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Fruit Trees That Can Be Grown in Containers

Fitting fruit trees into a small urban yard or onto a balcony or deck gets easier every year as breeders produce more kinds of dwarf trees that bear full-size fruit. True dwarfs are genetically small -- not simply large trees grafted onto dwarfing rootstock. They thrive in containers and produce fruit when they're only 2 or 3 years old. Yields on container-grown trees are less than those from a full-size tree, but one advantage is that you can reach all the fruit without using a ladder. While fruit trees require yearly pruning, true dwarfs need much less. Their small size makes this chore easier.

  1. Potting

    • Choose a container at least 2 feet tall and wide, about the size of a 20-gallon plastic nursery pot. Use a mixture of half potting soil and half planting compost or a mixture of half planting compost and half topsoil. Planting compost is rich compost that includes a percentage of manure as well as other nutrient-providing ingredients. Loosen the tree's roots and set it onto a cone of soil in the pot. Fill with more soil, watering as you go.

    Apples

    • Also called colonnade or pillar apple trees, columnar apples resulted from a genetic mutation discovered in the 1960s. Grafted onto dwarfing rootstock to improve pest and diseaseresistance, they grow about 8 to 10 feet tall but only 2 feet wide. Stark Bros. nursery released the first columnar apples in the 1990s -- the English varieties Emerald Spire, Crimson Spire and Scarlet Spire. Other varieties include Northpole, Golden Sentinel and Scarlet Sentinel. The newest cultivar, Ultra Spire, reaches only 7 feet tall, yielding red apples similar to Spartan. Two trees are needed for cross-pollination, and the fruit needs to be thinned, because the trees tend to over-produce.

    Figs

    • Fig trees are hardy to minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit with winter protection, and they thrive in pots. Instead of allowing the plant to become a tree, train it as a bush by cutting off a third of its top at potting time. Next year, in early spring, choose three to eight of the fig's vigorous shoots, evenly spaced, to serve as the main branches. Cut off all the other shoots. To keep the plant small, head back the main branches each year in early spring. Choose self-pollinating varieties such as Brown Turkey, Celeste or Mission. The self-pollinating variety Stella is a natural dwarf, growing only 6 to 8 feet tall.

    Tropical Fruit Trees

    • Citrus fruit trees such as lemons, limes, oranges and kumquats can grow in pots outdoors during the summer and be brought indoors to a sunny window in late fall for winter. The Improved Meyer Lemon, which reaches only 8 feet tall, bears clusters of full-size, sweet-tart lemons. If pollinated by bees or by hand with a small paintbrush, citrus trees will produce fruit indoors. Other non-hardy fruit trees that grow in containers include dwarf star fruit, Cavendish banana, acerola, passionfruit and Day avocado.

    Compact Cherry

    • The Stella cherry is a dwarf tree that reaches 8 to 10 feet. It is self-fertile and does well in a container. Stella bears firm, dark red, sweet cherries in late July and begins fruiting when only a few years old.

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Growing Edibles
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