Many gardeners grow vegies but not everyone thinks of growing fruit. Yet there’s a wide range of fruit-bearing trees available to gardeners in NSW and midwinter is the ideal time to pop into your local nursery and see what’s on offer.
If you haven’t grown fruit before, start with a tree that’s both ornamental and suitable for your local climate. That way even if the fruit is occasionally disappointing (late frost, birds) you’ll always have the pleasure of the tree.
Figs (Ficus carica) are among the easiest fruit trees as they thrive on neglect. They are medium size, multi-stemmed trees with big, attractively shaped leaves.
Figs (Ficus carica) are among the easies fruit trees as they thrive on neglect. They are medium size, multi-stemmed trees with big, attractively shaped leaves.
Figs have a weird fruiting habit which is worth watching.
The fruit develops in the leaf axils of the growing tips of a branch. As the branch grows, more leaves and fruit develop, so the biggest fruit are always those nearest the base of the branch.
Not all the fruit will ripen by autumn, but no worries, unripened figs hang on during winter and resume growth in spring, so trees often bear two crops a year.
Some fruit trees bear fruit useless for eating but nonetheless great for jam, jelly or paste.
Few of us would want to tuck into a crab apple (Malus) but they make lovely jelly. Many crab apples have luscious spring flowers combined with good autumn leaf colour.
M. ‘Gorgeous’ bears single, white tinged pink flowers and small, beautiful crimson crabs.
M. floribunda, with dark pink and white flowers, is the only crab immune to scab but its fruit is annoyingly small for jelly.
‘John Downie’ has bigger, orange-red fruit, and M. ‘Golden Hornet’ is better yet, with large, oval shaped, yellow crabs that luckily are of little interest to birds.
Crab apples are frost hardy and tolerate most soils, and need full sun for best flowers and fruit.
Quince (Cydonia oblonga) bear showy spring blossom and their lemony yellow, hard, acidic fruit turns dark red when cooked.
‘Smyrna’ has the biggest quinces, and I love the oblong yellow fruit of Mock Chinese Quince (Cydonia sinensis), equally good for jelly and paste.
Incidentally old country gardens often have a bush or two of the closely related japonica (Chaenomeles japonica, C. speciosa) and its quince-like fruit is also great for cooking.
Looking around recently for something new and different, I came across a persimmon (Diospyros kaki) displaying glossy, bright orange fruit hanging like small lanterns among brilliant red and yellow autumn foliage.
Persimmons thrive from cool temperate to sub-tropical regions though perform best with summer rainfall.
‘Dai Dai Maru’ bears astringent fruit needing over-ripening to remove its astringency. Fruit of non-astringent ‘Fuyu’ can be eaten firm. All fruit trees may require extra irrigation to produce a good crop.
Several growers supply bare-rooted stock in winter. Try Daleys Fruit Tree Nursery (www.daleysfruit.com.au), 36 Daleys Lane, Kyogle 2427; also Flemings Nursery (www.flemings.com.au), P.O. Box 1, Monbulk, Victoria 3795.