Fresh fruit in your backyard
Who doesn’t love fresh fruit. And what could be better than walking out your back door and picking. Well right now is the perfect time of the year to plant fruit trees.
keep in mind though just because they sell the trees in the local stores does not mean that they are adapted to grow in our area and produce fruit. All fruit bearing plants require what is called chill hours. Some require a few chill hours and so require a lot so you want to match the required amount of chill hours to the average amount of chill hours for your area. Chill hours are roughly the number of hours between the temperatures of 32-45 degrees fahrenheit. Winter hours above 60 degrees are subtracted from the totals.
As you can guess we really don’t get a lot of chill hours in North Texas. 360 to 450 is a fairly common amount. That greatly reduces the varieties of fruit bearing plants and trees that we can grow and have good productivity.
hands down the best resource for information on trees for Texas is Texas A&M Aggie horticulture https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/fruit-nut/
But for a little less scientific, more direct information on what grows well in north Texas Neil Sperry has put together a great list.
https://neilsperry.com/2015/02/best-fruit-crops-north-texas/
