Ontario Plants
Fruit, Nut, and Food Trees
Domesticated Fruit Trees
Most of these aren’t native. They’re carefully bred and cultivated to within a millimetre of their genetic lives. Trees of the same “variety” are essentially clones of each other. They’re far more delicate than domesticated trees. There are a variety of diseases that afflict them, and as clones, they will suffer from them more often. They also have a far narrower range of conditions they can tolerate. They will do well, but need more care than wild trees. The upside is that they produce the fruits we associate with grocery stores, like specific apple and cherry varieties, or peaches and nectarines.
Native Wild Fruit Trees
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Many of these are are extremely tough, and able to survive where more delicate, cultivated trees can’t. They tend to be grown from seed or propagated, but as non-domesticated trees, they are usually unique genetic individuals. Highly resistant to disease, pests and to local conditions, able to tolerate Ontario’s often intense climate and environments, they do well in their native range.
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These trees tend to sprawl and spread.
Native Wild Fruit Trees
Hazelnut- Corylus Americana- American Filber, Hazel
The American Hazelnut gets about 1.5-2.5m tall, at most, under perfect conditions, but mostly it’s a shorter shrub. It’s beautiful and makes a wonderful centrepiece in a garden, or a barrier or for edging.
The best thing about it is that it produces delicious nuts, traditionally eaten all over eastern North America. These bushes were common in colonial times, and they made a stately, noble statement in any formal garden. The nuts are eaten by animals, but they’re delicious and great fresh, for humans, too.
As a bushy shrub, it has a special kind of grace. It produces male and female flowers, which look like jewelry.
The bush can tolerate stress and conditions that would kill other plants – lack of water, too much or too little sun, pollution, pests.
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It’s useful, beautiful and tough, and makes food. Every house needs one.
Black Walnut – Juglans Nigra
The king of eastern North American forests, the gorgeous and noble Black Walnut has almost no company in its magnificent regal splendour. Historically known to dominate its forest canopies, it rises up out of the landscape like a towering symbol of the beauty of unleashed nature itself.
The walnut tree is so gorgeous, it seems a shame to cut one down, but its wood is the classic lumber used for making the very finest of fine furniture. The grain is tight, the wood hard, the chocolate brown colour shining when polished. Black Walnut wood is among the most prized in the world, and for good reason. It outclasses European walnut so dramatically, and most other woods, that there’s little that can compare to it.
Black Walnut is also an impressive food tree. Its edible nuts are usually considered more delicious than Persian or European walnuts, but they’re also harder to process, making them rarer, and difficult and more expensive to buy. The walnuts are rich in oils and fats, an extremely healthy food. The average mature walnut tree produces copious amounts of nuts, too, and over time, technologies have evolved to make efficient, time-tested ways to process the nuts to get at the inside. But there’s more: the sap can be tapped in winter, just like the sap of the sugar maple, to extract it and create walnut syrup. It’s sweet and delicious and carries the aromatic scent and flavour of walnut. Walnut syrup is one of the forest’s most luxurious products, if you can get it.
The nuts also have a natural dye in them, which creates a deep brown colour. It was often used to dye hair, or as an ink or wood stain. As wonderful as this tree is, as noble and grand and stately, its time as king is a lonely one. The tree produces the chemical juglone in most of its tissues, which has the effect of killing other plants. Around the walnut tree, very little else grows. Even its own seedlings have trouble growing near an adult black walnut. Planting a walnut is a wonderful investment, but plant it away from trees or plants you don’t want to kill. If it weren’t for the chemical weapons the tree produces, it would almost be possible to imagine that other trees and plants retreat from the majesty and splendour of the regal Black Walnut.
Never plant a black walnut as a frivolous gesture. Plant it because you mean it, and know what a magnificent thing you’ve done once you do it.
Shagbark Hickory – Carya Ovata
This was once an important nut tree for foraging, in a forest with lots of secret, edible food. But it’s not just a nut tree. The shagbark hickory is an attractive, legendary tree that once lurked in the deepest corners of the Eastern forests, a kind of spiritual or mythical being that worked its way into legends and literature.
The wood is incredibly tough and dense, among the toughest and most commercially useful – hard, flexible, easy to polish, dense. It’s great for furniture and construction, which obviously isn’t so good for the tree, in an age of capitalist industry.
Shagbark can handle a good range of growing conditions, but if it survives, it will eventually get huge – 30 m tall. They grow in most of Southern Ontario, and do especially well around the Great Lakes, like Lake Ontario. The trees start producing nuts at about 10 years old. The nuts are highly edible, and delicious, so much so that some trees are farmed in orchards. Unfortunately, squirrels love the nuts, too, so people have to compete with nimble forest critters for the bounty.
The nuts are a lot like pecans, and native Canadians, like the Iroquoian peoples, ground the nuts into a paste to make a kind of bread, a corn cake, and “hominy”. But the nuts aren’t the only source of food. The bark is also used to flavour syrups, much like making an alternative to maple syrup.
Butternut – Juglans Cinerea
Butternut is one of the trees many have forgotten because they were all cut down for furniture and flooring two generations ago. There was a time when butternut was cropped as if it were wheat, when trees that were 50 to 75 years old vanished so quickly, they disappeared from the landscape as if felled by a great mechanical axe all at once. The tragedy is that they were beautiful, and they produced immense amounts of fruit and nuts.
The tree grows incredibly fast, but doesn’t live very long. A tree 75 years is a very old butternut tree. It can survive in the far north, right to Zone 2, but it produces nuts only up to Zone 3 – but what this means is that it can still live in the far north, and makes a great tree for cottage country and the city, too. In good, warm years, it will produce nuts even when it’s approaching the boreal forest. As a food foraging tree, they’re even better than walnut and other nuts, because of the sheer quantity of the nuts they produce. They need full sun to really do well.
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At one time, the butternut was a key foraging food in southern Ontario forests. The nut is oily and rich, a delicious fall treat. The nuts are 20% protein and rich in oils and fats, even more delicious than walnuts.
Sugar Maple – Acer Saccharum
The Sugar Maple has to be the Canadianest of Canadian trees- the classic maple of song and story. Technically, it’s not a fruit tree – its seeds are inedible by people – but this lovely beast is definitely a useful food tree. This is the famous tree of winter glory, the producer of snowy gold, the source of food of the forest gods: the magic fountain of maple syrup.
As an ornamental tree, the sugar maple deserves to be front and centre. The sugar maple is the great staple of northern forests, found from one side of the country to the other, the universal arbiter of forest green. Except, of course, when fall comes – that’s when the sugar maple’s leaves turn every colour of red to yellow to gold, and the changing of the seasons is marked by the maple as if the explosion of colour is fall’s last fireworks. Very, very few things in the Canadian forest landscape is as powerful as the riot of colour from the changing of the seasons, and the sugar maple is the crown jewel of fall in Canada.
The tree itself is the tree most people associate with Canada. The Canadian flag was designed around its leaved with three points of three.
For most people, the sugar maple is an ornamental tree, but for the very industrious, learning how to tap a sugar maple tree isn’t very hard. You need copious amounts of sap to make syrup, because when you boil it down, the ratio of volume for sap: syrup is about 40:1. But for the true food forager, a big back yard is not complete without a couple of sugar maple trees gracing the skyline.
It’s big, it’s wild, it’s hard to control, and it’s got gold in its veins. Like maple syrup, the sugar maple tree is Canada distilled down to its essence.
Kentucky Coffee Tree - Gymnocladus Dioicus
Listed as threatened since 2008, the rare but magnificent Kentucky Coffee Tree is one of Ontario’s greatest lost trees. It got its name because in the American south, the bean-like seeds from the fruit pod were used to make a drink not unlike coffee.
The tree is very threatened throughout North America and in Ontario is now quite rare. The leaves drop in early fall, so the tree can look almost bare for much of the year; when it does leaf out in the spring, the profusion of colour can almost be shocking.
This is a very rare tree. Because it is disappearing from the forest and landscape, we should be doing what we can to bring it back.
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The seeds are toxic until you bake them for about 3 hours,when the toxins break down and the bean can be used to make a hearty, potent and slightly bitter drink.
The rest of the tree is used in natural medicines and for other uses, from tonics to purgatives.
Hackberry- Celtis Occidentalis
A long-forgotten but delicious fruit, the hackberry was once a staple of North American farmlands. It was widespread around Ontario, especially in the south, and once lent flavour to jams, jellies, pies and all kinds of preserves. Fresh, they taste like candies – really, they’re packed with sugar. They have more than just sugar – with protein and nutrients, they’re like an all-in-one trail mix. They have a slight peanut-like flavour, maybe like tea or dried dates. The berries can be pounded into a paste to be used with oatmeal for porridge or even for baking into bread. The berries don’t rot on the tree, so they last right into the winter, too.
Nobody grows this tree or this fruit commercially, unfortunately, even though this is one of the best lost fruits in North America.It’s a gorgeous tree, ultimately big and tall and proud, and its fruit is fantastic. Any foraging lifestyle needs to have hackberry on its menu.
Hardy Pecan – Carya Illinoinensis
North American Native Plant
Maturity: 70-90′ tall, 20-30′ around. Plant 50′ apart. Native; Full Sun; Z 4-8
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A huge tree when mature, almost 30 m tall, this tree grows all over central and eastern North America. It towers above many other trees, and spreads wide; its roots are known to go incredibly deep and far. It’s native to the central US, but was occasionally found as far north as Ontario. It’s extremely uncommon in the province. Ideally, it would be grown much more, and as a food tree, it’s incredibly useful, but it gets so big and it’s so impressive, and so rare, that it doesn’t often make it into a landscape planting plan. This is unfortunate, because it’s an incredible tree.
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For large properties with an exceptional landscape, nothing says “holy cow, that’s a serious tree, or should I say Tree”, like a pecan.
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They’re rare, and hard to find, but will grow well right into Zone 5.
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A mature tree will generate hundreds of kilos of delicious nuts, a famous and critical crop in North America. Used for millennia, the trees produce copious numbers of these nuts, which break out of paper-thin shells and then fall to the ground. They’re used for everything from baking (pecan pies) to roasting and eating raw. They store for long periodsm too. The nuts are eaten by animals, but they’re delicious and great fresh, for humans, too.
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It’s an enormous tree, so huge that it dwarfs many others. It’s important as a shade and ornamental tree, and its wood is spectacular for its grain and strength.
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Related to walnut and butternut trees, the pecan is similar – without the toxic juglone that makes walnut trees so dangerous to other plants.
The Pawpaw Tree- Asimina Triloba
We cannot stress how limited the number of our Pawpaw trees are, and how hard they are to get – at any price – from anywhere. We have a few very large trees ready to place in good locations.
Pawpaw trees are like something out of time, a forgotten king of fruit and of the forest that we want to bring back into the light. Right up to about 90 years ago, they were common throughout eastern North America; they were even found in Ontario, as part of the old Carolinian forest. And they’re the only known “tropical” fruit that grows in temperate climates.
Their fruit is unique. It was called the “custard apple” by some people. Its creamy flesh is delicious, with a taste of mango and banana, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t preserve well, so commercially it was never adapted to big-scale industry. At one time, pawpaws were a staple in villages and towns throughout eastern North America. There was even a song dedicated to the pawpaw!
Pawpaws are among the biggest fruit trees in North America. They’re also one of the most beautiful. Where once there were great stands of pawpaw, now there are none.
Unfortunately, pawpaw trees have excellent wood, … for creating furniture. Almost at once, millions of pawpaw trees were cut down when industrial agriculture took over the food chain and had no use for pawpaws. If it wasn’t good for commercial fruit, then nobody could have them, because it was great for wood, and money talks.
At some point in the near future, hopefully, more people will be able to once again taste the magic of the pawpaw fruit, while sitting in the shade under a giant pawpaw tree, majestically rising into the sky.
Pawpaw trees require different individuals in a neighbourhood to produce fruit, so they can’t all be clones. Thankfully, one non-clone in a pawpaw patch can do the job for many, and the more different ones, the better. This means it’s best to have pawpaws raised from seed. They need some shade when they’re young, but when they get big enough, they become the masters of the forest canopy and totally dominate it.
Pawpaw trees are notoriously hard and slow to grow from seed, but we manage. The object should be to avoid propagating the tree through cloning and, instead, to have lots of genetic diversity.
We have pawpaw seedlings, about 1-2′ tall. We also have “whips”, or 4-8 ‘ tall saplings that are very vigorous, and waiting for permanent homes. We have an extremely small number of fully-grown trees, up to 15′ tall, ready to be planted. When they’re gone, … they’re gone.
Planting Requests
The goal of planting pawpaws is not to get rich, for sure, because nobody is going to do that, but to actually generate real fruit and healthy tree populations near where people live. Raising them has been a labour of love. We are picky and choosy about who plants these trees.
We really want to see these trees planted as much as possible, but given the difficulty propagating these trees and the time and effort it takes to raise and care for them, the prices reflect the actual cost and not much more. Nobody is getting rich selling pawpaw trees!
We need to make sure that these trees go to people who can raise them properly, on good land. They take a lot of work to raise, especially to maturity. We’re careful about who we give these plants to. We don’t want to waste a pawpaw tree.
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We only have what we have.
It takes about 10 years to produce any fruit, and about 15 before any actual quantity of fruit is produced.
Domesticated Fruit Trees
Planning for Fruit
For small spaces, consider planting:
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Combination trees: multiple varieties of the same fruit, or the same type of fruit
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Espaliered trees: Shaped trees, trained into a lattice or other shape, to keep them in a manageable size, and even create things like screens
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Shrub-form Trees: some fruits have mini-versions that stay small or pack lots of fruiting onto a smaller form
Fruit Tree Basics
When you get a fruit tree, you need to think of a few issues:
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Space: Trees need a good amount of space. Also, they will grow pretty big, if you let them. If you want to keep them small, then you have to prune them.
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Friends: Many fruit trees need a non-cloned, similar-but-different variety nearby to produce the maximum amount of fruit. They don’t necessarily need to be exactly the same, of course. Stone fruits (cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, prunes, plums) will mostly cross-pollinate each other, and the same is mostly true for pome fruits (apples, pears, crabapples ,etc.).
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Mates: Some trees require a male and female of the same species. This means that you have to plant two trees in the same neighbourhood to get any fruit, at all.
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Producing More Fruit
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Consider getting a grafted tree with multiple varieties on the same tree, so that it will be self-fertile.
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Get a dwarf version for a smaller space
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Plant a special fertilizing tree nearby. A crabapple tree close enough to an apple tree will guarantee lots of apples, for example.
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Work with neighbours or the area. Plant a tree nearby to help yours. It doesn’t have to be on your property to fertilize your trees.
Stone Fruit
Stone fruit trees have similar traits – a hard, single seed in the middle, similar leaves, and the trees have similar habits.
They can all cross-fertilize, too – and some require different versions to produce fruit. These trees include cherry, apricot, peach, nectarine, prune and plum trees.
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Stone Fruit Combination Trees
A combination tree makes special sense for small spaces. You get multiple fruits, and the tree can self-fertilize. This is what makes it really special, and perfect as an extra tree among others, or alone in a small yard.
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They’re still trees, so they’re going to be full-tree sized, eventually.
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They have a random handful of grafted fruits on a main trunk, something like apricot, cherry or plum: Peach (Frost), Apricot (Puget Gold), Nectarine (Hardired), Plum (Shiro), Apricot (Harglow), Cherry (Lapin – sour), Cherry (Stella – sweet)
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Cherry Trees (Stone Fruit)
There are lots of cherry tree forms and types, each with their own slightly unique characteristics. Some have even crossed with other kinds of fruit, to produce something in-between. Most cherry trees are capable of getting enormous, and they have an upright, canopy-dominating shape.
We have only a very few of each of these.
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Mixed Fruit Cherry Tree
This tree has a series of different cherries grafted onto a cherry tree base, usually 3-6 different kinds. Stella and Bing are usually there, among others. Because it’s mixed, it’s self-fertile and produces a lot of fruit.
We have only a very few of these.
Pin Cherry – Prunus Pensylvanica
One of the fastest growing fruit trees anywhere, the Pin Cherry can grow to maturity in record time- counted in just a few years, not decades, like most other fruit trees. It also grows throughout Canada. It has a very short lifespan – about 40 years – but in that time, it produces unbelievable amounts of red fruit. All it needs is full sun, and to be left alone to do its thing.
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In the wild, the tree is abundant. Aside from scavenging its cherries, though, people sadly use this tree for almost nothing. The wood is too soft to be truly useful, and the tree grows too fast and gnarly for it to be structural. The cherries aren’t commercially useful, so big agribusiness ignores the tree. Basically, the tree doesn’t slot itself into any aspect of modern industrial capitalism.
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However, while it may not be economically pliable, it’s a wonderfully beautiful tree, in its own unique, wild, scraggly way – the kind of beauty you expect in an untamed beast that doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, gangly and energetic. When it flowers, thousands of blooms make the bare branches look as if they’re covered in gentle snow, and when its leaves burst out, it explodes into summer extravagance as if racing against the sun itself. It burns through the summer as if living a hundred lives in a few months.
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The pin cheery is perfect as a symbol for Canada’s glorious summers, and for the mythical summers at the cottage, wildly beautiful and beautifully wild.
Pin cherries put up with anything winter can throw at it. It grows almost anywhere in Canada, right up to the treeline in some cases, from the east to the west and absolutely all the way up north that a tree can sprout. If you need a fast-growing fruit tree for the cottage by the lake, something that will produce huge amounts of great fruit in a short time, there’s no better tree than the pin cherry.
The cherries are very sour, but this isn’t necessarily a drawback. The tree compensates for its lack of sugar by producing almost unbelievable amounts of fruit. And the fruit is, in fact, absolutely delicious, if you’re willing to do some work: pin cherry pie, and jam, and juice, are staples of millions of childhood dreams.
Because the cherry flavour is so strong, making pin cherry juice and preserving it is a favourite activity for those who know what to do with it. You can later mix it with water or anything else to drink it, or even distill it down into syrup.
Pin cherry is the northern fruit tree of choice for people who want the true taste of Canada.
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Bing Cherry
Sweet and juicy, these cherries are good for eating, one of the classic flavours of mid-summer. The trees get big, but can handle heavy pruning.
Black Tartarian Cherry​
The purple, almost black fruit is incredibly sweet and has an intense cherry flavour for people who really like that specific taste. The cherries set about mid-summer.
Stella Cherry​
A long-time favourite, these intensely cherry-flavoured cherries are dark and powerful. They’re great for freezing and eating in the winter, or baking into pies. The juice tends to be dark and intensely flavoured.
Van Cherry
A very popular cherry, these are medium-sweet and coloured, with a kind of dappled surface. It’s an all-purpose cherry, so they’re good for jams, for baking, and for just eating raw. The cherries are ripe in about July.
Lapin Cherry
Lapin cherries are unusual in that they’re self-pollinating, so you don’t need another variety around to help it out (though it doesn’t hurt).
The fruit is very firm, juicy and sweet, so the cherries will store for a little while and they maintain their freshness. This is a cherry type that you can find in stores from time to time, because it transports well and the trees produce a lot of fruit.
Carmine Jewel Sour Cherry
This is a very special tree.
Before you dismiss sour cherries, remember that for juice, for cooking and for jams, sour cherries are often better than sweet ones. The cherry flavour tends to be far stronger, and the puckering-sourness of the cherries have a unique appeal all their own. Sour cherries make the best jams!
This is a dwarf variety. It’s only going to get about 5 metres tall, at most, even if you let it go. The tree itself has small, delicate leaves, and it makes a stunning landscape feature. Its round, miniature form is perfect for ornamental gardens or for a more refined property curb appeal.
The tree was developed in Canada. It makes a perfect tree for containers, and its ornamental features mean it’s a wonderful crown for a pretty garden.
The purple, almost black fruit is incredibly sweet and has an intense cherry flavour for people who really like that specific taste. The cherries set about mid-summer.
Montmorency
A big tree, this variety produces big, bright red, colourful sour cherries used for jams, juice, and other kinds of preparations. It’s the most popular for pies and sweets. The cherries ripen in July.
“Nadia” Cherry-Plum (!)
A cross between a plum and a cherry, the fruit is bigger than a cherry, but smaller than a plum, but it tastes like a cherry. It’s pretty unique.
It’s a dwarf tree – it will only get about 3 metres high, mostly (you can never be entirely sure), but it will stay within this size.
A wonderful variety, with unique characteristics.
Mini Cherry Trees – Cherry Bushes
Dwarf cherry trees, or “cherry shrubs”, are unique – they produce lots of fruit, but they only get about 2-3 metres tall. They tend to have a compact, bushy style, too. They’re perfect for small spaces, intimate back yards, big pots.
There are sour, sweet, and dark version, as well. We have a few.
Black Cherry- Prunus Serotina
The master of elegance, as a landscape tree, the North American Black Cherry is among the most attractive. Tough and resilient, it towers over other fruit trees and has a magnificent crown.
The wood is considered some of the most valuable in the world, tight and hard and strong, perfect for cabinetry and fine furniture. Few woods are as luxurious as cherry, with its dark red tones and gentle patterns of waves and whorls. In furniture, the combination of black cherry and black walnut is like a congress of kings.
The cherries this tree produces are dark purple, almost black, and rich in flavour, though not terribly sweet. They have a big seed, or pit, like most wild fruits, and though they’re not like sweet cherries from a domesticated tree, their sourness makes for perfect jams and jellies, as well as baked goods, because of the sheer intensity of the flavour. A mature tree can produce so much fruit, it can be overwhelming even for the most dedicated natural foods enthusiast. Collecting it all is a serious challenge. These are among the most intensely flavoured (if not very sweet) of the cherries produced by any cherry trees, and when they ripen, the animals appreciate them, too. The good thing is that there’s so much, there’s no risk of you running out. Every 4 years or so, a black cherry tree will produce record crops of cherries above the ridiculous amount it regularly produces, creating natural superabundance.
Parts of the rest of the tree are useful, too. The bark was useful for cough medicines, and is still used for this purpose today.
Black cherry trees need full sun, but aside from that they can tolerate a wide range of conditions, across many environments. Hardy to the very deepest depths of zone 3, they can take whatever North American winters can throw at them. For an abundant, continuous crop of super-delicious fruit, as well as a tree of staggering beauty and form, very little beats North America’s queen tree, so long as you’re willing to wait for it to mature.
Sand Cherry- Prunus Pumila
Found all over Ontario, the sand cherry is common in, of course, sandy areas, especially on beaches around the Great Lakes. It’s a shrubby little thing, though it can grow to about 6 m tall under ideal circumstances. It spreads by suckers, underground, and can form densely packed colonies of plants. It’s a good shrub to plant in tough areas of a garden, or on hillsides, and if left alone, will slowly reach up into a big bushy colony. It’s very useful for difficult areas in landscaping, because it helps to stabilize soil, likes to live near shorelines, can tolerate dry, sandy conditions as well as richer soils, and will run off weeds from disturbed land by out-competing them.​
The good thing about the sandcherry is that it produces cherries – the largest of the North American native cherry plants, and they’re also the best tasting of the native cherries. It produces the in large quantities, too, usually in the early summer, which means that gardeners get an early crop. Because it’s so early, it makes a good addition to a foraging garden that has other, later fruits to pick. The cherries can be made into jams, jellies, used for juice or eaten raw, and they’re not as sour as actual sour cherries. ​
If a sour cherry has to be grafted, usually it’s the sandcherry’s rootstock that’s used to form the base of a sour cherry tree, because it’s tough and resilient. Raising sandcherries from seed is a long and complex process – it can take a year and a half before any seedlings sprout, and the conditions required are extremely specific. One of the good things about the sandcherry is its resistance to diseases and pests. It’s also self-fertile, so it doesn’t need another pollinator.
Carnelian Cherry- Cornus Mas
The European Carnelian Cherry is not, in fact, related to cherries.
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It’s actually a dogwood, distantly related to North American dogwoods like the Silky Dogwood or the Red Osier Dogwood.
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The thing is, it produces a fruit that’s very much like a cherry, though it has a quite unique flavour that cherries don’t have. It’s because of this unique fruit that the plant has been spread by humans across several continents.
Like most dogwoods, it’s not quite a tree. It’s more like a shrubby tree, living in the space in between shrubs and trees. it can get lots of low-starting branches, which, when the plant grows, become big and thick like a tree trunk. This makes it a somewhat gangly, sprawling kind of thing.
The flowers come in very early spring, even late winter, and because of this, it doesn’t produce fruit reliably further north; the cold can burn off the early flowers.
The shrub-tree produces copious amounts of fruit. It’s ripe when it turns bright red, in late summer. Before that, it’s sour, astringent, sharp. The berries look like a cross between coffee beans and cherries, with thick skins (which are also edible).
The flavour is a like cranberries, or sour cherries, or something similar to both yet neither. It’s a unique thing. Anyone who grew up in Europe or the Middle east, places like Turkey and Iran, will recognize these.
In North America, outside of places like British Columbia, these are sadly underappreciated fruits. The fruit makes fantastic jams and can be cooked into almost anything, and the cooked fruit goes well with meats. they’re also good for just eating, of course, and they can be addictive, they’re so tart and delicious.
Nectarine Trees (Stone Fruit)
Nectarines are delicious alternatives to fuzzy peaches. There are many varieties, but we have just a few. They fruit much better when there’s another stone fruit in the vicinity, flowering at the same time. These trees get big, but they’re very attractive.
We have only a very few individual trees. They’re all healthy.
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Fantasia Nectarine: The fruit comes on August, and when it does, it has sharp, sweet taste and smooth skin. Best of all, it’s self-fruitful – it will still produce a lot of fruit without another stone fruit around.
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Flavortop Nectarine: Self-fruitful, in August, this super sweet and slightly sour nectarine is plump and delicious. The tree can reach over 7 metres tall; be warned. It’s a great tree for shaping and creating an espaliered tree, though – so if you train it, it can be kept small and manageable.
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Hardi-Red Nectarine: This tree is especially cold-hardy and can survive a good Ontario winter. The fruit is firm, solid, and juicy, and it has a very intense nectarine flavour. It’s also self-pollinating.
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Harko Nectarine: A tough, resilient tree, this tree produces attractive fruits that ripen well and are very juicy. It’s a great tree to have in addition to other nectarines, especially for pollinating.
Apricots (Stone Fruit)
We have very few apricot trees. When they’re gone, they’re gone.
Puget Gold Apricot
Apricots are a kind of universal fruit, grown from India and Turkey to Spain and California. And, thanks to this hardy variety, also in Ontario. It needs other varieties of stonefruit for pollination. the tree itself is modestly sized, and not the toughest, but it can grow right up into Zone 5 – which is about its limit.
You’ll need to watch that late frost don’t burn off the flowers, but otherwise, this is one of the few apricots that will grow into southern Ontario.
It should be paired with other plums or stonefruits.
Native American Wild Plum – Prunus Americana
A beautiful landscape tree with spectacularly pretty flowers, the plum tree native to Ontario is the Great King of Pretty. It has almost as much visual appeal as a Japanese maple. It’s showy, and has cascades of flowers in the spring, along with a tall, upright straight spire. It can often be shaped into a column-like feature, but it has a very attractive canopy when it branches out, as well.
The fruit is smaller than Eurasian plums, about 4-6 cm wide, but the fruit is both super sweet and still sour, so it’s delicious for eating and using in recipes. The plums don’t keep well, which is why wild plums aren’t commercially available, but commercial plums often lack the intensity of flavour of the wild ones. As a delicious native fruit tree, they’re well worth growing.
Bigger individuals are dug out of the ground and replanted; this is expensive and complicated, but often worth it. We have very, very few of these.
Plum Trees (Stone Fruit)
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Shiro Plum: A delicious, tangy, juicy Asian plum, this plum also has a touch of sour (though not the strong sour taste of native Ontario yellow plums). The tree is tough enough to get by up to about Zone 5 – which means that it’s not good in Northern Ontario. It should be paired with other plums or stonefruits.
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Vampire Plum: A cross between an Asian plum and the native North American plum, this tree produces fruit that’s deep red on the inside and green-purple-red on the outside. It’s sweet, and delicious, and moreover, the tree likes to be pollinated by Asian plums, but there are several crosses that do the job. The fruit is ripe in August. A great addition to a back yard, the tree requires little special care.
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Toka Plum: Apricot-like, these plums are a 1911 cross between an Asian plum and a North American wild plum. They’re firm, juicy and sweet, and the tree is unusually fast-growing. It’s also self-pollinating, but with other varieties nearby, it will set much more fruit.
Pome Fruits
Pome fruits are ancient fruits, and we all love them. They include apples, quinces, pears, and lots of others. Usually, there’s a lobed capsule with little seeds, like an apple core, inside a juicy fruit. All of these trees benefit from having a different variety or cultivar around to help pollinate them. If pears or other pome fruits blossom at the same time, they can pollinate apples, and vice-versa. The trick is getting fruit that pollinates at the same time.
Apples
There are hundreds of varieties of apples. Maybe thousands. We love apples, so we have many apple trees.
These apples are either European varieties grown in Canada, often modified to survive well here, or they were bred here.
Apple trees can get big, but they take well to pruning. Looking after an apple tree is relatively straightforward; they can be shaped as you like, and if you prevent it from getting too high, you can manage it pretty effectively.
Apples definitely need another variety nearby to help with pollination. Combination trees work, but having a crab apple nearby is a virtual guarantee that you’ll get lots of fruit. Crab apples are not only astonishingly beautiful fruit trees, but they produce small fruit with lots of natural pectin. If pears or other pome fruits blossom at the same time, they can pollinate apples, and vice-versa. The trick is getting fruit that pollinates at the same time.
Combination Apple Tree
This apple tree is a combination of several varieties, from 4-7. This is a great idea, mostly because the apple varieties will cross and fertilize each other. The apple varieties tend to be random. These tend to be extremely productive, impressive trees. As they grow, they can become among the most productive trees in a yard, because they fertilize so easily. Also, the extra varieties mean that the tree can be very vigorous, and resistant to pests – if one branch suffers, the rest of the tree might not.
Combination Espaliered Apple Tree​
This apple tree is a combination of 4-6 varieties. This is a great idea, mostly because the apple varieties will cross and fertilize each other, but it’s better, even, because we have trained it to take on a fan or trellis-like shape.
Ours tend to be arranged in tiers, usually 3-4, and each level will have different fruit. This is called “espalier”. Delicate-looking but strong, this carefully shaped trellis lets you prune the tree into a wall-like form, so that you can grow apples even in containers. These can be used for barriers, along walls, and in any situations where you have limited space.
Apples Varieties
We have many apple varieties, including these:
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Honeycrisp Macintosh Smoothee Golden Russet Sweet Sixteen Lodi Yellow Transparent
Empire Jerseymac Idared Cortland Richelieu Wolf RiverHaralson
Gala Goodland Liberty Summercrisp Parkland Red Delicious Jonagold
Granny Smith. Spartan. Northern Spy Wealthy Lobo Golden Delicious Cider Apples
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Empire Apple
A firm, juicy texture makes this one of the best eating apples in Canada. There’s nothing like a fresh Empire apple in October.
This variety needs another to help pollinate.
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Golden Delicious Apple
A super sweet apple, it has a sharp flavour. People like the texture, which is firm and crisp.
This is a good apple to pair with a Red Delicious, for pollination.
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Idared Apple
One of the best apples for pies, the Idared is an early bloomer (watch out for matching it with other apples). It’s a juicy apple, firm and strong and perfect for baking.
Goodland Apple
This tree produces a large apple, crisp and juicy. It’s not a common variety, but with its strong flavour and scent, it should be!
It’s great for eating, cooking and preserving.
Haralson Apple
Not common but a great apple nonetheless, this apple is tasty, but is fantastic for cooking, preserving and in making apple juice. The tartness makes is exceptionally good for a juice apple. People who like a bit of sour with their sweet will love this apple.
Liberty Apple
Meant for making applesauce, the high water content and juiciness add to the strong flavour and firm texture. People like to eat them, too. This should be more available, but because it doesn’t store well, it’s not used commercially.
Granny Smith Apple
One of the most popular apples in North America, this apple is bright green, with a unique flavour and texture. It’s not quite sour, but its tartness is famous. It would be great for baking or cooking ,except that it tends to get eaten fresh before it gets there.
Macintosh Apple
One of Canada’s favourite fruits, the macintosh apple is the general go-to all-around apple for every purpose: eating, baking, preserving, making sauce and anything else. It has a sharp tartness when it’s first picked, though this fades within a few days. There’s nothing quite like a freshly picked macintosh.
Honeycrisp Apple
The apple of choice for cider, it’s also popular as an eating apple. It’s super sharp and has a wonderfully juicy texture.
The apple is planted pretty extensively in orchards, and is one of the most popular for pick-your-own farms. The apples can get pretty big, too.
Special / Dwarf Apple Varieties
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Golden Sentinel Apple: Developed in British Columbia, this apple has excellent disease resistance. It produces tangy, juicy, delicious fruit along its height. It gets to about 12 feet high, which might seem small, but the more interesting feature is that it stays in a right column. This makes it perfect for a container, on a patio, or as an architectural feature in a garden. The apples cluster around the columnar trunk. They’re yellow and extremely sweet and crisp. The tree likes to be pollinated by other apples – it produces far more if there’s another apple tree nearby.
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Scarlet Sentinel Apple: Developed in British Columbia, this apple has excellent disease resistance. It produces tangy, juicy, delicious fruit along its height. It gets to about 12 feet high, which might seem small, but the more interesting feature is that it stays in a right column. This makes it perfect for a container, on a patio, or as an architectural feature in a garden. The apples are very tart, sweet, and crisp. The tree likes to be pollinated by other apples – it produces far more if there’s another apple tree nearby.
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Pears
There are more varieties of pears than can easily be counted. We have a few examples of a small number of them.
Combination Pear Tree
This pear tree is a combination of several varieties, from 4-7. This is a great idea, mostly because the pear varieties will cross and fertilize each other.
The pear varieties tend to be random, but usuallt include Bartlett’s, as a pollinator, and others, like Red Clapp’s.
These tend to be extremely productive, impressive trees. As they grow, they can become among the most productive trees in a yard, because they fertilize so easily. Also, the extra varieties mean that the tree can be very vigorous, and resistant to pests – if one branch suffers, the rest of the tree might not.
Espaliered Combination Pear Tree
This pear tree is a combination of 4-6 varieties of pear, but we have trained it to take on a fan or trellis-like shape. Delicate-looking but strong, this carefully shaped trellis lets you prune the tree into a wall-like form, so that you can grow pears even in containers. These can be used for barriers, along walls, and in any situations where you have limited space.
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Domesticated Pears
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These pears are either European varieties grown in Canada, often modified to survive well here, or they were bred here.
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​Flemish Beauty Pear: Ripe in about September, this pear likes winters and does well in Canada. The fruit is soft, with a tasty skin, and very sweet. The fruit can be stored for a long time, too. This variety needs another to help pollinate.
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Luscious Pear: This pear has fruit that is medium-sized, extremely juicy, with lots of pear flavour. It doesn’t preserve well, but it’s great for eating fresh, making sauce and cooking. The tree is a little smaller than others – about 5 metres.
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Golden Spice Pear: The fruit is a bit smaller than other varieties, but it makes up for that by producing a lot more than usual. It’s very popular for making jams, or preserving, and for baking. The scent is very strong, too.
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Anjou Pear: Originally from France, this variety was called “Nec Plus Meuris”, or short-necked pear. It’s the “pear’s pear” of fruit – the classic, pear-y tasting pear that everyone thinks of when they think of pears. It’s the one most sold, the one that grows most easily, and the one people want to buy most often. It’s great for eating fresh, making sauce and cooking.
Asian Pears
These pears are Asian varieties that are very popular in Japan, Korea and other Asian countries.
They require a Bartlett pear or another Asian pear to pollinate, though.
These pears are big, juicy, round pears, made famous in Korean dramas and found in specialty grocery stores, usually for high prices.
They’re in huge demand, and impossible to find, and we only have a handful of them on hand.
Nijisseiki Pear
The tree produces mild-tasting and juicy fruit, round-shaped and a soft yellow colour. They’re very juicy, and are good pretty much just for eating, because they turn to mush if you try to bake with them. These are some of the most desired pears in Asia. It’s hard to get them in Canada, or North America; we have very few of these trees.
The tree gets about 5 metres high, and it definitely needs another cultivar nearby to help it pollinate.
Shinko Pear
This pear has super sweet flesh, and also super juicy. It’s so juicy that it’s not good for cooking with, but it’s great for eating. The fruit also gets relatively large. In Korea, these pears are peeled and served on a plate for guests. They can command very high prices in the markets.
Match this with a Bartlett pear to get lots of production.
Chojuro Pear
This tree gets very tall – 7 metres – and is super cold-tolerant. If you need something that can take winter, this tree can do it. The taste is mild, but the fruit is very juicy and crisp. The flavour has a hint of “butterscotch”.
These are meant for eating, usually peeled and served.
Unusual Fruit Trees
Persimmon – Diospyros Virginiana
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Persimmon trees grow slowly, but they are extremely sturdy and tough. The leaves are shiny, and turn bright red when it gets cold. The fruit has a soft skin, which you peel, and the interior has a moist, sweet flavour with a fibrous texture. It’s a very unique taste.
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Be warned: while a gorgeous tree, and hard to find, these noble fruit trees can become absolutely enormous. They can get as high as 20 metres. Their root systems are broad and deep. Another warning: it’s best to plant them some distance from house foundations. They grow fast and start bearing fruit quickly. And when mature, they bear incredible amounts of fruit. One tree can easily overwhelm a household with its fruit, producing thousands of persimmons a season. An enormous 15 year-old persimmon tree at a friend’s house produces so much fruit, it took four people several days to pick the lower branches clean, and all of the upper branches that were inaccessible had far more fruit than that.
Animals foraging could barely scratch the quantity. It takes many years to get to this size, but when the tree gets there, it’s amazing.In a back yard, these trees will push up and crown whole neighbourhoods. They have very, very long lives. It’s like a generational tree. Your grandchildren’s grandchildren will still be eating the fruit from this tree.
They’re very, very hard to find, and hard to grow from seed. We only have a handful. They’re about 15 years old, and already pretty big and sturdy. Our trees are “parthenocarpic” – varieties that, if they’re not fertilized by a male, will still set fruit, but seedless fruit.
We have VERY FEW of these trees. They’re rare, and expensive, delicate, hard to grow trees for people who really have everything, and now want the rest of everything.
Quince, Asian- Chanenomeles Species
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These quinces are Asian varieties that are very popular in Japan, Korea and other Asian countries. Most come from Korea, propagated here.
With names like “Japonica”, “Pink Lady”, and “Toyonoishiki”, these fruit are rarely known in North America but are heavily used in Asia. They grow into a big bush-like form, and produce huge numbers of fruits. You aren’t meant to eat them raw, but in Korea, for example, where they’re called “moga”, the bush-tree’s fruits are used for many purposes.
Because they have such a strong scent, some Koreans cut them and leave them out to infuse the room with the powerful and pleasant smell. The fruit isn’t usually eaten raw, but the juice is extracted, and this is used to make everything from drinks to alcohol, and to flavour meats and soups. Quince jam is absolutely excellent, too, and the juice has a large amount of nutrients, packed with nutrition. It’s considered one of the dietary “miracle foods” of Asia, and for the health-conscious, quince should be on the menu.
Quince need full sun, and another variety nearby to help pollinate. Be warned – though they’re a bush, if they’re allowed to they will grow to enormous size, with huge, curling and twisting branches forming a dense matrix (that kids love to climb, by the way). Once they get pretty big, they produce incredible amounts of fruit.
Fig Tree – “Chicago Hardy”
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This tree is one of the few that can survive something like a Canadian winter. Even then, they need to be protected from winter with a mini greenhouse if planted outside, or they can be taken in. Containers can be used to keep them, but then they need to be moved inside (into a room with a lot of light) in the winter.
This is properly a Zone 6 tree. You need to treat it well. It might handle Toronto or Niagara winters, but it will still need help.