Growing fruit trees in a small yard

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Our garden has been loving all the warm weather the past few days. The apple trees have been blossoming and I think this year we might even get a few apples from them. We will be lucky if we do as we have only had them for a year now and don't expect to get too many apples from them in the first year. It will take at least a few good years too get a vast amount of fruit as the trees get more branches thus producing more fruit.

Dwarf varieties of Pink Lady and Granny Smith apples in a small garden plot

Blossoms on the Pink Lady

You don't need a big backyard these days to have fruit trees as there are now many varieties of dwarf trees available. The fruit tree is grafted onto a root stock to dwarf or stunt the growth of a fruit tree while keeping the fruit the normal size. This creates more compact trees suitable for small Australian backyards. 

Fruit developing on the Pink Lady

We have two apple trees. One is a Pink Lady because this is my favourite apple to eat. The other is a Granny Smith - chosen because I wanted something opposite to the Pink Lady flavour. We have these two trees near each other so that they pollinate one another. Because these trees are dwarf varieties it means that they will only grow half the size of a  normal tree, meaning that they will grow just a little higher than the height of a normal fence.

Fruit developing on the Granny Smith

Just about all nurseries in Australia carry dwarf varieties and not only are they available as apple trees but in many types of fruit including: lemon, mandarin, lime, orange, fig, mulberry and  mango to name a few. Check your local nurseries, they are bound to have some of these or doing an internet search will show you nurseries that carry these.

In my previous blog I spoke about drying fruit in my dehydrator so I am hoping to eventually grow enough apples so that I can dry my own instead of buying them. :-)