You Can Have Fruit Trees in Your Desert Garden

Apricots, plums, peaches, cherries, apples, pears, grapes, and other fruiting plants can be grown in desert gardens.

It might be a little more difficult to raise fruit trees in your desert garden. Late spring frosts can damage early blossoms and new fruit. The unrelenting sun can cause sun scorch on tender branches and trunks. And the dry incessant spring winds can cause havoc as well, desiccating leaves, and damaging branches.

Add to this the alkaline soil high in soluble salts, and the fact that most fruit trees in the desert will have full production in only one in five years, and you wonder: why bother?

Don't give up hope, though. With a modicum of care and preparation, you can raise apricots (which do fairly well in alkaline soils), plums, peaches, apples, grapes and cherries. It's not as difficult as you may think, and fruit trees can provide you with years of enjoyment, shade, and tasty fruit.

In the series of articles on fruit trees in desert gardens, we'll cover specific problems common to the different species of fruiting plants, ways to avoid them, and we'll give you a list of the most well-adapted varieties for desert gardens.

For more information on growing fruit trees in your desert garden, click here.