school age kids. The idea of fruit trees around their garden area came up and
I’m wondering what trees you would suggest. They will have approximately 9
trees spaced on a grid.
apart and are semi dwarf.
Dwarfing or Semidwarfing Rootstocks
All fruit trees should be grafted onto dwarfing or semi
dwarfing rootstocks (Citation for stone fruit, M111 for apples, OHxF333 for
pears). If you don’t know the rootstock then the plant label should say “semi
dwarf” or “dwarf”, not “standard”.
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| Many fruit and ornamental trees are grafted. The :dogleg” appearing on the trunk of a young tree is because its grafted. |
Early Producers
normally not is school from June – September, I would think you would avoid
trees that produce fruit then. That still leaves you with early producers like
May Pride peach, Early Grande Peach, FlordaKing or FlordaPrince peach,
Earlitreat peach, Flavorosa pluot. Royal Rosa, Flavor Giant, Katy, or Gold Kist
apricots. These should produce fruit from late May until maybe early June.
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| There are some very early peaches like Earlitreat and FlordaKing or FlordaPrince which will probably produce peaches before June graduation. |
Late Producers
For late producing fruit trees I
would pick Pink Lady or Sundowner (red) or Mutsu (green) apples, Bartlett or
red Bartlett pear, or Bosc pear, your favorite pomegranate, Flavor Grenade or
Flavor Finale pluots, Emerald Beaut plum, Giant Fuyu persimmon or any Fuyu or
Chocolate persimmon. I would suggest avoiding late producing peach. I would
avoid any nectarines due to the scarring of fruit from insects. Nectarines are
difficult to produce without spraying for insects. No late peaches because
there aren’t any good ones in my opinion. The best peaches are in late June,
July and August.
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| Enerald Beaut plum produces good but late fruit in Las Vegas. |
Non Desert Recommendations
Be
careful of planting fruit trees based upon recommendations from people not
living in desert regions. The tree will most likely grow but it’s more of a
question about the quality of the fruit it produces. It’s different. An
interesting exploration for these children would be to compare the quality of
the fruit produced by their trees with the quality of fruit purchased at the
grocery store.
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| Flavor Finale pluot is a good fruit tree for late production in the fall. |
Dave Wilson Nursery online has a
harvest calendar that you can download to your computer for your reference. The
harvest schedule is for central California but is very close to harvest times in
southern Nevada with a few exceptions. Be careful of fruit recommendations from
non-desert climates.