Looking for fruit trees to plant (Houston, Center: purchase, maintenance, cost)

[Oskar_Z28]

Anyone recommend good fruit trees to plant in Houston.

Already have a peach tree, but results from it have been mixed.
Tangerine is doing really good. Definitely will consider other citrus trees.

Anything else that will do well in Texas heat and wet clay soil?

Also, what are good nurseries to get decent sized trees from? Houston Garden Center has some sorry looking "sticks".

[fnh]

Fig, avocado, banana, kumquat, persimmon, citrus (lime, lemon, grapefruit, satsuma).

RCW Nursery at Beltway 8 & Hwy 249 specializes in trees.
https://rcwnurseries.com

Also Buchanan's Native Plants in the Heights.

[sonic0boom]

Subscribe to the Urban Harvest list to find out when they are doing their fruit tree sale. I think it might be coming up. I have a Meyer lemon and a Lisbon lemon in the ground. A cara cara orange in a whiskey barrel pot (Buchanan's sells them). The Meyer lemon was from Buchanans and the orange was from Enchanted Gardens. Purchase from a good nursery or from the Urban Harvest sale, not the sorry looking ones from those big places. John Panzarella is a citrus expert and sells trees as well, including the "fruit cocktail" trees which are pretty awesome: Panzarella Citrus

Also look up the care and maintenance guidelines from the Texas Ag extension, which also includes best practices on planting your tree. Yes, the clay soil doesn't help but following the instructions i mentioned does show how large of a hole to dig, etc, which gives your tree the ability to establish roots. Also note that the trees have to reach a certain maturity before they'll produce anything. I picked up 5 gallon trees, which cost more but are older so that i didn't have to wait as long before i got anything. I got maybe a few per tree the first year, but this past year, i got around 40+ lemons and maybe 8 or so oranges.

Good luck!

[mkwensky]

Originally Posted by Oskar_Z28

Anyone recommend good fruit trees to plant in Houston.

Already have a peach tree, but results from it have been mixed.
Tangerine is doing really good. Definitely will consider other citrus trees.

Anything else that will do well in Texas heat and wet clay soil?

Also, what are good nurseries to get decent sized trees from? Houston Garden Center has some sorry looking "sticks".

As someone else mentioned figs do really well here. I put one in, forgot about it for a year, and was eating fresh figs for half the year. Citrus in general also do pretty well here.
Speaking as someone who could barely be bothered to water the grass.

[chairmanoftheboard]

Nothing quite like a tree ripened lime. The kind of tree that gets big. Most limes are harvested green for stores, but most limes are not actually ripe until they turn a lemon yellow color. Yum Yum if you thought you liked limes.