I don't have a clue. Is there a horticulture association that could tell you who would sell approved trees as opposed to virused or trees with a problem? Is there a particular apple that you like and know would grow well here? We see loads of Bradford Pear trees, and their branches seem to break during every storm.

You might try the Master Gardener line.

Sammy

First call Colebrook nursery located in west Tulsa, then for further info you might contact Stringer nursery near 41st and Sheridan in Tulsa.

In the past colebrook nursery found for me a fruiting mulberry tree cultivar like I described was a childhood remembered favorite of mine. Even though there are lots of different fruiting and nonfruiting mulberry cultivars, they did seem to locate the correct one for me. Then last spring, I found a very nice pecan tree at Stringer nursery. They had a number of very nice ones that they had received the previous fall and held until the spring before they considered them ready to sell.

Both mentioned above trees are still growing nicely; since I planted them earlier this spring on a vacant silty loam lot in south Jenks, especially considering those trees have not gotten supplimental watering.

I agree with Colebrook and Stringer. I have bought from both places. I go to Colebrook a lot because it's closer to me. The folks are knowldgeable and seem to go out of their way to help.

I hate to be the fly in the ointment, but have you ever grown fruit trees before? In order to get edible fruit there is a lot of work involved. We just cut down the last of my enthusiastic first time homeowner mistakes a couple of years ago. You need to be willing to spray religiously for coddling moth on apples. You will need to buy a cultivar thats resistant to both apple scab and cedar apple rust or you will be spraying fungicides as well as insecticides. On my Golden Delicious tree (a good apple btw), I was picking up a bushel basket of apples every day for weeks. You will need to do something with those apples if you don't want them laying around on the ground rotting and attracting wasps. How many pies, cakes and Apple Brown Betty can you bake in a day? I have a friend that loves cooking and doesn't mind her backyard in a constant fog of insecticides, so she is quite happy with her fruit trees. Me, I will just go to Albertsons for a dozen apples when I feel the need to bake. Let a commercial grower have all the headaches. I'll just settle for desert.

What Maryl said! We also had too many birds, and the stench of bird poop.

I replaced it with a Red Sunset Maple that started shading my roses after a few years. This spring it left and gave room to a very pretty crape myrtle.

Sammy

Yes, I had apple trees before. I find a fruit tree a bonus. Shade and fruit. Can't get any better then that as far as I am concerned.

Thanks for the warning.

Moni

PS, I am also looking for some "just shade" trees. Still need to go to those two nurseries mentioned above.

I live half way between OKC and Tulsa. My question is do we REALLY have to do all that spraying of fruit trees??

I prefer all organic gardening and I'm wondering if the sky will fall if I choose not to spray. What did our ancestors do in lieu of spraying after all?

I not only dislike the idea of using chemicals, but I may not even be in town when the spraying OR picking dates come and go. I'd love to hear from some of you "ole timers" who grow and maintain small home orchards. My fruit trees are large enough to start bearing this year.

Shekanahh,

Of course you can grow fruit trees organically. However it is sometimes very difficult with some types of fruit, and you have to be extremely dedicated and pro-active.

To grow fruit trees organically, you must start with healthy soil. Then, you have to grow fruit trees as part of an overall organic program. You also have to pick your varieties carefully. Often, it is the older, tougher "antique" varieties that stand up better to pests and disease. It also is best to purchase trees grafted onto the right rootstock for your area.

I grow plum and peach trees organically and have wonderful crops....usually more than we can eat, can and freeze. (We give the excess to friends, family and neighbors.) I've grown fruit trees organically for about 25 years and my dad grew his fruit trees organically for quite some time as well after he abandoned the use of chemicals in his latter years.

I have made a deliberate choice not to grow apples, though, because our county is simply overrun with cedar trees, which is the host plant for a disease known as cedar-apple rust. Still, if you plant a variety of apples with resistance to cedar-apple rust, you should have a reasonable expectation of success.

If you want to grow fruit organically, you probably should find a good book related to the topic and read it completely before embarking on an organic fruit-tree program. With organics, timing is everything when you are trying to control pests and diseases. It is always easier to prevent a problem from occurring than to try and "fix it" after it appears.

Dawn

Shekanahh,

I've grown apples "organically" (that is, not spraying anything) here in Minnesota on our tree in the backyard. Every single apple had worms. If I waited until the apple was fully ripe, then the worm(s) had already gotten to most of the flesh. If I ate the apples before the worm had grown much, then the apple was unripe.

(This assumes I got to them before the squirrels.)

The only ways I found to salvage the situation was to 1) use the apples as compost and 2) cut off the outer third of the apple and use that. I still had to cut around the initial worm hole(s), at least one on each apple. I had to watch that I didn't inadvertantly include a worm, or worm poop (that's the brown trail they leave behind them in the apple). It also included a high ratio of skin, which isn't desireable in a lot of apple recipes. I had to cut them off by hand, since any peeler/slicer is made with the assumption that you want most of the apple flesh.

We cut the tree down last year because it wasn't worth it.

What our ancestors did, no doubt, was eat the worms along with the fruit. If you want to do that today, then go for it. I can't imagine that apple maggots would be *bad* for you, but it's not something I can stomach.

Well I just have to chime in on this one. I live in a small town in NE Oklahoma and I have two apple trees, two peach trees, and a plum tree in my back yard. I have planted a pecan in the front but it hasn't gotten big enough to make anything. I have neighbors who have pecan trees also, which is why I can get away with only having one tree and still expect to get pecans.

At my previous house, I had a nice big apple tree in the back yard, and a couple of peach for awhile. The apple tree always made big beautiful yellow apples. It was supposed to be "yellow delicious" but the apples were round and not shaped like the delicious apples I saw at the grocery. They were crisp and just tart enough to cook and bake with.

I have never used pesticides. I have never had worms to the extent that some of you who have posted here have mentioned. I have noted some of what I thought was cedar apple rust, as we have cedar trees in the neighborhood, but not to such an extent that it ever ruined the apples. Yes, you do have lots of apples, or plums, or peaches, all at the same time, but I have always managed to process them in time.

To process apples and peaches, I wash them thoroughly in soapy water to which a little bleach had been added. It's amazing how dirty apples get before they ripen fully. After a good rinse and a towel dry, I would then remove the peel and core (or pit), and slice into about a gallon of water that had about 1 TBSP of non-iodized salt added. When the container is full of fruit, I slosh them around a little and pack them in zip-lock bags or in freezer containers. The salt keeps them from darkening and you will not taste it. We love to eat the slices frozen. They're easy to tumble into an unbaked pie shell with flour, cinnamon and sugar for a nice pie, or several. You can use them, in fact, in any recipe that calls for fresh fruit. There are so many uses. Last year, that late freeze prevented my trees from making any fruit, and we have really missed those apples and peaches! I still have plum puree in my freezer from the bumper crop of the summer of 2006. There is no better jam than plum jam. I make it and give it for Christmas gifts. I have one elderly neighbor who gives me all her milk jugs for wintersowing and she always makes sure to bring her jam jar back. So I take her empty jar and trade her a full jar. Even if I have other kinds made, she always asks for plum. It's my favorite, too.

Whether or not you have fruit trees depends on whether you want to spend the time to work up the fruit, that's all. If I had to use pesticides in order to have fruit, though, I just wouldn't have fruit. The trees are beautiful when they're in bloom. There are also people who will come and pick your fruit and clean up under your trees in appreciation for getting the fruit. I used to do that for my neighbor, who had a wonderful old gnarled pear tree that made the best pears in the world. My grandsons were little at the time and they thought home-canned pears were candy. We didn't have a lot of money at the time and I was really glad to have pears to can.

I just wanted to add that in my instructions for processing the fruit from my trees, the salt-water is drained from the fruit before packing in the freezer. I'm sorry I wasn't very clear on that. And you can use the salt water for about three batches before you have to throw it out and make new. If your family likes to eat the fruit frozen (especially good during hot weather), scatter the fruit slices on several cookie sheets and don't put them into zip-lock bags until after they have frozen. Otherwise they will stick together some. If the fruit thaws out completely and becomes warm, there will be a little browning and they will be soggy, so either snack on them while still frozen or cook or bake with them immediately after they are thawed enough to work with. Just like any frozen fruit, the consistency changes once they are thawed completely, but if you cook or bake with them you cannot tell the difference between them and fresh fruit. We also like to freeze grapes and bananas for snacking on later. Grapes are the easiest. Just wash and stem. Bananas are best if frozen inside their peel, but put them in a large zip-lock if you're going to keep them very long as they do tend to dry out after awhile otherwise. When you're ready to use them, just run a little hot water over the banana peels and you can slip them right off. The peels will turn black and they will look terrible on the outside. But the banana will still be yellow inside. My kids used to like to eat the banana with a spoon, they said it tasted like banana ice cream. If strawberries are frozen, they are better if you cut them in pieces and mix sugar in with them before you freeze. When I take them out of the freezer, I make a very thick cooked cornstarch and water mixture and stir that into the berries. (about a cup for 2 quarts of berries -- the corn starch box will have instructions on how to make a cup of thick "sauce". I just use the corn starch and water and cook till it's thick and pour it immediately into the frozen berries that I have dumped into a bowl, and then stir it all around. Of course if you haven't frozen your berries with sugar you will need to add sugar at the same time as your corn starch mixture -- It makes the texture better and they are not soggy if you have to hold them for a day or two. --Ilene