Check out Raintree--their selection will make your head spin! They also have "select by zone", and generally have a good reputation.

http://www.raintreenursery.com/

Bay Laurel also has very nice trees:

http://www.baylaurelnursery.com/

Carla in Sac

MountainBoy-
You need to stay as far away from TyTy as possible. They are infamous/notorious for being the worst online nursery out there. I have never, ever, heard of a successful purchase through there. There is an online nursery rating system called "DaveÂs Garden Watchdog" (link below using Raintree as an example). Apparently, TyTy was listed up there with a deplorable rating, and sued to get their name removed from there. Run, Run, Run away from TyTy. Need I say more? -Glenn

Here is a link that might be useful: Daves Garden Watchdog - Raintree

Try Johnson Nursery, it is a southern nursery that knows what does well in your climate. They are in north Georgia.

Scott

A second for Johnson Nursery. They should be an excellent start for your conditions. Then your appetite will be whetted for the wider selections at Raintree and others and you will be hooked like the rest of us.

http://www.johnsonnursery.com/

You might also google Century Farm Orchards, in North Carolina, who specialize in apples and pears for southern conditions. I also like Hidden Springs nursery in Tennessee for a wide range of edible plants -- very knowledgeable and helpful staff.

Mountainboy,
I'm from UCLA(upper corner of lower Alabama -War Eagle!) but been living north of the state line for over 20 years.
Stay away from TyTy - enjoy the cheesy photoshopped pictures and the unbelievable claims, just don't order anything from them - you'd be sorry if you did.
You've gotten some good recommendations - Johnson, Hidden Springs, Lawson's, Big Horse Creek, Vintage Virginia Apples all would be good sources for fruit trees in the Southeast, with similar weather & soil types(Raintree & Bay Laurel are good, but they're west coast operations - and I have bought from Raintree when I couldn't get what I needed over here on the other side of the country - plant materials were good, but shipping was steep).
Dan Finch & Simmons Berry Farm are good sources for berry plants; Indiana Berry's got some good stuff, too.
I was big on pawpaws for a while, but wouldn't dedicate any
premium space to one now - Have you eaten pawpaw? - most folks find them disgustingly insipid, though some find them delectible. I like persimmons a lot better - and they're more reliably productive.
Take your time deciding what to get. Might be good if you'd give us an idea of what you want in an apple/pear/peach, etc. Sometimes the choices are mind-boggling, and you can't always believe every thing you read in the nursery catalog - better to get the real story from folks who've actually grown 'em.

Mountainboy, check out ediblelandscaping.com for an excellent selection of low mantainance fruit trees.

I've planted apples,peaches, blueberries, Oriental persimmons, blackberries, pears, plums, pecans and pomegranates. The blackberries are good for kids to graze and produce well, as are the blueberries. The junebeetles defoliated the apples and they dropped early. Best results were the pomegranates and the persimmons- delicious and enough to keep the kids interest!

I'm almost in zone 8 so you better check if these will work for you. Good luck!

RE: Lucky's comments about the flavor of paw paws. I too found them quite foul-tasting at first, feeling that they had sort of a strange, kind of listerine-like or turpentine-like, resinous aftertaste. But, I've found out a couple of things in the past two years -- 1) they have a stage of ripeness at which the resinous aftertaste is minimimal, around the time that they are completely soft but before they start to turn dark. Before or after this time, the aftertaste is stronger, so this stage, which only lasts about a day, is the point at which you want to eat them fresh or put them into the freezer. 2) like many foods with more "complex" flavor elements, such as cheeses, olives, anchovies, wine, etc., they can really grow on you with exposure to them. A decade ago, I was happy to leave them for the deer. This year, I picked about 3/4ths of a bushel, froze the vast majority of them, and I now ration them out to my family, who I've also made converts out of. I've come up with several recipes for baked goods that are really outstanding with paw paw in them -- after freezing and then baking, the aftertaste is gone, and the flavor of the paw paw is a complex blend of banana and butterscotch/caramel flavor elements.

So, of course, everyone has their likes and dislikes when it comes to food, but I would encourage people to try them, if nothing else, and see if they might like them. The plants have a lot going for them, in the sense that they're pretty trouble-free once established.

Dennis
SE Michigan

There are two other matters relateed to aftertasre and overall taste. For the former, the flesh right next to the skin has more of the aftertaste, so try to avoid scraping that off. I break a pawpaw in half and squeeze the middle portion into my mouth, which avoids a lot of it. With regards overall taste, there is a fair (though usually not huge) difference among plants, but with the named selections including ones quite a bit superior. "Mango" and "Wells" and an apparent "Mango x Overleese" cross have done well for me. The several Peterson selections I have yet been able to try have been outstanding.

Gonebananas, excellent point about the aftertaste of the paw paw being concentrated in the skin and the greenish-tinged flesh right underneath it. You are absolutely correct on this. I just now this past year learned that paw paws can be dipped into boiling water and peeled like a tomato, making it much faster to process for the freezer than trying to peel with a paring knife, but the down side of this is that it does leave that greenish-tinged flesh behind. I froze mine this year with it on, but perhaps in the future should take it off. When I use them, I can always scrape it off of the semi-frozen fruits with a spoon or something before mashing and extracting the seeds.

I'll be anxious to try the grafted, selected varieties myself. My bearing-aged trees are all seedlings. When I planted them back in the early 1990's, the availability of any paw paws was limited, and the grafted ones were really hard to come by, I guess, or at least, none of the nurseries I dealt with offered them. Frankly, I thought it was pretty progressive of me to obtain the seedling grown plants. I probably wouldn't have ever heard of them had not my sister moved to the city of Paw Paw, Michigan, back around that time, which piqued my curiosity. I finally got around to planting two selected varieties last spring, NC-17 and Sunflower, and I've got Mango and one other kind (can't recall, without looking up the order) coming in the spring. Yeah, Spring! Only 92 days to go until the Vernal Equinox (03/20/2009 at 11:47 am)! Can you tell that I'm ready?!

denninmi,
I live in the "city" of Paw Paw, Mi. Did your sister purchase her trees locally?