Fifty fruity favourites
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Sharpen your spades! It’s fruit tree planting season and those who dilly-dally risk missing out on the best varieties. Which are, you might ask? For your shopping convenience, I’ve helpfully prepared a list of my 50 favourites:
The ‘Meyer’ lemon. Aside from the sour-faced kumquat, this hybrid is the cold-hardiest of all citrus. It’s promiscuous too, bearing fruit for 11 months of the year.
Lemon meringue pie lovers should also plant ‘Villa Franca’ or ‘Yen Ben’. These have more volatile essential oils (and thus more flavour) than ‘Meyer’.
For a sweet, easy-peel lemon you can eat fresh like an orange, seek out ‘Lemonade’.
The novel Buddha’s hand citron is all pith and zest with no flesh but its claw-like fruit has an intense air-freshening fragrance. Keep one in your car. Tahitian limes, for mojitos. Subtropical kaffir limes, for Thai curries and fragrant basmati (bung a leaf in your rice cooker).
‘Eustis’ limequat. A limekumquat cross for cooler climates.
Ruby red ‘Fortune’ plums. They’re big, juicy, and bursting with flavour. (Or at least they are if they’re fully tree-ripened, unlike the specimens in supermarkets.)
‘Black Doris’ plums, for cobblers and compotes.
Damson plums, for drowning in gin.
Small purple ‘Stanley’ prune plums, for drying and aiding digestion.
Large purple ‘Sultan’ plums. Juice bombs. Luscious ‘Luisa’ plums. Ambrosial ‘Cluthagold’ apricots. The pride of Central Otago. Enough to make any Aucklander jealous.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Old-fashioned ‘Moorpark’ apricots, for drying.
‘Fuyu’ persimmons, if their bland, jellied flesh is your thing. (It’s not mine.)
Sweet ‘Seminole’ tangelos, for juicing.
‘Smyrna’ quinces to poach, paste, and preserve.
‘Ted’s Red’ tamarillos. An oldie, but a goodie. Also an overwintering bordello for tomato-potato psyllids. Spray or be prepared for the consequences come summer.
‘Seville’ oranges, for aristocratic marmalade.
‘Golden Special’ grapefruit. Slice in half, zap in the microwave, and sprinkle with brown sugar. Breakfast, sorted.
‘Peasgood Nonsuch’ apples. For skiting. They routinely weigh more than 500g each.
Roast pork requires ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ apple sauce on the side.
‘Kaiteri’ feijoas are first to ripen and large enough to scoop
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with a dessertspoon.
‘Unique’ feijoas. The best variety for a self-fertile, uniform hedge.
‘Navel’ oranges, for vitamin C in winter.
‘Harwood Late’ oranges, for vitamin C in summer. ‘Hass’ avocados. For Christmas cherries, ‘Compact Stella’ is prolific and petite.
‘Miho’ mandarins. Seedless, easy-peel, and early to ripen.
‘Clementine’ mandarins are sweeter but seedy.
‘Brunoro Black’ figs: darkfleshed, dark-skinned, and divine.
Tangy red cherry guavas appeal to winter palates and wood pigeons.
Purple-foliaged ‘Mabel’ nectarines look good in the landscape.
Stuck for space? Plant dwarf ‘Nectar Babe’ nectarines. Or baby ‘Bonanza’ peaches. In humid climates, beat brown
25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.
rot with early-ripening ‘Maycrest’ or ‘Orion’ peaches.
Heritage ‘Blackboy’ peaches tick all the boxes: they’re freestone, flavoursome, and easy to grow organically. 39. ‘Healey’s Peacherine’ is a big, bald peach that’s as good for bottling as any ‘Golden Queen’.
‘Doyenne du Comice’ pears. Nectar of the Gods.
Pint-sized ‘Garden Belle’ is the first true dwarf pear tree available here.
Papples. The red-skinned Nashi pear that thinks it’s an apple.
‘Wilson’s Wonder’ walnuts. Huge yet easily cracked with bare hands.
Spanish ‘Manzanilla’ olives ripen to black, and can be pickled or pressed.
‘Queenie’ mulberries: a longterm investment, but worth the wait.
Elderberries. Roadside weeds, really, but with edible blossoms, antioxidant-rich berries, and toxic leaves for DIY insecticides.
Pomegranates. Kidding. Don’t bother. They rarely, if ever, ripen fully in New Zealand.
‘Thumbelina Ruby Crunch’ crabapples. Four times bigger than a standard crab.
‘Jack Humm’ crabapples. So perfectly red and shiny, they look plastic. Chop into cider for a candyfloss-pink colour.
‘Slack Ma Girdle’ heirloom cider apples. Even if your homebrew tastes awful, it’ll sound authentic.
Having trouble choosing? Just buy one of each. As Stephen Fry once said, ‘‘Taste every fruit of every tree in the garden at least once. It is an insult to creation not to experience it fully. Temperance is wicked.’’
38. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.