fruit tree varieties

I was talking to a friend at work a couple’ve weeks ago, about her garden (she’s recently bought a house, and is madly excited to be planting some dwarf fruit trees in the garden), and she asked me what trees I have in the ground. It made me think, maybe other people might be interested in our choices of trees and varieties too. So, here goes. 🙂

 

Not all of these are in the ground as yet; I’ve noted which ones are planted, and which are on order. The trees without a status note are on the wishlist.

 

Apples:

 

These are for the cider orchard. Most are table / dessert apples (i.e. for eating), but these can be juiced to make cider too. The cider apple varieties usually aren’t well suited to eating fresh, but the two we’ve chosen are reputed to be reasonable for fresh eating as well as cider-making.

 

Citrus:

 

I may have a fruit tree collecting issue. Gotta catch ’em all, right?

 

Dates:

 

These are an experiment. They should get enough heat to fruit, but we can’t be completely sureuntilt hey do fruit. or at least until they flower.

 

Figs:

 

I don’t actually even really like fresh figs – but I very much like dried figs, and fig paste, and fig jam. And caramelised fig sauce stirred through ice-cream. Thus: figs.

 

Olives:

 

 

Yes, olives are fruit. Even if you have to pickle them before they’re edible, or just use them for oil production.

 

Pears:

 

Pears are K’s favourite fruit. So we had to have a variety.

 

Stone fruit:

 

In case it wasn’t abundantly clear, I adore stone fruit. The smell of peaches and nectarines in summer is one of my happy things, and the sweet-sharp taste of an apricot or plum fresh off the tree is.. well, my mouth waters thinking about it. I also love jams made with stone fruit; apricot jam is endlessly useful, and plum jam is actually my favourite of all the jams I’ve ever tried (actually my favourite jam in the world is the plum jam my mum makes, with ruby blood plums from her tree and a touch of fresh orange juice for the pectin content).

 

Miscellaneous:

 

And then of course there are the nut trees. But I’ll leave those for another post.