Which fruit tree?

[TZ -OH6]

I am thinking about planting either pear or peach trees, or both. We have a couple of 'feral' apple trees on the property and the fruit is always too blemmished to eat. I am concerned that peaches or pears might be the same way. I am not willing to spray and will only consider planting if the trees will be usefull if left on their own once I get them established.

[damethod]

If you buy the tree young, there aren't many fruit trees that will not require some TLC early on. Mature productive trees that require little maintenace are usually 10 yrs old or older. You can buy a tree that age, but will have to care for it aggresively the first year or so until it gets situated.

[TZ -OH6]

I'm not worried about properly caring for a young tree, I just don't want to have to spray the fruit in order to get a few edible ones. As I mentioned, none of the apples are ever fit to eat off of the trees.

[applestar]

The way I understand it (based on intensive research last year), peach typically suffers more from bugs and diseases conventionally "fixed" by spraying. They say apple is easier than peach, and pear is easier than apple. On the other hand, pears, like apples, require cross pollination by specific varieties whereas Peaches are self-pollinating.

That said, do look for disease resistant varieties -- root stock as well the grafted cultivar itself.

Depending on what you're trying to avoid, Magness, Potomac, and Seckel are some pear cultivars that have good disease resistance. I bought Magness, hopefully to be cross pollinated by locally abundant Callery pears. If this doesn't work, then I'm going to get a Seckel. Magness can be pollinated with Seckel (or an Asian pear, hence the Callery) and Seckel is self-pollinating but Magness can't pollinate anything else. My main concern was Fire Blight.

For peach, my choice was Carolina Belle, though I was also looking for Madison. I have to be on the lookout for Brown Rot.

I'm going to try Surround as well as Diluted Milk and Compost Tea for spray options on my fruit trees.

BTW, I have an Enterprise apple tree (I couldn't resist the name... ) It's disease resistant and gamely fights off the Fire Blight that did in both of my Asian pear trees, but my next door neighbor used to have 2 giant red cedar trees along the side of the their house and Cedar Apple Rust was inevitable/inescapable. Happily, one of the trees collapsed under a heavy snowfall a couple of years ago and at that point, they decided to get rid of the matching tree. My Enterprise has been doing much better. Also, in the mean time, some bird kindly left us a crabapple seed to grow in a garden bed not far away in an ideal place to grow, and it matured enough to start flowering... at the same time as the Enterprise. So I didn't have to get a pollinator after all and all of a sudden, my "useless" apple tree is productive! Except that the squirrels steal the ones up high and rabbits and ground hogs steal the ones hanging low!

[TZ -OH6]

Thanks for the info on peaches. A couple of people in the neighborhood have had lone pear trees over the years, which produce, but not well. My limited experience with them was that the fruits were not perfect, but better than my apples. There is a peach orchard 10-15 miles away so I can get fresh peaches in season.

[IndorBonsai]

If there is a peach orchard so close by maby ask to get a couple starts from them. The species of peach they are growing obviously grows well in your area plus you have somewhere close by to ask questions on how to care for them. Or you can just watch and when they trim their trees you trim your trees.

Just a idea. don't mind me, I was just passing through

[MaineDesigner]

The are a number of apple cultivars now that offer very high degrees of disease resistance. 'Liberty' is the most popular among these in Maine. They are not, however, insect resistant. I think you need to do some research to identify what is causing the majority of the blemishing in your area and make your choices based on that if you decide to go with an apple.

Pears and Asian pears are also worth investigating. Applestar has offered good advice. Pay heed to his/her comment regarding rootstocks for either apples or pears. It is still early in the grand scheme of things but the Cornell Geneva apple rootstocks and some of the Budagovskys, so far, appear to be a real improvement on the Malling-Merton rootstocks, especially if fireblight is an issue in your area.

You may need to be vigilant for borers and/or voles with young trees.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Best ever pear tree I saw was at an old nursery I used to work at; a six, seven foot D'Anjou that was simply scrumptious and bore without much help...

Genus Prunus, which includes almonds, cherries, plums and peaches (bet you didn't know they were all cousins, huh?) is famously susceptible to fungal diseases and Ohio is not far different to me here, so I know those are an issue. I find pears to be even more trouble free than apples and that's where I'd go...

Eventually I will get a tree for the yard but I want to get a paw-paw...

[url]https://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/pawpaw.html[/url]

Almost no real disease or pest issues; going native can have benefits for everybody, even the local wildlife...

HG

[IndorBonsai]

LOL poor mans banana,

darn don't think I can grow it here

[The Helpful Gardener]

More like mangoes than bananas...but the descriptor works for me...

HG