Northern NJ is pretty close to my realm in southeasten NY. You can do the mulberry and keep it small with summer pruning to a weep. Fireblight isn't a huge problem here and I've never seen it on any ot the Asian pears I grow, including my favorite, Korean Giant. They do get some stink bug damage on my own site. Seckel is very susceptable to scab and stinkbugs but on some sites never suffers- Bartlett and Bosc amongst others may be easier. Bosc does get some FB, but it's always been managable for me by cutting out strikes. Harrow Sweet is also a good choice. You can try brown-rot resistant peaches, including earlier ones (Red Haven or earlier). Harcrest, Elberta and Belle of Georgia have some resistance also. Keep peaches very vigorous (wide mulched rings help) and look for frass at base which would indicate borers- cut them out or exclude by taping nylon screen to the base with rubber electric tape. Prune them open and summer prune to keep sun and air on fruit. Select blight-resistant filberts (you need 2 varieties). E-mail me at alandhaigh@gmail.com if you want any further guidance.

Liz , ..you have already mentioned top choices , but in my opinion the one that meets your requirements best is : BIG BEEF (F1). ---It is red, beefsteak , average 8-12 oz - -- it is early, about 73 days from plant out. --- It is productive , Plant size is just normal indeterminant. --- Fruits are quite tasty all around. --- It is Disease resistant to most soil borne diseases. It is so good in this department that it is also a popular root stock for grafting. Some gardeners compare it to Better Boy but most prefer Big Beef over better Boy. I grew one plant for the first time last year and this year I will plant two. I will also grow Better Boy to compare side by side. I would suggest the same to you.

Yes, climate and chill hours needed ... also Peach Leaf Curl should be considered. I would ask around a couple nurseries or the local extension and find out if is an issue in your area. Those varieties you list would get destroyed by curl in our Nor Cal orchard ... with diligent sprayings of fungicide they could do ok but would always be alot of work and a problem. There are good tasting curl resistant peach trees ... not at Lowe's.

I'm going to put a plug in here for Daisy Farms, located in Dowagiac, Michigan. I got my asparagus crowns from them, 200 of them and 198 of them grew. I just ordered strawberry plants and horseradish from them a couple of weeks ago, they will be shipped in mid-May. I live in Northern/Western Michigan, about 50 miles North of Grand Rapids. I don't seem to have any issues at all with growing a LOT of vegetables, although some tomatoes really dislike our short growing season and I find that hot peppers must be started inside pretty early, I've already got mine started. I've grown various sweet peppers, from Ajvarski to California Wonder to sweet banana, they've all done fine. I don't buy separate cucumbers for eating fresh or for pickling, I get Miss Pickler or Northern Pickling, whatever my local feed store gets in bulk. I have trouble with spinach, it bolts too quickly to get much use out of it, it goes from cool to really hot too quickly for spinach to like it, so I plant lettuces, bok choi, leaf amaranth and mizuna instead. Snap peas do well as long as you get them in early enough, although I've had more trouble with chipmunks eating them than I have had growing them. Deer love them too. (sigh) We eat a lot of dried beans and since I don't want to mess with supports, I go for the bush types. Varieties which have done well for me here are Taylor Horticultural, various types of cranberry beans, mayacoba, kebarika, red kidney type beans and soldier beans. Michigan grows a lot of dried beans and they do well pretty much everywhere in the state, I think. Green beans I just buy whatever is at the feed store in bulk, from Provider to Blue Lake, they're all the same to me. I do buy Royal Burgundy because I like them and think they stay firmer when canned. I've had no luck with brussels sprouts, our season just doesn't seem long enough and I get tiny little sprouts about the time things start freezing. Cabbage does really well, though. Broccoli always seems to get "strong", but aspabroc is amazing, I just keep cutting those little florets and they are always sweet and good. Winter squash is something I always grow, and we just like butternut best. I've still got butternut in storage from last year, so it stores well too, good thing to put into that root cellar! We also like the blue Haikodo and the red Kuri, and various acorn types, including Carnival. Delicata is good, but it likes a long season so it's not consistent. I have raspberries, a mix of Caroline (my favorite) and Latham, both do well. I don't have blackberries. The asparagus I got from Daisy Farms and it was Jersey Giant. I'm very pleased with it. The strawberries I ordered was a mixture they have, June bearing, and I don't know how I'll like them because I don't have them yet. I had a lot of trouble with Ozark Beauties, they got everything from fungus to some kind of rot to mildew, no matter what I did I never even got enough berries to eat fresh and I planted them three years ago. They are in a raised bed and I have terrible luck growing anything in raised beds, for some reason. My raised beds are going to be repurposed for early spring greens and lettuce or they may become cold frames with the addition of some old windows, and I'm putting the berries into a different/sunnier spot. If lettuce won't grow in those blasted raised beds I'm tearing them apart and giving up on them entirely, although it does make it much more convenient for the deer to eat everything in them without having to lower their heads too far... Good luck, don't start too big. I know lots of people who have just given up altogether because they were so excited to start and underestimated the time and work that went into their gardening. Annie