Fruit trees, variety by variety.
"Plant an apple tree" is not advice - WHICH apple decides everything: flavor, climate, pollination, how much work you sign up for. Here are 33 variety guides across nine orchard fruits, each with the honest trade-offs. Growing basics live in the gardening hub; these pages pick the tree.
🍎 Apples The backbone of every home orchard - crunch, keepers, bakers.
🍐 Pears Pick them hard, ripen them indoors - the whole secret.
🍒 Cherrys Sweet for the bowl, sour for the pie.
🟣 Plums Japanese for fresh bites, European for jam, prunes and cake.
🍑 Peachs Hard pruning, hard thinning, glorious July.
✨ Nectarine A peach without the fuzz - flavor turned up a notch.
🧡 Apricots First to bloom, first to break hearts - and worth it.
🟤 Figs No spray, no fuss - just sun, restriction and patience.
🍈 Quince Inedible raw, magical cooked - the forgotten perfume fruit.
🐝
The pollination cheat-sheet
Self-fertile varieties (Victoria plum, Stella cherry, Conference pear, all peaches and figs) crop alone - one tree, done. Apples and sweet cherries almost always need a partner blooming at the same time within bee range (~15 m). When in doubt, plant two different varieties of the same fruit - or check each profile's pollination card above.