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| Courtesy Wikipedia |
As your Victory Garden expands into planting Fruit Trees, one of the questions you will run into is ‘do I have enough space’. Trees are obviously larger and may need another tree variety for pollination. Fruit trees are divided into two categories, self-fruitful (does not need a pollinator to set fruit) and self-unfruitful (needs a pollinator of another variety to set fruit). The fruits below will aid in determining what you plant.
APPLE: This is an easy one. All apples are self-unfruitful meaning that an apple tree will need another variety of apple tree to cross-pollinate it. Interestingly, a flowering crabapple can be the pollinator since they are in the same genus plus they hold their blossoms longer than eating apples. Ideally, the tree and its pollinator should be no more than 100 feet apart (less is best). Needless to say, you still need bees to do the work. A couple of examples for pollination are; a Gala can cross-pollinate a Yellow Delicious; a Macintosh can provide a cross for a Honey Crisp, etc.
Nurseries usually stock apples named ‘4-in-One’ where they have grafted 4 different varieties onto one apple tree. You will only need one tree that has several varieties of apples grafted on it for cross pollination.
PEACH: Most peaches grown in Colorado are self-fruitful, needing only one variety.
CHERRY: A good rule of thumb is that all sour cherries are self-fruitful. The best ones in Colorado are Montmorency and North Star. They are hardy, reliable, and produce big crops.
Sweet cherries are another story. Sweet cherries are self-unfruitful with the exception of Stella. They therefore follow the rule of needing two different named varieties such as Black Tartarian, Ranier, Van, or Lapins. Like apples, growers have grafted 3 or 4 different varieties on cherry stock such as Stella, Bing, and Black Tartarian onto one tree thus requiring only one tree.
PLUM: The European plum varieties named Stanley, Italian, and Blue Damson are self- fruitful. Japanese plums on the other hand are self-unfruitful and thus need a cross pollinator. A few of the varieties are Santa Rosa, South Dakota, and Satsuma. Depending on bloom time, the European plums may not pollinate the Japanese plums.
Some websites to look at for further information are: CSU Pollination of Fruit Trees and WSU Fruit Pollination.
