I’m working on deciding how many fruit trees I’ll have room for and what varieties to get. I’d like to get a peach, a pie cherry and several apple trees.

Along with the peach and the cherry, I think I’ll have room for 3-5 apple trees. I don’t know whether to plant dwarfs, so I can spray, pick and prune them without a ladder, or semi-dwarfs, which I think are hardier, longer-lived and produce more fruit.

From my quick measuring of the space, it looks like I have room for either 5 dwarf apples or 2 semi-dwarfs and 1 dwarf.

For varieties, I’m thinking a good mix might be: Honeycrisp (high flavor eating and storage apple), Liberty (mild flavor apple for eating fresh) and Grimes Golden (a high flavor all purpose apple fresh eating, good storage and pies). A friend of my mom’s has Liberty, Anoka, Macoun and Northern Spy trees and she likes the Liberty best. I grew Fuji a few years back and it was so-so, never seemed to ripen fully. I LOVE Honeycrisp for eating and definitely want to grow this variety. Grime’s Golden is supposed to be one of the best pie and sauce varieties.