My Guide To Buying Fruit Trees

I’ve spent many hours pouring over catalogues with the thought of buying fruit trees. After a while, the mind boggles and gets overwhelmed with information.

I’ve had an orchard with over 130 different varieties of Fruit Trees as well as 46 different varieties of Citrus and I have learnt so much.

If you’re not planting 100 fruit trees and you have a more reasonable sized garden, then this guide will help you. It is purely opinion based and because of my experience with all the varieties, I am full of opinions!

At the base thought of this guide, I was aiming for “If I had to narrow it down to just one or two varieties of this type of fruit tree, which one would I choose?”

Whenever there are two listed, you need 2 varieties for best pollination.

Apricot: Moorpark

This is the most popular variety. It’s the classic flavour being great for eating fresh, jam making or bottling Most of the other varieties of Apricot like Trevatt (early) and Glengarry (late) are also great for extending the season and are basically early and late versions of Moorpark. In fact, if you ever see early or late attached to a variety, it’s all in reference to earlier than Moorpark or later than Moorpark.

Nectarine White Fleshed : Goldmine

A superb white flesh Nectarine. It is also the mid season Nectarine (around February) that is a freestone (meaning you can cut it in half and it twists apart) that all the others get compared to. It has a most spectacular flavour and is a reliable cropper. If there was room for only one variety of Nectarine, I would choose this one. If you had room for two varieties, I do love Queen Giant for two reasons, it was one of the earliest stone fruits, ripening late Christmas/early January and also the fruit is huge. But in all honesty, the flavour or Goldmine is superior.

Nectarine Yellow Fleshed: May Grand

This variety is fantastic and mid season, being a free stone and cropping reliably. I also love Fairlane for it’s late season crop as it really helps extend the stone fruit season. Both have a similar delicious flavour.

Peach: Elberta

This is the show stopper Peach. There are many delicious Peaches but when I start waxing lyrically about a Peach being eaten, warm from the kiss of the sun, perfectly ripe and bursting with flavour and juice…… this is the variety I’m talking about. It’s mid season, free stone and if there was only room for one Peach tree, this is it. It’s also sold as Blackburn Elberta and some texts recommend that it needs a second pollinator but I don’t believe this is so.

The other Peaches that I like are Golden Queen, which is mid to late March and is a cling stone (which means you can’t cut it in half and separate it) however, this aside, it is the Peach that gets canned. It holds it’s shape in cooking and makes the best Peach Chutney and is just delicious.

Blood Plum: Satsuma & Mariposa

If I had a dollar for every time someone dreamily remembers Satsuma Plums, I would be so rich! It is great and you do need two Blood Plums to cross pollinate. However, let me say and perhaps put to you that you can’t have tried Mariposa Plum if all you can talk about is Satsuma. Mariposa is a very large plum, free stone, and is delicious fresh and for cooking. It’s reliable and to pick it at it’s perfect ripeness you need to collect it from the ground. Mariposa is ripe when it falls off the tree, which is unique. I love them both and you do need two varieties for pollination but I couldn’t live without Mariposa.

Apple: Pink Lady & Golden Delicious

There are oodles of varieties of Apples and I haven’t met one yet that I didn’t like. I do have reasons for narrowing it down to these two but if you have room for more, you won’t be disappointed with any Apple variety in my opinion. I chose Pink lady because it’s a late apple, that’s crisp and sweet but tart and it lasts for a long time both on the tree and freshly picked. It’s good for eating fresh and for cooking. But just let me open your eyes to the Golden Delicious. If you’ve ever bought it from the supermarket, you wouldn’t be a fan. It doesn’t store well once it’s picked, but……… it lasts on the tree for 3 months without going soft and is the most juicy, sweet and delicious of Apples. It’s a treat that you can only get if you grow it. Once you pick it, it lasts less than a couple of weeks before it goes soft. But freshly picked off the tree, it’s so crisp and bursts in your mouth, honestly, I wish everyone gets to try it like this.

Pear: Williams and Beurre Bosc

Pears are a bit of a long term investment, needing a few years to actually start producing well, but if you’re not moving for a few years, it’s worth planting. I chose Williams (also called Bartlett) because it is the most popular pear we think of and I really haven’t met a Pear yet that I don’t like. It is partially self fertile but does better with two varieties. This is the pear that you pick and then it ripens off the tree. So if you have a big crop, don’t make my mistake and pick them all at once, because in three weeks time you will have to deal with 100kg of ripe Pears. Hindsight has taught me to pick a few kilograms at a time repeatedly throughout the season until they’ve all gone or started to drop. The reason I chose Beurre Bosc as the other favourite for Pear varieties is that it’s a firm textured pear, perfect for cooking and preserving as it holds its shape. But I also adore Red Sensation Pear, but it’s basically a red skinned version of Williams. And this list is of the bare minimum, so of course if I had room I would get the Red one too!

Cherry: Starkrimson

There is a bit of confusion with Cherries because until the last 20 years, you could really only get varieties like Bing and Black Boy, that needed to be cross pollinated and while good eating, were quite small. Since then there have been some great new releases of Cherries that don’t need to be cross pollinated and have large fruit and delicious flavour. (they are usually a bit more expensive for this reason) Starkrimson, Stella and Sunburst are the main ones and I love them all, but if I had to choose only one it would be Starkrimson. It has given me maybe 6 more cherries than the other two varieties, so really, hardly a reason but all three are brilliant for the home garden.

Fig: Black Genoa

Oh how I love Fig Trees. My favourite is Black Genoa because of it’s dark skin and pretty white and pink flesh inside. It preserves well, making a Fig Jam that is more rubied in colour than brown but it’s utterly delicious fresh and makes any dish that you put it on look divine. Other varieties like Brown Turkey and Preston Prolific are also fantastic but nothing beats the presentation of Black Genoa.