The best way to ensure that your home or community orchard survives and thrives is to carefully select your fruit trees so that they will grow well in challenging urban conditions. Up until recently, it's been been hard to find disease resistant varieties of trees and trees that are properly pruned for urban conditions. We at Growing for Green are working to find good sources of fruit trees for urban purposes. In the meantime, we have selected a variety of trees that will cross-pollinate and provide us with fruit throughout the growing season but if you are looking to buy a fruit tree, attend one of our workshops on selecting a fruit tree for your yard to find the perfect tree for you.
We have planted 14 fruit trees in Ben Nobleman Park. Here are the varieties we have.
Cherries:
Prunus avium 'Lapins' / Lapins Sweet Cherry - (red) - self fertile -ripens late July - good for eating (planted spring 2009)
Prunus avium 'Sandra Rose' / Sandra Rose Cherry - (dark red) - self fertile - late season - good for eating (planted spring 2009)
Prunus avium 'Tehranavee Cherry' / Tehranavee Cherry - self fertile - good for eating, canning (planted summer 2011)
Plums:
Prunus salacina 'Shiro' (yellow) - cross pollinating - mid season - good for eating, pies, jams etc (planted summer 2010) ---
Prunus salacina 'Satsuma' - (red) - cross pollinating - ripens mid season - good for eating, cooking, canning, preserves (planted spring 2009)
Prunus salacina 'Early Golden' - (yellow) cross pollinating - ripens early season (mid July) - good for eating (planted spring 2009)
Apricots:
Goldbar Apricot - cross pollinating (planted spring 2010)
Puget Gold Apricot (x2) - self pollinating (planted spring 2010)
Apples:
Liberty - Disease resistant (planted spring 2010)
Smoothee Gold (planted spring 2010)
Golden Supreme (planted spring 2012)
Pristine (planted spring 2012)