Hi All, I’m in Denver CO and we just had to take down a large ash tree. it opened up a solid 40 feet of space along our back fence. the area gets great all day sun, it’s in the mulch border around a lawn that I don’t want to get rid of until kid is grown (no time soon). it is also under power lines…we have thriving peach trees in another area. we have some on-again/off again apples but we’ve already planted their replacements. we like all kinds of fruit. We can have hard late frost.
I’m looking for ideas for fruit trees to plant that will be ideal as dwarfs, produce edible fruit and are likely to succeed here. any ideas for things for me to look into?
brief considerations:
contemplated training apple trees to grow in a fan pattern and not overhang the grass a lot.
we’d love a cherry but this neighborhood seems to be horrid for them. we’ve had 4 die, friends a street over similar luck.
Don’t know a thing about Denver soil but I have had similar luck with Cherry trees on the east coast, trees dying. Cherry trees on Colt rootstock worked for me. Might be worth a try … Of course you can never have enough peach trees!
i agree with Brady. i have 4 of romeo , juliet and carmine jewel… very vigorous and carefree trees. they were bred to be hardy in the prairie provinces of Canada. should be bullet proof for you there. bugs so far haven’t touched mine in the 3 years I’ve had them. i barely watered them while they were establishing. they actually have higher brix than most sweet cherries.
American persimmons are delicious. You don’t need a second tree if you purchase a grafted female.
There is an American named ‘Early Golden’ that has male and female flowers on it so you will most-likely have seeds in your fruit. From ‘Early Golden’ other cultivars came into existence. Should you plant a female (again a grafted selection) that’s not in the family of early golden, you’ll get full crops of 100% seedless fruit. They’re also really beautiful trees as ornamentals for their fall color, bark, and of course orange fruit. You can prune one any way you wish to any height.
" Diospyros virginiana , which is native to the U. S., yields small, flavorful fruit . … Blossoms and fruit are produced on the current season’s shoots that originate from buds near the tips of one-year-old branches." Google
Sadly the ash was kind of doomed here. Strange, Sweet cherries do good here in denver but will die every 30 years at least from a snap frost and are not reliable fruitwise but every other year or third because of late frost during bloom, Maybe your getting the wrong rootstock? Sours in general do very well and take the snap freezes much better and have been my most reliable crop. I am trying Jujubes and so far all 3 varieties have went through the winter and came up in the spring. I have had similar issues with apples and need to reset to fireblight resistant varieties. Plums do well here and almost everything will be susceptible to our late spring frosts
some like it eaten strait off the bush. others use it for juice, jam and in recipes. animals are always a issue with any fruit. most use netting to protect their crop and prune the bushes to keep them a manageable size. with the area you have open you could put several fruit bushes and small trees in there.
How about fruiting bushes? Blueberries, gooseberries, currants, you may mix in some strawberries as well. May be raspberries, if you do not mind mowing them down when they get to your lawn .
I like H63A a lot. I’ve tasted a lot of them and they all can be very similar. You should look for H63A, Barbra’s Blush, or Lehman’s Delight for larger fruit; for smaller fruit and excellent flavor, Morris Burton and Lena are superb.
Lehman’s Delight is also known more correctly as ‘100-46’.
Sapalta Chum (cherry-plum ) [not Sapa…Sapalta is an improved Sapa] will easily survive your frosts…hardy to Zone 3 or better…has a compact tree form…I have one that is 6 years old and still only about 7 feet tall …is not picky about soils as long as drainage is decent…dark purple/red and has a deep dark (almost black )red inside…not a lot of cherry flavour but plummy and very sweet if left to ripen fully…tons of blossoms and tons of fruit…skin is a bit astringent but you won’t notice after biting into a fully ripe one they are so sweet. Fall leaf colours are beautiful bright dark red/plum colour. Crotch angles are acute so if a racoon tries to get your fruit…or if it gets overloaded with fruit…it can tear away at the main trunk…I prune mine so that I get rid of narrower crotch angles and helps also to beef up the branches that are left so they will be stronger.
Waneta Plum will also easily weather Colorado lows…is precocious…you may get fruit after just a year or two…and they are nice…sweet flavorful orange flesh and orange with a red blush on the outside…depending on your rootstock you may need to prune to keep it smaller…but that is easily done. If you get it on a prunus Americana rootstock you can let one of the suckers grow out for pollination.
.