I’ve begun scratching my head on this question. I should add “easiest to grow AND maintain”.
I’ve planted cherries, apples, pears, plums with negligible success over last 3 years. Had soil test, added lime.
I’m beginning to think I should just plant a bunch of chestnuts & pecans (the climate change will make zone 6 ready in a few years).
Curious what the forum suggests?
Zone 6, altitude 2300-2400’
easiest? mulberry, American persimmon, local area pawpaw, native plum, local variety hazelnut
not the most saleable fruits but the lowest maintenance
Pears (the most fireblight resistant ones from Clark’s list) and American or Hybrid Persimmons as far as fruit trees. May as well plant a Contender peach and an Indian Free they are pretty tough. May as well try a GoldRush apple also. Liberty/Freedom/Enterprise/Empire apples may be worth trying.
Pawpaws are easy if thats your thing.
Mulberries are pretty dang easy.
Shrubs like Honeyberries are pretty easy.
Cane fruits are pretty easy…
Barring all of that… you can grow just about anything u want in pots. Plenty of folks on here do… and lots of examples on Youtube etc.
If you mow alot and have a pristine area free of predators and wasps etc… you will likely need to spray or do something… Personally i have mostly stopped mowing and spend alot of time on habitats for predators and bees. My goal is not to spray anything other than maybe some compost tea and have a polyculture…at least im trying.
I dont care if my fruit has blemishes or mars or spots really… as long as it tastes good and makes me some stuff to can or preserve, freeze or dehydrate im good.
Z6B/7A Appalachia/WV.
NE Kentucky foothills here, zone 6B.
I have about 20 apple, 5 pear, 4 peach, 3 pluot trees, 2 bush cherry and numerous berry plants.
All the trees but 5 of the apples were planted in 2016-18. Berry plants 2017-2020.
My tree fruit growing has been a big failure with very little fruit harvested off them. It’s either late freezes killing blooms or squirrels stealing immature fruit. I’ve also lost 8 apple trees due to root issues, either disease or insect/rodent damage. Pears grow well here, but I have only had two trees produce anything meaningful, but pears can take a while. For peaches, I have Contender, Blushingstar (white fruit), Redhaven and Coralstar. But yet to have one ripe peach off of any off them. Pluots were a bad decision for this climate, they bloom way too early for this locale. I also have a wild plum that I transplanted in 2017, it’s a very nice sized tree, and is pretty productive, but again, squirrels…
Blackberries are my most productive fruit crop, raspberries have been a struggle to keep going. Strawberries do well here, but my patch has gone to weeds. Gooseberries do very well, but I lose a lot to birds. Bush cherries especially Juliet produce a lot of cherries, but again, birds get them before they’re ripe.
Even tho blackberries produce well, I do have issues with some of my UArkansas thornless varieties succumbing to late winter kill of the floricanes. At least with Freedom and Traveler, which are primocane bearers, I do get a late harvest of those, they’re still producing some fruit now, and will until we get our first freeze. Triple Crown is more hardy and has the best flavor IMO.
I’d go with what @resonanteye suggests as the easiest. Figs are also super easy, even considering the winter protection. Certain varieties of apples and pears are relatively trouble free, but not as much as the other suggestions.
Chestnuts can be good, but pecans do best in deep bottomland soils.
On the east coast only stone fruit are really labor intensive. Apples would be the next hardest. Everything else is easy.
I couldn’t resist the pull of stone fruit - cherries & plums
Plus apples. I went hard. 1/2 made it. But just didn’t seem to thrive at all.
I bought chestnuts and pecans and put in pots. They all did great. Kept under trees. Can’t wait to test their growth when transplanted vs the above in 2024
I’ll add some mulberries as recommended in post above. Burnt Ridge has some.
Thanks for the advice, everybody
Where’d you get the trees? Were they bare root or big box container trees? When did you plant them? What rootstocks have you tried? Did you protect from deer?
You mentioned you added lime. Chestnuts really want acidic soil. Depending on how much lime you added and the ph in the soil now, the soil may not be very hospitable to chestnuts. At a minimum I would spread soil acidifier (elemental sulphuric) now in the spots you intend to plant them and hopefully it will be a better match when you plant in 2024.
I would say persimmons and pawpaws will be the most reliable without having to spray.
Horse apple grows pretty well down there. Pawpaws grow all over the place. Limbertwig apples. Red June or Yellow Transparent.
I’m worried about those broken souls. 
Not nearly the first post today using an incorrect term…I realize ‘autocorrect’ isn’t correct all the time…but there’d be lots of red ink if I taught English class and graded papers. But, it’s fruit class I reckon instead of
English.
I figured either a phone ate that post or I was having a stroke. 