Small Fruit Trees That Are Perfect For Home Orchards

Almost anyone who’s interested in edible gardening would love to have their own fruit trees, but very few of us have the acreage necessary to grow full sized fruiting trees. All is not lost however, as some fruit trees are grafted on dwarfing or semi-dwarf rootstock that keeps the tree size down to a more manageable level. There’s a wide array of small fruit trees for the garden.

In fact a fruit tree for the home garden has actually become quite popular and, due to the shrinking size of many backyards, some can even be container-grown. Interested in a small fruit tree for your garden? Keep reading to learn about the best fruit trees for small spaces.

There’s a lot that goes into producing fruit on trees. There is pruning, fertilizing, spraying and harvesting. Plus you need space, especially if you want more than one fruiting tree.

This is where smaller fruit trees have some benefits. Yes, they still need to be maintained but their care is on a smaller more manageable scale. Even harvesting is easier on a smaller sized tree.

As to the best fruit trees for the home garden, the variety is vast. Apple, cherry, peach, nectarine, fig, plum, pear, lemon, apricot, pomegranate, mulberry, persimmon, orange, quince, papaya, loquat, and olive are some of the fruit trees available to the home gardener.

Dwarf apples have many benefits. They bear earlier, require less pruning, less space, less pesticide use, have better cold hardiness and pest resistance and can be harvested without a ladder.

Some cultivars are available in different strains; a mutation of a type of apple that has been selected purposefully. There are both spur strains and non-spur strains. Spurs are slow growing and compact and can expect to be fruitful for 7-10 years or