The prior message was correct that bushes and vines will give you fruit faster than trees will. Figs and kiwi will grow in your area, but you must make sure to get varieties that are cold hardy. These can be found but you need to Google "Cold Hardy figs" and do a bit of reading before you buy plants. The smaller non-fuzzy Hardy Kiwi can be grown even in zones 3 and 4, but not the bigger fuzzy kiwi. A raised bed with everbearing/day neutral strawberries will give you a really good harvest the second summer after you plant them and some the first summer. You can order bare root strawberry plants in early March that will cost a small fraction of the cost of the potted ones for sale in the summer at retail locations. They will look dead when you get them, but if you read ahead and plant properly, bare root strawberries will probably give you more fruit, faster, for less cost and effort than any other fruit. Raspberries and Blackberries are a close second. Blueberries make a great plant for the yard, but keeping the pH of the soil low enough can be difficult for some people. If your soil has a naturally high calcium level and high pH, blueberries may be eaiser to grow in containers where you control all the soil rather than fighting against a soil base that keeps raising the pH for your plant. Someone asked a similar question in the containers forum. I have copied part of my answer to them regarding a wonderful book that could help you as well as a website for information. The book is published by Rodale Press, one of the oldest and best sources of information on organic garden and sustainable agricultural techniques. Whether you go organic or not, the book as great information about starting a backyard orchard. ....I would recommend one of my favorite books on the subject. You can get it used from one of Amazon's used book dealers for under $6 including shipping. If you want to raise a backyard orchard it is well worth the $6. It is a book that is straightforward and full of information. On Amazon's "Look Inside", you can see the table of contents, a few example pages, and the index. One of the best parts of the book is not shown in the preview. It has a 50 page alphabetic encyclopedia section, which gives almost everything you need to know about a variety of fruits from Apricots to Tayberries. All of the fruits are for small backyard gardens, and all but a few are great for containers. I cannot recommend this book high enough for beginners or experience gardeners who are new to growing fruit. In 160 pages, it has more information about a home orchard, than I have ever seen in one book, even ones many times longer. By Rodale Press ISBN-978-0875966380 "Backyard Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know About Planting and Growing Fruits and Berries in Your Own Backyard" One shortcoming of the book is that it was printed in 1995, so when it recommends specific varieties of plants, it will not have the newest varieties listed. This is not to say that the information is not still valuable. I have a fondness for heirloom varieties that are often some of the best tasting. Many of the advancements with new varieties are not for taste, but for better shipping for commercial growers. Some traits that commercial growers want are the opposite of what a home grower would want. Commercial growers want a plant with fruit that ripens all at once, while home growers often prefer an extended fruiting period. Cornell Guide to Growing Fruit at Home is a great resource for gardeners in New York state and surrounding area. "http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/fruit/index.html" Here is a link that might be useful: Rodale Press's Backyard Fruits and Berries: Everything You Need to Know...

lots of excersize ... and you learned a lot ... but i wouldnt work that hard for 30 to 50 bucks... delivered to my house ... in the mail ... i hope it works out ... all it really needs next year is PROPER WATERING ... i dont know if i would bother with root stim nor fert ... on an already highly stressed tree .. sounds like you had fun ... when you get older.. you will start looking at the labor you put into it.. and wonder why you used to work so hard... lol ... good luck ken ps: i am thinking.. i would look to let it set fruit in 2 to 3 years ... not next year.. but i am a tree guy.. not a fruit nut ....

fruit trees do not like wet feet. Mine do better if I deep water them at the rate of a one inch rain, and then let the first 2 inches of top soil dry before I water them again at the rate of another one inch rain. One of the first indications that there is too much water can be seen with some of the leaves showing signs of getting lymp or wilting One of the first indications that there is not enough water at the appropriate times can be seen with some of the leaves first turning yellow before turning brown. If the water deprevation gets bad enough the branch could even begin having trouble pushing off the dead leaves.

My brugmansia came back after the summer heat. Here it is right now and it's getting quite big. It does very well in the shade and it's been giving me quite a lot of flowers lately. Yes, elephant ears work here. I'd suggest getting some from the alocasia family, not colocasias. I've tried colocasias, they grow well in the spring and fall but they just cannot take the heat at all in the summer, in my experience. Here's one of my Borneo Giants in full shade They will die back when it hit below freezing for more than a couple hours, but if that happens, don't water them again for the rest of the winter or else the bulb will rot. Just wait for them to pop back up in spring. Same thing with Cannas. If you're going for tropical, get some Cannas, since they LOVE being in full sun here. another one I'd recommend is the Chinese Parasol Tree. Big foliage and can take some sun. I have mine in morning sun/full shade in the afternoon. The plant loses its leave in the winter and goes dormant. Here's mine now after a week from coming back from dormancy. It's already grown about 6+ inches! Birds of paradise are great as well here in Phoenix. They're frost hardy down to 25-26f I believe. Split-leaf Philodendron are great as well. Just plant them in the shade. Plus you can find these easily at HD or Lowes. I wouldn't risk planting a castor bean though since you have pets. They drop a lot of those red spiny bean pods all over, and from what I've read are very poisonous. I'm not sure about the brug's toxicity though. Their flowers might be poisonous?