Rainbow Magic Sparkle Butterfly : Fruit Trees in My Yard

It is late June here in North Texas and almost all of my fruit trees are producing fruit this year (some more than others). All eight of these trees listed below are self-pollinating. That is the main reason I selected that fruit tree variety - so I would only need one. Here in North Texas our soil is black gumbo clay. We have experimented with our trees. On some we have amended the soil by adding compost and sand. In other cases, we have put the tree in the ground with no amendments. We have had successes and failures with both approaches. In my opinion, there is no silver bullet for success with fruit trees.

Peach Tree
This tree was planted 3 years ago. It was a 2 gallon size. The year it was planted my kids ran into it and broke it in half. I was ready to pull it out of the ground but my husband wanted to experiment. He taped the tree together tightly at the break and it survived and thrived! Just so you know - this is the 4th peach tree we have planted at this house. We have planted them in various locations. This is the only one that lived - even after it was broke in half.

Fig Tree
This tree was a 1 gallon size and was planted 2 years ago. It is the 3rd fig tree we have tried on this property - all the others have died. This one is doing well. I have learned that if a tree dies - you can try another location where the conditions might be more favorable in your yard.

Asian Persimmon Tree

This tree was planted as a bare root "stick" that had come through the mail and was given to us by a neighbor about 10 years ago. This is a wonderful tree and has given us many years of fruit. I freeze the pulp and use in pumpkin recipes.

Russian Quince
This Tree is 3 years old and was ordered as a bare root tree through the mail. Last year it got fire blight and we thought it wasn't going to make it. We cut off the affected portions (bleaching the pruners each time we made a cut). It came back this year with no evidence of fire blight. I hope it makes it. This is the first year it has produced a fruit.

Pear Tree
This tree is a fabulous fruit producer. We planted it the first spring we lived in this house about 11 years ago. The only problem? The pears are not good to eat fresh. I'm sure they would make excellent jam, however I'm ashamed to say that I have never made jam from the fruit. That is one of the things I need to do! (next year)

Jujube Tree

What is this fruit tree? I read about it in Texas Gardener magazine - which by the way is an excellent publication. I copied the link for your information:

http://www.texasgardener.com/pastissues/janfeb08/Jujube.html

I ordered the tree (which was bare root) from a nursery in Washington State (the trees are not easy to locate). I planted it 2 years ago and it has thrived and is approximately 6 feet now.

The fruits are very small and have the consistency and taste of apples.

Almond Tree
We ordered the almond tree bare root through the mail. This is its second year. No fruit yet. Notice how the leaves are very similar to a peach. They are in the same family. We noticed last winter that the tree was the last deciduous tree on our property to lose its leaves.

Pomegranate Tree

This tree resides in my front yard and is now six feet tall. It is about four years old and has produced fruit every year (some years are better than others. This year I only see a few fruit.