Let's Talk About Fruit In the Ozarks

I would like to share some experiences growing fruit in the Ozarks. I started experimenting about a decade ago. I have had a lot of failures. I have had some success too. I would like to hear what is working for you and what is not.

My advice to anyone just starting out, plant thornless blackberries. Plant all you can afford and as quickly as possible.

Peaches Nectarines plumbs and everything in between as been a total waste other than the pretty pink flowers.  The fruit always rots and gets bugs. I get a few bites here and there.

Apples are never very productive. Quince struggles with blight.

Blueberries do pretty good. Raspberries do ok but they require lot's of TLC because they don't compete with the local natives well. Blackberries are by far the best berry for me. My two attempts at domesticated gooseberries failed. I will try those again though. Currants failed, late cold snap. Same with Honeyberry.

Pawpaws and hybrid Asian persimmons have taken 5 plus years to produce, but they are finally consistently flowering. The native wildlife beats me to it though. Elderberry does great. Mulberry does great. My domesticated tree from stark bros is pretty small, but I grafted it onto some natives and they have taken off. They produce fruit for 1.5 months early every summer.

I have saved the best for last, Pears.
We have a massive problem with calery pears, bradford pears that go wild. The offspring produce aggressive trees with 2-3 inch thorns. These trees overtake any open space they can. I have been grafting them for the last ten years on my property and some gorilla grafting as well. Some years I see as high as 90% success rates. The key is to do it in January. By late February my success rate goes way down. I have been moving around 3 varieties for the last few years. The best is a thick skinned gritty pear I got scions from. I wish I knew the name. I found it at my wife's grandma's neighbors. It tends to flower early, in fact the buds are loosing right now at the end of January. It is often de-flowered by late frosts, but when it fruits it is awesome. Very tasty and the bugs leave it be. I have some early grafting videos on youtube(I wont post more videos there. I am free speech absolutist, so I cannot support the site). My skills have gone up considerably so I won't post the link, but you can find with with a search. This year I added 3 cider varieties. This is the first time I have bought scion wood. Even with a late frost the trees have a few late bloomers and I will have a pear a day for a month. When a good year comes, I will have more pears than I can eat. I built a cider press a few years back for that day. I also, have a couple of bartlet varieties that do ok and one other I cannot think of off the top of my head. They all do good and seem to be pretty disease/bug resistant. I do have records and varieties, but I am not sure it matters so much. I encourage you to experiment from here.

I get 3-5 times the growth of a grafted pear vs planting a tree. They fruit sooner too. I just finished up 22 more trees and I hope to get a for more done as well.

Our experience with fruit in the Ozarks is very similar.

Wild fruits are at the top of the list of favorites...persimmons and muscadines are amazing and well adapted to the weather fluctuations here.

Stone fruits take too much maintenance, and our apples are not doing well. Other than one started from seed they have all succumbed to borers.
Borers were the main cause of peach tree death also.

Strawberries do great here.  The main challenge it keeping them thinned.

Normal raspberries were a fail but Dorman Red did great in the past but we moved and lost them.

wild goose berries sometimes yielded.

Not a fruit I know, but mushrooms are a great success here, both in the wild and cultivated.

and yes! thornless blackberries!  
I'm letting them wander around...they do need water though, at least during last summers drought.

I have many mulberry trees started from seed to plant soon and some goji bushes.

And I almost forgot pears!
we have three asian pear trees that are wonderful and are only set back by late freezes here after bloom .
The other two, an anjou and a bartlett both got fireblight every year and we finally took them out.

Old farmstead pear trees do well here though...not sure of their varieties but likely from seed and a survival of the healthiest.

Locally I have seen these wild fruit trees and shrubs:
Black walnut
Hazelnut
Hickory
Red mulberry
American persimmon
Blackberry
Dewberry
Gooseberry
Maypop
Autumn olive
Bur oak

Nurseries and big box stores are selling regular fruit trees in spring time: apple, peach, pear etc. I have been going around town and actually don't see many fruit trees actively producing in people's front yards, or maybe they tend to hide them in the back! Two people with peach trees told me they either don't get a crop or the squirrels have them.

I reliably get harvests from black walnut, raspberry, Blackberry, gojiberry and fig every year. Stone fruits are highly dependent on the weather in my case.

Online map is showing lots of orchards west of Springfield but not in the heartland of Ozarks.