Stone fruit needs at least a 15 to 20 foot circle unles you get your tree grafted to one of the new super dwarfing rootstock. Don't know that there is any thing to true dwarf your plum and pluot. If you crowd your trees in a sun challenged area you'll get nothing and may have unhealthy tree that only give spring flowers

I also would like to add that citrus fruit is so cheep that the stores are almost paying people to take it away so you might want to plant something very rare in stores. For me its Meiwa and Fukushu Kumquats, figs, black berries and sweet lemons ($4.99+/lb) for any of them if they can be found.

Hi Steve, I will plant a fig tree at our front yard, 11' from my huge orange tree. My kids love black berries, but would the plant be very vigorous and wild? Do they require a lot of work? The skin of the kumquats is very sour, right? What is sweet lemons? Do you use them as lemon or eat them as orange?

As for the fig do a lot of research to separate the gems from the dogs. black berries are self reproducing. Plant them in a row and they will produce the second year and thinning the excessive runners can be done with a weed whacker. Kumquats have a sweet skin and the Meiwa variety has sweet flesh when ripe. Pop the whole thing in your mouth. Sweet lemons and limes are acid-less varieties of the sour fruit. They have low sugar so they taste mildly sweet. I eat them like oranges out of hand am very new at citrus growing but have over 2 decades with apple, peaches, pears, cherries, and plums. It is very important that you time the fruiting of each of your particular trees with the quality and quantity of available sunlight for the area it is planted. Trees that may not get enough sunlight from above will need to get sunlight from east and west and will need more space between them.

I have only picked and eaten one citrus fruit (Cuban Shaddock) that I picked to soon. My trees are small and I have only eaten store bought citrus. I have however picked between 300-400 figs and they are much easier to grow, variety Hardy Chicago.

Hi Steve, very helpful information. What do you mean by gems and dogs for the fig tree? I will buy an improved brown turkey bare root.

I will research for the sweet skin cumquats variety. Thanks.

Gems are very good figs and dogs are very bad figs. The Hardy Chicago is the only fig I can grow in my city. It will come up from the ground and start setting figs on green growth in a month or 2. My safe growing season goes from may first till October 15. If you can plant citrus trees outside you can probably grow most figs. You probably have a garden community in your area that can help you with fig varieties.

All kumquats have sweet skin. Only the Meiwa variety has sweet flesh to.

Hi Steve, I will have improved brown turkey by end of this month (online order). I researched on the kumquat and remembered that it was the flesh that was really sour. I tried some from Safeway and somebody's tree. I also remember I had really sweet and tasty ones at Southern California. I thought it might be the weather, now I think it must be the variety. I will try to find meiwa variety, thank you! How tall and wide is the meiwa tree?

Tiny

It is a natural dwarf probably limited to little more than 8 to 12 feet max and is very trainable. This would do good against a fence with out limb problems. As for the fig if your temperature don't drop below 20F you can count on a early crop and if your first killing frost comes in late November or later you should get a good main crop.

STAY AWAY from Cuban shaddock For Meiwa rootstock check out the test trials below. Say away from any lemon tree type rootstock. They yeld inferior fruit on any grafted sweet citrus variety scion (fruiting part).

Look at the Meiwa trials only near the bottom

Pay very close attention to what died. grafters graft to the easiest rootstock. The warranty will be up before your tree dies. Poncirus trifoliata is best if you are zone 9A or colder. If you find one on KxR or Bendix Citrange let us know where. You will be doing everyone a big favor.

Thanks for posting that interesting article about rootstock incompatbility. It seems to confirm my suspicions about a few trees of mine that seemed to fail at the graft.

Cory

Trace bought a Meiwa kumquat tree for his micro zone 8b. It was grafted to lemon rootstock. Lemon rootstock should not be used less than zone 10 maybe 9b and lemon rootstock blands out the flavor of the Meiwa kumquat. 2 strikes against it. If his tree was on PT or the other 2 rootstocks it tree would be alive and doing quit well. some graft for huge farms and do not sell junk. Most others that are not big names will sell anything. All my other fruit trees show the cheapness of big box grafters. It is almost impossible to get anything on PT because it is a little slower than the others.