Planting Fruit Trees For Our Zone

Apple

Happy Arbor Day!

We aren’t planting our trees quite yet, but I am super excited to talk about trees anyway. Fruit trees, specifically.

One of the reasons we moved to the country was because we really wanted to start homesteading – even on a small scale. The biggest thing we wanted to do was plant a garden along with some fruit trees. Sure, the lack of neighbors is great and the owning versus renting aspect is pretty awesome, too. But growing our own food is something I’ve wanted to do for so long and I am so excited to finally have a place to do that.

I don’t know what it is, but I have wanted fruit trees since I was a little girl. I’ve always wanted a garden, too, but not in the way that I wanted fruit trees. To me, there was something so amazing about being able to head out to your backyard and grab a piece of fruit that you can enjoy right away. I can’t place my finger on what makes it so magical to me, but I will embrace it nonetheless.

I would LOVE to grow lemon and oranges, we don’t live in Florida. Or anywhere close. Instead, we live where it snowflakes are more common than sunshine. So there will be no citrus trees for this girl. Luckily, we can still plant some kinds of trees. We just have to plant according to our zone which just so happens to be the 7th coldest zone in the United States. (Want to find out what zone you are? Check out this Plant Hardiness Zone Map from the USDA.)

While I won’t be enjoying fresh orange and lemon juice from our own trees, we will be planting some other trees that thrive in this area like sour cherries, apples, and pears. And every time I think about these beautiful, fruit-bearing trees – I think about one thing:

Pies.

Not fresh fruit to snack on and eat healthy. Not fruit salads. Not anything remotely healthy. Just delicious cherry pies. And apple pies or apple crisp. And pear tart which is close enough to pie for me.

Apparently once we plant these trees and they start bearing fruit, I’ll be doing extra yard work to make up for the inches I’ll be adding to my waistline.

do you have any fruit trees?

what would be your ideal trees to plant?