Climate change plus drought are having a devastating effect on Australia’s Murray-Darling fruit bowl. It is heartbreaking to see decades-old orchards, tended by generations of a family, being bulldozed into the ground. As well as the tragedies of family farm collapse, every one of us in the cities and suburbs will see the flow-on effect. You can bet that fruit prices are not coming down anytime soon (unless you are prepared to sell out our local farmers, already doing it tough, by purchasing imported fruit). So why not support those other primary producers – the nurserymen – and grow a little of your own instead?

Fruit trees for home gardens have developed enormously in recent times. Most are available on semi-dwarfing rootstocks to suit suburban gardens; many are ideal for tub culture. They are usually available for a range of conditions – here in South Australia, for example, specialist growers supply fruit tree cultivars and rootstocks that are suited to different soil types and different climates, such as apricots suited to the hot, dry Adelaide Plains, or the wetter, cooler Adelaide Hills. Other trees are multi-grafted with several cultivars (often cross-pollinating) on the same trunk, while others may be planted two trees into a single hole – all great space-saving options.

Complete self-sufficiency in food is a goal beyond the reach of the average suburban gardener, but a single, well-grown fruit tree can supply a family with all they can eat during harvest season. Choose your favourite crops and support Australian farmers out-of-season and with other fruits!

Water restrictions make maintaining an entire garden difficult, but my daughter has picked tangelos from a tree in the ground, watered only with grey water from a front-loading washing machine. Potted citrus are easily watered with buckets. At home, I’ve installed additional rainwater tanks that we use in the house in winter, but in the garden in summer.

I’ve long had food plants in my garden –black and red currants, apple, as well as water-miserly loquat, pomegranate and feijoa – but, perhaps due to the woes of our planet, some kind of nesting instinct has made me feel it is even more important now. Food picked from your own garden has ZERO food miles, and actively growing fruit trees reduce your carbon footprint.

So this winter, I’m preparing to expand my orchard. The canopies of large trees to the north and west of the growing areas are being thinned, and overhanging branches from a neighbour’s yard removed, because almost all fruit trees do best in full sun (Chinese jujube is an exception that bears well in part-shade; my Australian finger lime also thrives in dappled shade). A willow myrtle, inexpertly pruned by me five years ago to remove fire-risk branches over the house, will now be removed completely. I’ve dug up a clump of golden bamboo, a plectranthus and several perennials to make room for fruit trees. After more than two decades of improvement with compost, peastraw, manure, gypsum and various mulches, the soil on my sloping block is still clay… but a clay that’s very well-drained with a dark, crumbly structure (fast track your own fruit trees by incorporating plenty of well-rotted compost into the planting area).

But which trees to plant? Well, my potted orchard along the northern wall of the house includes lemonade fruit, lime, orange, lemon, and kaffir lime. Cumquats thrive in pots around the back, and I recently bought an Australian native finger lime (which fruited prolifically in its first season), Red Shahtoot mulberry (ditto), custard apple, and a blood orange. The citrus are doing better than they ever have, now that I’m fertilising them more heavily as advised by my local grower (slow-release fertiliser twice a year in September and January; about 24 teaspoons per large tub each time). In fact, the citrus, some of which I’ve had in tubs for a decade or more, are taking up rather a lot of space. It’s time the largest of them went into the ground.

The evergreen lemonade, lemon, kaffir lime and lime will replace the golden bamboo and plectranthus to screen the chook run; I’ve already dug over the planting mounds (not pits) and mixed in many barrows of additional compost, but I’ll only plant when the weather begins to warm in spring. A triple-grafted nashi pear is already in place further down the hill (I would be grateful to any reader who can tell me the correct third- and fourth- year pruning for these multigrafted trees!). The evergreen custard apple, soft-leaved and low-fire-risk, will replace the willow myrtle and be kept to size.

Still to come are an avocado (a self-fertile cultivar into the raised bed for absolutely perfect drainage in the front yard), a macadamia (no phosphate fertilisers!) and the chinese jujube (in dappled shade). I’d love also a persimmon, pistachio, apricot and cherry, but will exchange existing shrubs in later years. I’m happy to plant fruit trees in the front garden – just drive through your nearest Italian or Greek suburban community and see the beautiful olives, mandarins, lemons, apricots, plums, and almonds, decades old but rarely over 3m high, in pride of place across the front lawn!

How can I fit in so many trees? By choosing cultivars on dwarfing rootstocks and pruning, pruning, pruning and PRUNING from a young age, in winter and in summer, to keep the trees around 2.5m tall and not much wider – the last thing I want is for them to shade each other out. Constant light tip pruning and removing watershoots will keep them to size.

I haven’t given a great deal of specific information about growing fruit trees, only a flavour of possibilities to whet your appetite and inspire you. There is a very good reason for this. When choosing fruit trees, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of going to a reputable specialist nursery or supplier who can give you the correct advice suited to YOUR local growing area. Believe me, at a large hardware centre, you will not receive such advice from the guy who’s filling in at the nursery counter for the day, but who is usually in the power tools section. This wouldn’t matter if you’re buying a few punnets of seedlings. But you are not buying seedlings, annuals or even perennials that will look pretty for a few years. Fruit trees are a lifetime investment – they will likely still be there after you’re gone. There is no point planting a tree that requires cross-pollination when you don’t have a cross-pollinator, a frost sensitive one in a cold area, or one that requires chilling (eg cherries) in a warm region or near the coast. An avocado seed is fun to grow, but may never (yes, NEVER) fruit. Your lemon may fail because it is on the wrong rootstock for your soil. A specialist grower will be able to advise on your local region or microclimate and soil. If you’re ordering via mail order and are uncertain about a particular cultivar’s suitability, ring or email the supplier – I have found they invariably welcome genuine enquiries.

My local fruit tree specialist hands out a cultivation and planting sheet with each fruit tree. You are asked where you live when you bring a tree to the counter, and directed to another plant if they feel it’s unsuitable. You may be encouraged to wait until warmer or wetter weather to plant. Such advice, if you follow it carefully, will guarantee success, so that you’ll be picking sun-warmed fruit soon, and for many years to come!

Google fruit trees/ nut trees/ nursery suppliers/home garden. There are many long-established and highly reputable mail-order fruit and nut-tree nurseries in Australia. Winter is a good time to buy bare-rooted deciduous trees. Read and understand the planting codes many of these nurseries use for each plant’s preference for climate region, water requirements, frost tolerance, soil type etc. You’ll also find numerous .gov, .edu and .org websites with reliable cultivation tips for specific fruit trees, citrus, nuts etc.

www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/hort/fn/cp/pruning
http://www.calyx.com.au/fruit.html
http://www.rarefruitaustralia.org/
http://www.rarefruit-sa.org.au/  
http://www.wanatca.org.au/Second/Zoneframe.htm  http://ag.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/archive/chillingreq.html  http://www.crfg.org/tidbits/container.html
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles1006/fruitpots.asp  http://ag.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/byg/archive/pomegranates.html