Good fruit trees for my new property

Trying to pick out perennials for my new house (suburban sized yard).

I already have perennial onions (welsh onions, walking onions), caucasian mountain spinach, strawberries, raspberries, figs, yacon, passionflowers, lovage, sorrel, mint, oregano, thyme, sage, tarragon, chives and rhubarb, as well as some peppers that I overwinter.

I got seems I'm starting for perennial shallots, earth chestnut, asparagus, skirret and perennial longleaf ground cherry. I also have some pawpaws I grew from seed in containers that I'll plant this year. Also gonna try growing culinary mushrooms in woodchip mulch and in logs.

I'm planning on buying hardy kiwi, American persimmon, haskap and currants from the local nursery. Maybe concord grapes too.

I'm also thinking of stone fruits or pears (American or Asian), but not sure how they'd fare against plum cucurlio, late frosts and pesky squirrels and birds. From what I've read apricots are rather fussy about late frosts. My neighbours have a sweet cherry tree, but squirrels ate all the fruit, although they didn't do a good job of sealing the bird netting around the bottom of the tree. I've heard others had success with peaches in my area. Anyone have experience with any of these in the Great Lakes/Northeast (I'm in southern Ontario zone 5)?

Would you consider any kind of apple? Here at Wheaton Labs (Zone 5-5b, cold arid continental) apples have done great, along with pear. We're trying some fruit berry bushes this year, but I can't speak to them just yet.

I was in Ontario, 5b, near Stratford. Pears were great, once I got a pollination trio. Summercrisp is not the most exciting pear but it's early, reliable, decent to eat and cooks well. The Luscious lived up to its name but was a lousy pollinator. A Chojuro ( Asian) gave great, tasty fruit very quickly and solved the pollen shortage.
Sour cherries were a surprise win for us. I had a Saskatoon next to it and that pretty much distracted the birds from the cherries. It helps that they are not sweet. Great for cooking, jams and preserving. They help a ton of other fruits flavour and dishes all year. I'm putting in 4-6 in our new place! ( Montmorancy taste is worth the space for us)
Black raspberries were another easy to use, low effort and high production fruit. No bird pressure on ours but they do have thorns and need multiple, regular picking.

Plums and apricots failed mostly but the Italian plum was a winner, even with fighting against the curculio.
Goji grew moderately well but the fruit was unpleasant. Haskap I like but we did have to net them. Pineberries were the only strawberries we would ever get. Kiwi also grew well and are delicious but not super productive. Bunny pressure on them didn't help and several died. Hazelnuts also were hit by buns but were just starting to fruit when we moved.
Concord grapes and a related type were easy, good and produced but either a raccoon or opossum would clean me out of the sweeter cross the last 2 years. Still got great jelly from only 2 vines.

Stephen B. Thomas wrote:Would you consider any kind of apple? Here at Wheaton Labs (Zone 5-5b, cold arid continental) apples have done great, along with pear. We're trying some fruit berry bushes this year, but I can't speak to them just yet.

I have no doubt they'd do well so if the other fruits fail I might replace them with that, but they're very easy to obtain fruits from local orchards, there's even a lot of abandoned trees on public land where I can collect fruits for free. Persimmon, haskap, pawpaw are much harder to obtain, hence why I wanted to try those.

Dian Green wrote:I was in Ontario, 5b, near Stratford. Pears were great, once I got a pollination trio. Summercrisp is not the most exciting pear but it's early, reliable, decent to eat and cooks well. The Luscious lived up to its name but was a lousy pollinator. A Chojuro ( Asian) gave great, tasty fruit very quickly and solved the pollen shortage.
Sour cherries were a surprise win for us. I had a Saskatoon next to it and that pretty much distracted the birds from the cherries. It helps that they are not sweet. Great for cooking, jams and preserving. They help a ton of other fruits flavour and dishes all year. I'm putting in 4-6 in our new place! ( Montmorancy taste is worth the space for us)
Black raspberries were another easy to use, low effort and high production fruit. No bird pressure on ours but they do have thorns and need multiple, regular picking.

Plums and apricots failed mostly but the Italian plum was a winner, even with fighting against the curculio.
Goji grew moderately well but the fruit was unpleasant. Haskap I like but we did have to net them. Pineberries were the only strawberries we would ever get. Kiwi also grew well and are delicious but not super productive. Bunny pressure on them didn't help and several died. Hazelnuts also were hit by buns but were just starting to fruit when we moved.
Concord grapes and a related type were easy, good and produced but either a raccoon or opossum would clean me out of the sweeter cross the last 2 years. Still got great jelly from only 2 vines.

We do have rabbits here, they've damaged our cedars, euonymus, burning bush, hydrangea and sage this winter... So I'll have to get guards for everything. We have voles as well. But no deer, at least not in our yard, houses are too close together/too many fences between us and the nearby countryside.

Wound up going with NC-1 & Shenandoah pawpaws, Magenta & Somerset grape, kolomikta kiwis (1 male, 1 female), a couple haskaps, white, red & black currant, and Reliance peach.

My neighbour has a sweet cherry tree, but it looks like she didn't tie the bird netting at the bottom properly because some squirrels got in and ate everything. So squirrels might be more of a problem than birds when it comes to sweet cherries. I haven't seen raccoons or opossums so far, and we have a couple dogs which I'm hoping would deter them somewhat (not the greatest hunters and sleep inside, but hoping their odour would help).

Have you tried goumi berries? Anyways, I'll see how much space there is in the yard once everything is planted, and maybe next year I'll squeeze a few more things in, like a cherry/dwarf mulberry or cherry/saskatoon combo, or pears, and I still want an American Persimmon (maybe Prok?) but whiffletree sold out so that will have to wait until next year. If I can eliminate the reeds I have growing, maybe I can plant blackberry or pineberry there too.

I found the kiwi to be super easy to propagate. Just sticks in dirt works! You can have lots of females for each male. I'd encourage you to do at least a small group of both since I found the males much more fragile than the females. (I had 2 males, 12 females)
My pawpaws were just producing when we moved. 3rd year for the Shenandoah and 1st for the Susquehanna. That was 8 years after planting, both from Whiffletree.
Haven't tried goumi yet or jujube. ( we were just out of range for those so I might be able to try them now)
Friends have had success with peaches, but they are in line with my new zone, 6b.
I've got a bunch of things coming from Grimo. Persimmons, native red mulberries, sweet chestnut, pawpaws, more hazelnuts, low tannin oaks, and a couple more Saskatoon. They do tend to have a very limited ordering window however and I got lucky that we confirmed on our new place while it was still open.

Dian Green wrote:I found the kiwi to be super easy to propagate. Just sticks in dirt works! You can have lots of females for each male. I'd encourage you to do at least a small group of both since I found the males much more fragile than the females. (I had 2 males, 12 females)
My pawpaws were just producing when we moved. 3rd year for the Shenandoah and 1st for the Susquehanna. That was 8 years after planting, both from Whiffletree.
Haven't tried goumi yet or jujube. ( we were just out of range for those so I might be able to try them now)
Friends have had success with peaches, but they are in line with my new zone, 6b.
I've got a bunch of things coming from Grimo. Persimmons, native red mulberries, sweet chestnut, pawpaws, more hazelnuts, low tannin oaks, and a couple more Saskatoon. They do tend to have a very limited ordering window however and I got lucky that we confirmed on our new place while it was still open.

14 kiwi plants would take up a fair bit of space though no? I ordered kolomikta kiwis, which are smaller than Actinidia, but even kolomikta are supposed to be 6-10ft by 15-20ft from what I've read. That's why I went with only 1 male and 1 female to start. What are they fragile to in Ontario? Cold? Rodents? Disease?

Nicolas Derome wrote:
14 kiwi plants would take up a fair bit of space though no? I ordered kolomikta kiwis, which are smaller than Actinidia, but even kolomikta are supposed to be 6-10ft by 15-20ft from what I've read. That's why I went with only 1 male and 1 female to start. What are they fragile to in Ontario? Cold? Rodents? Disease?

I had mine on the north side of a south facing fence. It took years to get even several of them fully up the 7' fence and producing. The group of 14 covered about 40' of the run.
As for the males fragility, they were: harder to root, slower to grow, took more damage from late cold snaps and recovered more slowly from bun damage. I had no noticeable bug or disease issues with any of mine.