Permies Poll: How many fruit trees do you have on your homestead?

How many fruit trees do you manage? Would you like more? Are they all different or similar?

I have a handful of different fruit trees currently growing on my homestead. A couple of apples, several peaches, some plums.

I'd like to look into something like a cherry or a medlar or perhaps some kind of pear? I am limited on growing space so I have to be very intentional.

Do I count trees that will grow fruit eventually but are too juvenile to have done so yet?

Christopher Weeks wrote:Do I count trees that will grow fruit eventually but are too juvenile to have done so yet?

Absolutely! None of mine are producing but I am counting them. :)

Around 200 trees on a one+ acre lot in a subdivision.  My off button broke.

None due to apple cedar rust.

I have about 15 planted or heeled in awaiting a thaw. I only really got started last winter with planting fruit trees. Mulberry, one plum, peach, pawpaw, persimmon. One of the peaches is a volunteer, the happiest of them (though none of them look too bad). That is not counting shrubs—lots of little tiny red-flowering quinces, some young currants and jostaberries, a gooseberry, a delicious chokecherry bush, and one Nanking cherry. And there is a plethora of wild nannyberries who I have pruned and thinned in the hopes that they will be abundant (hopes not yet fulfilled). Also there is one highbush cranberry that has never borne fruit as far as I know, and a wild plum that made two fruits a few years ago and none since. (The plum is being strangled by hops, shaded out under a canopy of box elder and ash, and may soon fall into the river. Oh! And I got a sucker from that tree to take root.) A few wild black cherries too.

There are some wild apple trees too. They are not particularly reliable, but there are plenty of other places to get wild apples that I don’t need to bother them with pruning.

A few grapevines have been planted too, and a kiwi. I have spread lots of seed during summer and fall and am hoping that some of it will come up and grow more good fruiting trees and shrubs.

The land wants to be forest and so forest gardening seems like a good way to go along with that. Anyway, the soils here have damage and pollution such that more wood and organic matter is really a necessity in order to have a sustainable garden system.

i stopped counting when i passed 50. nearly thirty pawpaws, 15 or so pears (mostly asian but a few euro), apples, persimmons (mostly topworked wild trees), mulberries, cornelian cherries…and a handful of other oddballs here and there. we’re on 5 acres (half of which is steep, heavily wooded, and north facing) in a long ditch in the north carolina mountains.

Had to change my vote to the highest number once I started listing the trees.  Oops. I have more than I thought.

5 lemon
1 lime
2 orange
1 tangerine
1 tangelo
1 grapefruit
1  pomelo
1 Surinam cherry
6 persimmon
2 tomatillo  
2 good eating guavas and dozens of wild ones only good for feeding livestock
2 eggfruit
2 apple
1 mango (doesn’t produce, but it’s a lovely tree)
6 avocado
56 clumps of bananas, each with 3 to 5 stalks . I’m actively increasing my banana clumps. I’m in the process of lining the driveway with them.

Around 20 on a 1/2 acre suburban lot.
A dozen or so peaches, 3 of producing ages.
Two plums. Ornamental, but occasionally make a nice fruit.
One mulberry. Very good fruit producer. They are a weed tree here. I cut down dozens every year.
One apple of unknown variety. Similar to Macintosh but more sour.
One hawthorn. Very nice winter fruit.
One crab apple. This one may get chopped down. It shades the peaches, and the fruit isn't great even for sauce.

Also have raspberries and concord grapes.
I would like to get Japanese pear and persimmon, cherry, and good plum.

Some are babies, some are mine but on my son's property, he has some of his own, and some I'm not sure count as trees whilst some I'm not sure count as fruit.

But, having said that, I have over twenty, probably thirty or forty depending on what counts and what doesn't.

Types include fig, persimmon, orange, lemon, lime, peach, apricot, plum, cherry, apple, pear, mulberry, paw paw, pomegranate, avocado, quince.

If nuts count, I also have almonds and hazelnuts.

Not sure if prickly pear count as trees, but some are now big enough to have a pretty woody looking trunk. Also apple cactus. And kiwi, which aren't really trees.

Do elder, olive and pepper count as fruit?

And I have some seeds of strawberry guava, which I'm hoping will count in a few years...

Oh, and strawberry tree - I knew I'd forget something important!

I'm at a ridiculous number. Probably about 50 at my house and another 1,300 out at the orchard with another 500 on order for planting in 2025.

I have about 57 mature fruit trees in the ground or in pots. Including seedlings and immature trees in pots, maybe about 30 more. Including fruit bushes/vines and nut trees, lots more. I love fruit trees and I love planting them and giving them away, it's fun.

Apples, lots.  Between 50 and 100.
Cherries, a dozen or so, some of them bush types
Pears 1
apricots 3
persimmon 2
paw paw 1
peach 2
artic kiwi, not a tree, but I have 4
lots of berry bushes of various types, not really trees though

I'm sure I'm forgetting some.  I don't think I'll ever be done adding them.  Looking for an Arkansas Black apple or two to add this spring.

Census off the top of my head:

16 apple
5 pear
8 plum (does not include wildings)
8 peach
6 cherry
1 apricot
15 feijoa
1 lemon
1 grapefruit
1 persimmon
3 fig
1 quince
2 tamarillo
1 satsuma
4 avocado
1 banana

75 total (I'm sure I missed at least one or two)

The above are all in the ground. If I include potted ones that are earmarked for future planting there's another couple dozen waiting in the wings. And this list excludes things like berries, grapes, kiwifruit, and guavas (except feijoas, because they really are trees). Should I go for 100? Then we've got nuts...30-40 hazels, a dozen chestnuts, two walnuts, two macadamias, four almonds, a Torrey pine and a few oaks.

Guys... I really need to get my fruit tree game up!

I'm impressed and envious at everyones accomplishments.

Wow, fifty plus is mind blowing... I've got 2 mature apples, 1 mature crabapple for the birds, and three of each pears and plums I just planted last spring. Hoping to get those high numbers soon! This year is more about support trees than fruit production, but I'll get fifty someday

I grow mine from seed and it didn't ask how many already fruiting and there's a big discrepancy

Edit:
I only have 2 acres so everything must be small.

Over a dozen apple trees from seed but none are bearing fruit yet and it has been 8 years. I might get a backhoe in next year and if so, relocate them. The spot has grown over and now I have a better spot for them

The 2 Hawthorne which I thought were apples for years are beginning to fruit!
I don't think I can count the climbing roses, which are growing a living fence, or the 8' high bush cranberry.

The wild cherry from a sucker is a bush but in 3 years is producing

The wild elderberries don't produce much, so I started some cultivated ones from seed.

I harvest some of my ornamental plums from an ancient tree that was pruned of dead wood

I grow massive quantities of fruiting bushes, indigenous.

I bought Ann Ralph's fruit tree pruning book, recently recommended indirectly through this site -- to better manage the plum, and perhaps with that backhoe, buy a few cultivated dwarf trees and practice significant pruning.

Peoplle with apple cedar rust issues:  Check into resistant varieties such as Liberty, Enterprise, and Freedom.  Good performers as well.

50 something peachtrees
20 something apples
20 plums
some cherries
many more coming

If I count the nut trees, then I can squeak past fifty.
Yes, I'd love more, but on a tenth of an acre I'm pretty much out of space. I'm practicing pruning heavily.
They're all different. Even the duplicates are different cultivars.
I'm not dealing with the produce of fifty trees. Many have yet to bear, others bear intermittently or stingily. Others I have cut back to topwork and they haven't taken off yet.
For instance the ghost pine has made cones but not yet nuts. The pecans don't ripen. The plums I'm removing almost everything but the new grafts.
Five assorted citrus.
Four feijoas to make a privacy hedge.
Three apples and three pears and three cherries.
Two white sapote, two cattleya guavas, two seedling american persimmons, two multigraft asian persimmons, two figs, two multigraft plums.
One apricot, one multigraft loquat, one mulberry, one mountain papaya, one olive, a peach that never ripens.
Stuff that I'm not sure counts as trees, like grapes, bolivian fuchsia, elderberry, raspberry, currant, a couple of pomegranates reputed to ripen without heat that haven't matured to flowering age yet.
Several pawpaws that got stepped on and broke off the grafts and don't seem to want to grow.
Buncha wacky stuff from seed that will probably never bear, like the two cherimoyas, the one remaining macadamia, ice cream bean, bergamot orange, seedling olives coming up in the weeds.
And the stuff I'm postponing removing, like the European chestnut and possibly the cherries.
The number isn't static, I'm always planting and culling, finding and losing, breaking branches and rooting cuttings.
The stuff I actually harvest is mostly citrus, apricots, pears, apples, sapote, asian persimmons, cattleyas, olives, mountain papayas, feijoas, plums, fuchsias, elderberries, figs.

In our yard proper about 60 and in the orchard about  700. Mostly apples and plums and a few pears. We also have lots of raspberries, black currants, goose berries and haskaps.

It depends...

Strictly trees, I got beyond 20, but pretty sure we aren't at 50 yet.  The delineation between shrub and tree could arguably push that number up.  If we add the other woody fruit plants, I'm pretty sure we're over 50.

Trees include apples, pears, plums, Trader mulberry.  Adding shrubs includes cherries (Romance series and native chokecherry), Saskatoon (amelanchier, so effectively service berry or June berry are names some might be more familiar with), currants - black, red, and white, Manchurian apricot, silver buffaloberry, haskap (aka honeyberry), sea buckthorn, gooseberry, elderberry...I may be missing some as it's a work in progress and not everything is fruiting yet.  

We have seeded apple cores and hardy apricot pits as well as chokecherries - we'll see what comes of it.

On the nuttier side we have hazelnuts (beaked and not) and butternut (seeded last year, so we'll see how they survive).  

I had a pack of Ussurian pear seeds that started sprouting following the stratification process, but never came up once I had them in the air prune bed.  Perhaps they were too close to the butternuts and weren't happy with the juglone.  Gotta keep trying.  I have a neighbour with a Beta grape that I need to take cuttings from....

Ra Kenworth wrote:I grow mine from seed and it didn't ask how many already fruiting and there's a big discrepancy

Edit:
I only have 2 acres so everything must be small.

Over a dozen apple trees from seed but none are bearing fruit yet and it has been 8 years. I might get a backhoe in next year and if so, relocate them. The spot has grown over and now I have a better spot for them

The 2 Hawthorne which I thought were apples for years are beginning to fruit!

Ra: I've grown apple pips too. Having a much smaller plot than you, I've got to restrict the size of them. Two pairs were growing close, so I've been training and pruning - the leader of one to run down the trunk of its neighbour, and vice versa. Growing downwards is reckoned to encourage flowering, and 1.5 years after the work, one of the plants flowered and fruited on the down-growing wood. Hopefully others will produce this year.

Otherwise, I've 4 old trees from when we moved here: Kidd's Orange Pippin, Ingrid Marie, Annie Elizabeth, and Wallace Street my own seedling on own roots, not too large and fruiting nicely. A seedling came up that dropped its small fruit early - that's commandeered for grafting onto, so that's got Wisley Crab on it. Then a raft of small trees that I've grafted with interesting and tasty trees from the local area, mostly feral seedlings.

Anthony Powell wrote:

Growing downwards is reckoned to encourage flowering, and 1.5 years after the work, one of the plants flowered and fruited .

Awesome! Many thanks for this tip!!

I will try this on the largest trees which are 5-7 feet now, before I attempt a backhoe coming in and digging down and attempting to move them off the mound of trees trunks and smaller rocks and dirt that I seeded them on top of boulders and meagre top soil on glacial deposits.  (I hope to locate a buried point well and a neighbor is renting one.)

Wow, so many different types in different zones. I think I have (SEE ABOVE) Dennis Bangham's disease I don't know when to stop :-)

My area grows sub-tropical to temperate very easily, (also a few tropical if I place them in the right areas with canopy ; a few cool temperate if I place them facing north against brick or stone walls and protect them when under 3 years). I've put their latin names for anyone who is curious as I realise some may be unfamiliar.

When I scroll through these lists I see we permies are a very eclectic lot. I do a lot of preserving, jams, sauces and also sell at local farmers markets.

1 Abiu (Pouteria caimito)
1 Amla (Phyllanthus emblica)
2 Apricots 1 early, 1 late to extend season
8 apples & 1 Crab Apple, I use scions from this to graft other apples as it’s such a strong stock
4 Avocado different varieties to extend season
Bananas 6 varieties, Green Java, Red Dacca, Goldfinger, Lady Finger, Ducasse, Cavendish
4 Pear
1 Dragon Fruit, red (Selenicereus monacanthus)
1 Plumcot
6 Plums 3 santa rosa & pollinator 3 satsuma
6 Peach
6 Cherry & Cherry-Lapins (Prunus avium)
4 Feijoa
3 Figs
4 Strawberry Guava
2 Lemon
2 Cumquat-Nagami
1 Grapefruit
4 Mandarins
2 Oranges
1 Blood Orange
2 Finger Limes Red & Green
1 Tahitian Lime
1 Yuzu - (Citrus junos)
2 Mango 1 Kensington Pride, 1 Honey Gold
1 Miracle Fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum)
2 Nectarines
1 Peanut Butter Tree (Bunchosia glandulifera)
2 Persimmon
1 Quince
3 Tamarillo 1 red 1 orange 1 yellow
3 Mulberry 1 White, 1 Red Shatoot, 1 Black
2 Red Papaya

Berries, not strictly trees but fruit anyway - youngberry, strawberries, loganberries, gooseberries, thornless blackberries, white, red and black currents, Goji berries
Nuts almond, hazelnut, macadamia (pink & white flowering)
Vines – muscadines, kiwifruit, chermoya, red and white grapes, passionfruit

That makes 97 fruit trees, not counting berries, nuts or vines.

Ra Kenworth wrote:

Anthony Powell wrote:

Growing downwards is reckoned to encourage flowering, and 1.5 years after the work, one of the plants flowered and fruited .

Awesome! Many thanks for this tip!!

I will try this on the largest trees which are 5-7 feet now, before I attempt a backhoe coming in and digging down and attempting to move them off the mound of trees trunks and smaller rocks and dirt that I seeded them on top of boulders and meagre top soil on glacial deposits.  (I hope to locate a buried point well and a neighbor is renting one.)

Stefan Sobkowiak (Ferme Miracle Farm near Cazaville, Quebec - The Permaculture Orchard - I think - on YouTube) advocates training branches downward for more fruit.  I remember him saying he learned from his mentor "Do you want a tree (extend arms upward and make yourself look like an elm) or do you want fruit (extend arms out and downward at about a 45 degree angle)?"  Pears are the exception as their branches should be horizontal at lowest.

We have about a dozen, maybe more. Unfortunately most of them are apples planted on really dwarfing rootstocks (not my choice!) - either on the property when we arrived, gifts, or stuff my mother has impulse bought. We get some fruit each year, but no where near the amount we "should" be able to produce. The dwarfing rootstocks don't do well on our shallow chalk soils, especially when planted into meadows. I think they would do better if the grass were removed and the area totally mulched, but the workload for that is too much for us at present. I'm working towards getting more full size trees planted, but that is a multi-year project.

Michael Cox wrote: The dwarfing rootstocks don't do well on our shallow chalk soils, especially when planted into meadows. I think they would do better if the grass were removed and the area totally mulched, but the workload for that is too much for us at present.

I'm not on chalk, but I am on thin soil and have limited time.

My solution has been to dig "compost pits"  just past the drip line in a convenient location. These are normally advertised to be 3 ft deep and wide... that would take a back-hoe on my land and be tough even then, so I aim for 1 1/2 to 2 ft deep and whatever shape it turns out because I usually hit a big rock at some point! I toss in punky wood, dead animals (chickens that have passed, or road kill), chop and drop material, kitchen waste, biochar and anything else that will decompose.

There are some situations where putting punky wood underground rather than building up is not recommended because dry wood floats, but in my ecosystem, on the scale I'm doing it, it is not a problem.

These hold moisture near the tree, attract worms, and encourage the tree to spread it's roots as much as its genetics allow for.

Now if I was as successful at restricting deer/fawn access, my espalier pear on dwarf rootstock would be *much* happier!

Take-away is that this is a project where doing "one" pit for "one" tree on a weekend can be doable, rather than being overwhelmed by all the trees that would benefit from more than is achievable.

Define a "tree" - do I get to count Mulberry? (The song says they're a bush.)

Do they need to be in the ground and showing signs they'll survive long term? I planted 2 abused apple trees. I think one will make it if I manage to do some more work down slope of it. I'm worried about the second as I'm not convinced it's getting enough sun.

I will pretty much guarantee 4 apple trees and 4 plum trees. The deer decimated my espalier pear last year, but before that happened, I would have counted it. The peach tree split last year, but I'm hoping to graft the side I lost, so it's a maybe also.

Saskatoon berry (Service berry version) are native and I have 1 that is productive, a bunch of wild ones that the robins harvest, and one that refuses to die but also is refusing to grow. Hints anyone of what makes them happy? They are large enough they might qualify as a tree-wanna-be.

If I just had a sunny, deer-proof area large enough to plant more, I've got 4 more apple trees in pots, 2 more mulberry, 2 fig trees, 2 jujubas and a pile of very baby avocados, most of which won't survive the upcoming cold snap unless I give them some more protection - guess that goes on today's list!

Do nuts count?
Then there's the English walnut which people said won't root by cuttings or layering, but I just had to try layering a low branch for the heck of it and it has a lovely bud forming on it... we shall see if it makes it...

I have a young Monkey Puzzle - too young to sex, but trust my luck it's a male and 1 ginko which I can pretty much be sure is a male as it was a cutting  and most people only plant males as apparently the females are stinky. I'll put up with stink if I get nuts... but no idea where in my area I could find a female or whether it's possible to graft onto male root-stock.

I do have both male and female Seaberry's, but again, are they trees or bushes? They seem to like more sun than I can give them, but I'm hoping the two ladies made it through the winter. The male is established.

Conclusion: I'm way better at getting talked into taking and rescuing potential trees, than actually getting them established on my land. Between deer, bunnies, lack of sun, too many ducks and chickens, winter rain/summer drought, getting trees to be happy and independent takes work and monitoring.

Last vote in apple poll was on January 18, 2025