What is your Favorite Fruit Tree?

"What is your favorite fruit tree?" I get this question a lot, or some variation of it. "What is your favorite apple tree for this area?" "What kind of cherry tree produces the best fruit?" "What peach tastes the best?"

Questions like these are like asking a father who their favorite child is. My answer to all of these questions is the same. I always answer the question with a question. What is your favorite ice cream? If the answer is anything other than vanilla, then I ask if they would eat it on apple pie. For example, my favorite ice cream flavor is Rocky Road, but I would never eat it on apple pie.

Yum, Rocky Road on Apple Pie!

Before you decide what kind of fruit tree to plant, ask yourself, "What kind of fruit do I eat the most?" Then ask, "How do I eat it?" If you eat a lot of apples and never eat plums, then you should grow an apple tree. If you only eat apples in pie, then you should chose a tarter variety that holds up well when cooked.

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I know a lot of gardeners have limited space and like to know what fruit tree varieties are good for multiple purposes. I recommend experimenting with multiple varieties of fruit before choosing which one to plant. Do a taste test with all of the varieties in the grocery store. Visit a local grower and see if you can taste all of the varieties that they produce. Ask local gardeners what they like and then see if they will let you taste their home grown fruit. Most people enjoy sharing their produce more than they like growing it.

What Varieties do you Like Best?

At the end of the day, any home grown fruit will be better than anything you can purchase at the store. Even those nasty red delicious apples taste better off the tree than most varieties in the grocery store.

Any Home Grown Fruit is Superior to Store Varieties

What about multi-variety trees? These can be fun, but I don't recommend them. Multi-variety fruit trees require advanced pruning. In short, not all grafts are equally compatible and a multi-variety fruit tree needs every branch to be pruned back to match the weakest branch. After several years of pruning you will quickly realize that this is a slow, tedious endeavor. In my experience, most multi-variety fruit trees end up having one variety out perform the others and chokes out the rest of the tree. Within a few years your multi-variety tress becomes a single variety tree.

The last option is to grow multiple fruit trees, but learn how to keep them small and compact. One way to do this is to grow espalier trees against a fence or a wall. This too takes some advanced pruning, but if you do it right, you can get a lot of fruit in a small area.

Grow Multiple Varieties in a Small Area

Thanks for Reading! If you would like to learn more about the care and pruning of fruit trees, please browse our 100+ fruit tree articles here, join our Backyard Fruit Growers Facebook Group, and take our free Fruit Tree Pruning Course. Also, please subscribe to our Fruit Pruning YouTube Channel.