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.
2
