North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Scott Smith <scott@cs.jhu.edu>]

Greg, I live in Baltimore city and am growing many fruit varieties.  Many of the things that people think will grow fine without any spraying simply do not, and I have learned painful lessons to that effect.  Those disease resistant apples they mention for example: they are not resistant to fireblight, likely not to CAR (my Goldrush in particular gets that in spades), moths, curculio, etc.  Based on my orchard I would say asian pears, european pears (but both of those will have fireblight problems and some moths/rot), jujubes, figs (may get frozen out however), hardy asian persimmons, kiwis, mulberries, pawpaws, and blueberries (with netting at harvest) can work.  Apricots if unsprayed can get horrible brown rot here - one year my trees looked like they were melting, it was from all the brown rot goo on the shoots.  Even one or two sprays and they would be OK on that, and they may do well for a few years without any sprays, but once brown rot settles in during that odd rainy wet year it will stay around indefinitely.  Overall my #1 recommendation is the jujube.  It doesn't fruit well every year, but besides that they have been completely worry-free and produce a fruit that gets very positive remarks from all I have given them to.

You are always welcome to visit my orchard to check out what I have growing.  I keep everything pruned to 8' tall which is possible with 2-3 prunings per year.

Scott

*Apples*: Enterprise, Liberty, Pristine, Red Free, or Goldrush
    Apple Rootstock: Geneva, M7
*Pears*: Kefir, Sickle, Liberty, Magnus
    Pear Rootstock:  Homewood or Quince
*Apricots*: Anything from the “Harrow series” of apricots such as Harcot,
Harglow, Hargrand, Harlayne, Harogem, Harval
*Any species will be considered