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  • From: "clanSkeen" <sgian AT planetc.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] A Homesteading Question
  • Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 14:27:12 -0500





I hate to rattle any cages and try and get folks to address a question about >homesteading, or at least gardening, if one isn't actually homesteading but I'm >wondering if you folks in Zones 7A and 6B would care to share your favorite fruit >trees and which do best in your respective zones.

Lynda, haven't you been paying attention? Go to WalMart and randomly buy any fruit you fancy then throw the pits and cores all about your place and you will have all the fruit you want in two years (or less). Bananas, papayas, pineapples, coconuts, doesn't matter. Biological "laws" are real iffy, as the pirates in the Johnny Depp movie would say, "More like guidelines.." More remote odds than that have been offered for credibility.

Seriously, though, while the agricultural zone is a good guide, keep in mind that certain trees need a certain number of days below a certain temperature in order to provoke them into fruiting. The zones don't always serve as a good guide in this. I've found the guide seems to be designed around what plants will survive, not bear necessarily. We are in zone 6B. Pears bear nearly every year, apples three or four in five, peaches one year in two, apricots almost every year (go figure), cherries every year unless there is a really freak frost. All cane and bush fruit, including bush cherries bear in profusion every year. Grapes bloom so late that they always set fruit but the quality varies depending on how soon it gets cool in the fall. But the profile of our Appalachian highland 6B is likely not going to be much of a match for your western 6B.

James





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