This past weekend I planted three new fruit trees. This brings me up to nine different fruit trees with seven different kinds of fruit. I am really excited to have this variety in my zone 4 yard. For those of you curious, I have three apple, cherry, plum, pear, asian pear, peach, and apricot.
The first photo is of the new Tawara Asian pear and the photo above is of a Polly Peach. I bought both locally at Gertens for a very fair price. They are good sized trees and look very healthy. They also come with a one year warranty should anything go wrong.
The final tree is an apricot purchased locally in highland park. It is the most expensive tree in my yard now. I think it was worth it because apricots seem rather rare at the different nurseries I have visited.
We planted them by digging a hole twice as big as the container. We filled the hole with finished compost. The grass and old poor quality soil was put into the compost heap. We covered the area with cardboard and then a heavy layer of woodchip mulch.
To help with nitrogen in the area, I planted a combination of hairy vetch and clovers. The cherry and plum tree are surrounded by clover and doing much better than the apple trees without. I spread it around to my existing trees as well. I just hope the squirrels don’t eat all the seeds before they germinate.
For my existing pear tree, I added some perennial flowers including mums, cone flowers, black-eyed susans, and garlic chives near the area to add some color, visual interest, and extra food for my honeybees.
These are the two very ripe plums from my mount royal plum tree. I planted the tree last fall and was super surprised to see it flower this spring and produce these delicious plums. They were the best plums I have ever eaten. I can’t wait to more next year!
I have room for a couple more fruit trees, so I am still on the lookout for varieties hardy enough to survive a zone 4 Minnesota winter. I would love a pluot tree.
