Eagle Lake Nurseries Ltd.

Grow Your Own Fruit Trees!

Many types of fruit trees will grow in the Calgary area, we are not limited to apples alone. Plant your trees in a sunny spot with at least 6 hours of sunlight, preferably in the afternoon. The soil needs to be well drained, and avoid frost pockets at the bottom of a slope. Good ventilation is essential. Above all, plant your trees where you can see and enjoy them - they are beautiful!

Pear trees listed here are hardy to zone 3. They are a very attractive tree with white blossoms in the spring and glossy green leaves in summer turning to burgundy-orange in the fall. The fruit is not as large as the pears you would buy in a supermarket but it is spicy, very tasty and good for canning and jam as well as eating. For fruit production, another pear tree flowering at the same time is required, within a city block of your tree. To be certain of cross-pollination why not plant two varieties at the same time?

Golden Spice pear grows 8m tall and 5m wide. Golden yellow, spicy fruit ripens in late September.

Early Gold pear is the same size tree, with spicy, pale yellow pears in early September.

John pear grows to the same size, producing yellow-green fruit in mid-September.

Ure pear is the smallest pear tree that is hardy in our area, growing to 6m in height and 4m in width. Sweet green-yellow fruit is ripe by mid-September.

Plum trees for the prairies are often cherry-plum crosses. They are small trees, maturing to 5m tall and 4m wide, with attractive shiny dark bark. Showy white flowers envelop the crowns in the spring and fall leaf colour is a spectacular orange-red. The plums are good for eating or canning.

Pembina plum produces 4-5cm size purple/yellow fruit in late August. This tree requires cross-pollination with Brookred plum, Opata cherry-plum or Western Sandcherry shrub within one city block radius.

Brookred plum will cross pollinate with Pembina, Opata or Western Sandcherry to produce 4-5cm red plums in early September.

Brookgold plum requires a Nanking Cherry shrub for pollination. In late August small [2.5-3cm] tasty yellow plums ripen.

We also supply the Princess Kay plum, a small ornamental tree standing 4m tall and 3m wide at maturity. The double white blossoms on this tree are quite stunning and we have found the small reddish-yellow fruit to be very tasty - an added bonus!

Prairie hardy Cherries usually grow in shrub form, but the Evans Cherry may be grown as a small tree very successfully, reaching 4m tall and 3m wide. It displays pale pink flowers in the spring, followed by translucent red cherries that are good for eating, canning and pies. Fall foliage is an attractive yellow-orange colour. While it is self-fertile, a much better crop is obtained if a second cherry, flowering at the same time, is available.

If you are partial to cherries, check out the new prairie hardy shrub introductions from the University of Saskatoon. These, and the ever dependable Nanking Cherry, will keep you supplied with delicious fruit.

Apple trees have been cultivated on the prairies for many years, but new and improved varieties are always appearing. The trees grow to 5m tall and 4m wide unless they have been grafted on a dwarfing rootstock. The buds of apple trees are usually pale pink, opening to clouds of white blossoms and cross-pollination occurs with any apple or crabapple flowering at the same time within a city block. Apples are categorized as early, mid or late-season varieties depending on fruiting season.

Early season apples produce ripe fruit in late August. Some dependable varieties are Norland and Parkland, both good eating apples, Westland - a good cooking apple, and Heyer #12 which is good for puree and juicing.

By the middle of September the mid season apples are ready. Battleford, an older variety from Saskatchewan, is a good cooker. Harcourt, Hardi-Mac, Patterson and September Ruby are some good eating apples which may also be used for cooking.

Late season apples are ripe by the end of September. Fall Red, Goodland, Haralson and Honey Crisp are all good varieties. An excellent summary of the eating, cooking and storage qualities of the various apples may be found in the booklet "Trees and Shrubs for the Prairies", which is available at our nursery.

Also of note are the Apple-Crabs, which are a cross between an apple and a crabapple. They are very hardy and produce good fruit that is slightly smaller than an apple but larger than a crabapple. Kerr and Rescue are two varieties that yield fruit for eating and canning.

Of the Crabapples an older, extremely hardy [zone 2] variety, Dolgo, produces excellent fruit for canning and preserves.

The rich red hue of the crabapples imparts a festive colour to jelly made from them, and they are very high in pectin.

We can grow fruit trees very successfully in our climate, the trick is to choose trees hardy for our area. One advantage of producing your own plums, cherries, apples and pears is that you know how the fruit was grown - and what chemicals were used on the trees.

Connie Webb
Eagle Lake Nurseries Ltd.