BIG FRUIT, Small Yard: 6 Tiny Fruit Trees For HUGE Harvests!

What's growing on, gardeners? Do you want to plant some fruit trees in your yard but you think it's just too small? Well, this video is for you. I'm going to share with you my six smallest fruit trees that make big fruit in the tiniest yards. No matter what size your yard is, you can fit these fruit trees and be overflowing with harvests most of the year. And on this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know to make that happen. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. I just counted and I'm growing at least 54 fruit trees in my backyard alone. That doesn't include my front yard, what I have planted around my house, and my container garden. When you add all those things together, I'm growing over 200 fruit trees on this little suburban plot in an HOA. And the amazing thing is the 54 fruit trees in my backyard are growing on only 0.04 acres of land. Yes, that's 0.04 because I've grown them very strategically. I've planted the overwhelming majority of these around my fence line, so I have a little bit more of 400 feet of perimeter fencing and all of the beds come out about four feet. So when you do the math, I have a little bit over 1,700 square feet of bed space dedicated to these fruit trees, or about 0.04 acres total. So if I can grow 54 different fruit trees in 1,700 square feet of space, I know that you can figure out how to plant six in your yard, no matter how small it is. The key is proper site selection, annual pruning to keep them small, and the selection of varied dwarfing trees grafted onto dwarfing rootstock. And on this video, I'm going to show you six of my favorites. You won't believe how small these trees are. Fruit tree number one is my Ichiki Keijiro Asian Persimmon tree. This tree has virtually everything you want in a backyard fruit tree. It is extremely cold hardy and can be grown all the way down to zone six. It is self-fertile, so you only need one tree, no cross-pollination required, and it is extremely resistant to insect pests and diseases, especially if you get it grafted onto Native American persimmon rootstock, which I am growing. So as a result, this is basically a problem-free, maintenance-free tree outside of annual pruning, which brings me to my next point, the size. Most Asian persimmon trees are semi-dwarf. If you let them grow on their own, they'll grow to be about 15 feet tall. And through annual pruning, it's easy to keep them around the 10 to 12 foot range, like this Giambo persimmon I'm growing right here. It's unpruned right now, so this is how big it'll be if you let it go. At the end of the winter, I'll prune it down to about 8 to 10 feet in height. But Ichiki Keijiro is a natural dwarf. It is one of the smallest Asian persimmons you can get. And if you leave it unpruned, it will top out at only about 8 to 10 feet. So with annual pruning, it is easy to keep this tree at only 5 to 6 feet tall in perpetuity, so it will be a very small tree in a very small footprint that makes huge harvests. Now, this tree is going on its fourth year, and I haven't even pruned it yet for the winter, and it's really not going to get any larger than this over time. So simply through your annual pruning, you can keep this as one of the smallest, most productive fruit trees in your entire yard. But the best part is, aside from my Giambo persimmon tree, this may be the best-tasting fruit I grow in my entire yard. Now, Asian persimmons can be both astringent and non-astringent. That big Giambo tree is an astringent persimmon, so you can't eat it when it's firm. It would be like eating a piece of chalk. You have to wait until Giambo gets really squishy like a bag of jelly. But this is a non-astringent variety. You could eat it firm like an apple, or you can wait until it gets super soft like a bag of jelly. But if you're patient and you wait for the fruit to soften, you will be rewarded with one of the greatest eating experiences of your entire life. A ripe persimmon is absolutely incredible. It's like a gooey, soft bag of jelly that tastes like a mixture of honey and spice. It is an absolutely magical experience. So for that reason, if I could grow only one fruit tree, I would honestly probably pick this, because you're going to get a low-maintenance, almost problem-free tree that takes up almost no space and will have one of the greatest-tasting fruits that you will ever experience. If you're looking to purchase an Ichikikejiro Asian persimmon tree, my tree came from an online nursery called Plant Me Green, but it has become very widely available over the years because of how fantastic it is. So if you perform a simple search, you'll find this pretty common all over the place. Fruit tree number two is the Bonanza peach. And believe it or not, this tree is going on its third year, and I have to squat down to film it. That's how heavily dwarfing this tree is. Now, there are a number of super-dwarfing peach trees out there, but a lot of them put out smaller fruit. The amazing thing about the Bonanza peach is it makes full-size fruit, and they are also freestone. So if you buy a Bonanza peach tree, you will get top-quality freestone fruit. Now, this is a cold-hardy tree that's cold-hardy to zone six, and it is also self-fertile. So you only need one tree. And what's amazing about this tree is if you don't prune it, it's going to top out at only about five to six feet. When you keep it pruned, you can keep it even smaller than that. So this makes it one of the most productive small fruit trees you can possibly grow, and it also makes a brilliant contender for container gardening. Like most fruit trees, peaches are easier to grow up north than in the south because there's less insect and disease pressure. So if you live in an area that has more insect and disease pressure for your peaches, having a smaller tree like this makes your life so much easier because it's tough dealing with a 12 to 20-foot-tall peach tree if you have to spray the tree. But when you can keep something perpetually small at five or six feet, it makes caring for the tree and looking it over and checking for any kind of insect, pest, infestations, or things like that super easy. So for that reason, this is going to be one of the lower-maintenance peach trees that you'll ever buy. Now, if you're interested in where to get one, this one's a little bit more difficult to find. I got mine from Bob Wells Nursery online. I ordered it, and they gave me a beautiful tree. And it's in its third year now, and it's doing really well. Fruit tree number three are fig trees. And when it comes to growing fig trees, in this case, the variety does not matter. You can grow any fig variety that you want and have it fit in a very small footprint. Now, it often comes as a surprise when I recommend fig trees for people with small growing spaces because they have a reputation to be invasive and get quite large. And that is true if you're growing them in their native Mediterranean climate and you never prune them. But here in the U.S. and in colder climates, these trees often get killed all the way down to the ground every single year and then sprout back up from the roots. And that is what makes figs so amazing. You can hard prune them pretty much all the way down the ground, and they will come back and grow eight to 10 feet tall and produce a harvest for you the very next year. So for that reason, you never have to worry about your fig trees becoming large or invasive because you could hard prune them and keep them as small as you want every single year. So they will really take up very little space in practice, and they can be grown in ground at least all the way down to zone six, even colder if you do things like cut them down to the ground and wrap the trunk and then bury them in mulch to insulate them for the next year. All of the fig trees that you see growing here are going on eight years old, and you can see how significantly large the trunks are. But I just cut them down to the cordons every single year to keep them small and they sprout back up. I haven't pruned them for the winter yet, but when I do prune them down, they will be cut down to about that second cable level, which is only about 30 inches from the bottom of the ground. And then they will re-sprout and they will make their figs for the next season. Now, there are literally thousands of varieties of figs out there. So what you would pick depends on what kind of flavor of fig you want, because they come in practically every flavor under the sun, from honey figs, to light berry, to rich berry, to molasses, to caramel, to peach flavor, to blackberry, raspberry. The world is your oyster when it comes to growing figs. However, if you were to ask me if I could only grow one fig variety here in the south where we get torrential rain, I would probably go for the variety Smith, which is a strawberry flavored fig. It's quite cold hardy. It grows very quickly and it tolerates rain and humidity better than most. So if you deal with rainy, wet, humid climates and you want a really good quality fig that's easy to find online and you can get the trees for a relatively low price, I would recommend the variety Smith. If you're looking to buy a fig tree, the biggest availability on the whole internet is going to be on an auction site called FigBid. You don't have to go through auction. You can just use the buy it now feature. But there are a lot of different websites out there that stock lots and lots of figs. One Green World is a good example. They have dozens and dozens of figs to choose from online. Virtually all the figs that we grow in the United States are parthenocarpic, which means they set fruit without pollination. You don't need to have that fig wasp that you may hear about to pollinate your fig trees. Every single one that I grow do not need pollination. They're not self-fertile. They are parthenocarpic, so they fruit without pollination. Almost all of the figs that you're going to buy online will have this unique genetic trait. Just don't buy any figs that are labeled Smyrna figs because they will actually need pollination. They are very rare and hard to come by. Fruit tree number four to grow in your backyard that'll fit in practically any space is citrus. And the key to having citrus trees that fit practically anywhere is to make sure you get them grafted onto trifoliate rootstock. One of the most common name varieties of trifoliate rootstock is Flying Dragon. So if you see on websites your citrus is grafted onto Flying Dragon, that is a bush-style semi-deciduous citrus that will keep your tree a permanently small shrub forever. For example, this Owari Satsuma, this is going on eight years old and this is as tall as it will ever get with annual pruning. I simply round it off in early winter every single year and this allows me to keep it planted right up against the southern wall of my house, which is the warm wall, which blocks the north wind and radiates heat all throughout the night and it gives it a very protected microclimate so I can grow the citrus very close to my house and protect it for those cold nights. The best part about growing citrus is they ripen their fruit in the late fall and early winter when not much else is ripening. So by growing citrus, you can have fresh harvests of ripe fruit when almost nothing else is fruiting anywhere else. Look at this Meyer lemon tree right here. It is overwhelmed with absolutely enormous fruit. These Meyer lemons are the size of softballs and they are everywhere on this tree. All the citrus trees in my backyard here are grafted onto that trifoliate rootstock. So this allows me to keep them permanently small. Many of these are going on five years old and this is as big as they get and this allows me to plant them up against these big 60 gallon pickle barrels which absorb heat throughout the day and radiate the heat back at night and then if I'm going to get a hard freeze, I just cover them with the agricultural fabric back there and this allows me to grow citrus all the way in North Carolina. Citrus is way more cold hardy than given credit for. You don't need to live in a very mild winter climate to grow them. Most of these cold hardy varieties of citrus can be grown all the way down to the zone 7b, 8a line. I just made a video, 12 different varieties of ultra cold hardy citrus that you can grow. Most people in the United States can grow citrus in ground. In fact, some ultra cold hardy varieties like a yuzu or a Prague satsuma or an ichang lemon or a sudachi, they can be grown all the way down to the zone 6b, 7a line with a little bit of cold protection. So again, I'll link to a video down in the video description that will show you 12 of my favorite varieties of ultra cold hardy citrus and also I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show how I protect these citrus trees with water barrels and incandescent Christmas lights. It is really easy to give them about 10 to 12 degrees of cold protection and that's really all you need to be able to grow cold hardy citrus in many areas of the United States that you think you can't. If you're looking for where to buy citrus trees, I buy all of my grafted citrus trees from Stan McKenzie at McKenzie Farms in Scranton, South Carolina. He's probably the biggest collector of cold hardy citrus in the entire United States. So you can simply look them up on Google Maps, you can give him a call, you can order anything you want over the phone from him and he will ship it to your door. If you live in a citrus quarantine state like say Florida, you can also buy your citrus from Just Fruits and Exotics or Bright Leaf. If you live in Texas, you can buy them from Bob Wells Nursery. If you live in Arizona, you can buy them from Seamus O'Leary Tropicals. So those states, they don't allow citrus to be shipped in from outside of the state. So that will give you a good idea of where you can buy citrus from online if you live in a quarantine zone. And if you still don't believe me, I received a wonderful message from someone just a few days ago in Zone 7, New Jersey, telling me that he just picked 21 brown select satsumas off his tree that he's growing in ground in Zone 7, New Jersey. Is that not incredible? All because he followed the methods in my video. You haven't lived until you have had citrus picked fresh off of your tree. I'm telling you, it's just the biggest flex, especially in areas that can't grow citrus in ground. Everybody's just amazed by it. Fruit tree number five is actually a fruiting shrub. It is called a feijoa, also known as a pineapple guava. And this is a member of the myrtle family. It is a fruiting myrtle shrub. It's not technically a tropical guava. It is subtropical. So it is to Zone 7. This tree has flown through back-to-back nights at eight degrees Fahrenheit with no issues at all. Nothing bothers this tree. I've never had issues with any insects, with any disease. The birds don't bother it. The squirrels don't bother it. Nothing bothers this tree at all. It is the lowest maintenance thing that I'm growing in my entire yard. And all I really need to do is just keep it shaped at the end of each year. I prune it in December after I harvest all the fruit off of it, and it just grows back bigger and better every single year. This is another tree that I got from Stan McKenzie eight years ago, and it has been growing ever since I bought my house back in 2018. And it's really an easy tree to grow, really super low maintenance, and it's beautiful as well. In fact, I liked it so much, I bought another one. This is a named variety called Takaka that I bought from the website One Green World. It's on its third year, and it's finally starting to put on some growth. It made its first handful of fruits this year, and they are huge. Pineapple guava have some of the most unique tasting fruit I have ever had. In fact, I call them nature's sour patch kid. You know a pineapple guava is ripe because when they are ripe, they actually fall off the tree, and you pick them up off the ground. They have a very tart skin and a very sweet interior. So if you eat them together, you get a sweet, tart flavor explosion. If you don't like the tartness of the skin, you can just cut the fruits in half, and you can scoop out the flesh, which is very sweet. It almost tastes like a cross between a pear and a pineapple. But the thing that really makes this tree a standout is the incredible, beautiful, perfumey, tropical flowers. They are this vibrant magenta color. They smell like perfume, and the flowers are actually technically edible. I've eaten them before, although they're so perfumey, they're not for me. But if you really like the flowers, you can eat them. And fruit tree number six is a recent addition to my garden that I've only been growing in ground for about two years, and that is a pomegranate tree. Pomegranates are very dwarfing. They are shrub-like, and if you don't prune them, they will only grow to be about eight to 10 feet tall. But through annual pruning, you can easily keep these as a five to six foot tall shrub. I went to Italy last year, and these pomegranates are all over the place there. They're very popular in Mediterranean climates because they do very well in places with long, dry summers. And you can keep them as a beautiful-looking ornamental shrub. They are one of the prettiest trees I've ever seen when growing in that type of climate. Now, the cold-hardiness of your pomegranate tree is somewhere in between. It depends on the varieties that you get, because some varieties, like the wonderful pomegranate, which is one of the most popular commercial varieties, that's more frost-sensitive, and it's only cold-tolerant to about the zone 7-8 line. But this is a variety called parfianca, which is a self-fertile variety that's more cold-hardy to about the zone 6-7 line, and it's also earlier. Now, I haven't gotten any fruit off this tree yet because it hasn't been in ground for a full two years yet, but I have been informed by people that they're a little bit harder to grow in places with wet, humid summers. And while they don't really have any issues with insect pests, if you have very wet, humid summers like I do here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, I might have some issues with fungal diseases. So that is why I got an earlier variety. So if you're looking for something really small and really productive and fairly cold-hardy, you can give yourself a try with a pomegranate variety. Just make sure the variety you get is self-fertile. The vast majority of them are, but not every single one is, so check beforehand. Now, my pomegranate is from an online nursery called Bay Laurel Nursery, and they gave me this beautiful tree. And so far, it has been basically problem-free. I haven't even pruned it yet. I'm probably going to give it its first haircut this winter. It's coming along nicely. It did flower for me last year, but because it was only in ground for just a little bit more than a year when it flowered, it did not actually produce fruit. But it goes to show you how precocious they are. I think it's probably actually going to bear fruit for me in its full second year in ground this year. So if you have warm, dry summers, definitely plant a pomegranate. They should be very easy for you to grow. If you have more humid, wet summers, you can try planting an earlier variety like this and see if you can beat the humidity. Either way, I'm really excited to see how this turns out. The tree itself is incredibly easy to grow and low-maintenance. And that right there are six tiny fruit trees that will give you big harvests in even the smallest of backyards. Don't let anyone tell you that you need a big backyard to grow lots of fruit. You don't. Remember, I'm growing 54 fruit trees on only 0.04 acres because I sourced dwarfing varieties and I prune them annually to keep them small every year, which you should be doing anyway because annual pruning practices actually make them fruit more and keep them healthier. So all of the fruit trees that you saw in this video, you can grow them and you can keep them even smaller by pruning them. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. For all of the products that I use most frequently in my garden for growing fruit trees, I'll place direct links down in the video description to my favorite things like fertilizers, shade cloth, insect netting, pruning shears, pruning saws, anything like that that will help you be more successful at growing fruit trees and make your life easier. For everything else I use in my yard and garden, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront. So expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you'll see everything I use in real life for growing my vegetable garden and all of my fruit trees. And while you're down there, check out my website themillennialgardener.com for all things gardening and for homemade custom merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Dale, you have been so incredibly good this entire trip. We have got you yet again another, another treat. I wonder what is in here. This is a very special donut called the hound for my hound. It's named after Elvis because it's peanut butter and bacon and banana fresh from the dog bakery. And I know someone's gonna love it. Oh he's gotten so good at taking these side bites. He's a regular old donut eating pro. One more bite buddy. He has been unbelievably good this entire trip. He's having the time of his life.