Top DWN Home Fruit Varieties in 13 States 2024

For the novice home fruit grower, choosing fruit varieties to plant can seem challenging. A good approach is to use retail nursery variety lists for your local area or climate region as key references, choosing nurseries that specialize in or emphasize fruiting plants. The best retail nurseries have developed their fruit variety lists over many years, continuously seeking superior varieties adapted to their market area. The Dave Wilson Nursery Where-to-Buy pages provide annotated variety lists for nearly 500 retail nurseries in the U.S.

Additional references have been created from those retail nursery variety lists: Most-Ordered DWN Home Fruit Varieties by State 2024. These compilations highlight the fruit varieties most often ordered from DWN by retail nurseries in 11 western and near-western states plus Florida and Georgia. A state list can be an excellent starting point when choosing fruit types and varieties. For growers in some climate zones or microclimates, the most-ordered list of a neighboring state can also be a helpful reference.

For tips about selecting, planting and growing fruit at home, here are some of the most useful DWN info pages:

Introduction to Home Fruit Growing for beginners and those just starting to consider growing fruit.

Backyard Orchard Culture - and related pages, including successive ripening, high density planting, spring and summer pruning, and photos.

Selecting Varieties & Rootstocks What to study and think about, harvest chart, taste test winners, variety recommendations. Multi-bud trees. Rootstock basics.

Buying Fruit Trees and how to choose a retail nursery.

Planting Your Backyard Orchard Things to do or think about: know your site’s drainage, berms and mounds, sun, layout and spacing, fertilizer and amendments, care of bareroot trees, planting steps and cutting back limbs.

Vine & Bush Fruits Growing Blueberries: two articles, three videos.

Grow Notes by the Month Keyed to inland Central California, where most stone fruits bloom late February to mid-March and late peach season typically extends into October. Adjust to your climate as appropriate.

Videos for Home Fruit Growers Fruit tours at Zaiger Genetics; How to Plant Container Blueberries; Jujubes for the Home Garden; Selecting Blueberries, Blackberries and other Bush Fruits; Fruit Tours at DWN orchards. And, of course, the DWN YouTube channel.

Questions and Answers 39 basic questions for beginning home fruit growers, such as: What are the most important things to know when starting a backyard orchard? What do I mix with the soil when I plant my fruit tree? How do I prune my backyard fruit tree?

Fruit Variety Recommendations for the low-chill Southwest and USDA hardiness zones 5-9 plus taste test winners from The Fruit Tasting Report and more.

Rootstock Descriptions Traits of the standard and dwarfing fruit tree rootstocks used by DWN.

last edit 5-13-24 8:01pm