Gene is on the right track. You probably want a Fuyu (Jiro) persimmon; I have zero problems with this tree. Fig also no problems, and a beautiful landscaping plant. Black Mission fig is what I have, two crops a year. Have you considered grapes? V. labrusca (American) grapes like Glenora, Jupiter, Canadice, Reliance, (avail from Stark) Steuben,Kyoho, will require no spraying in Cal and can be trained to almost any shape. Asian pears are way more trouble free than apples. Pakistan mulberry works in many Cal z7 areas, available from Bay Laurel N. and Rolling River N.- don't get a mulberry sourced from Dave Wilson N. as they are grafted too high. Mulberries are no spray. Frost peach is more disease resistant than most so probably get by without spraying. Davewilson.com has excellent info on keeping trees low. Good luck, Kate.

You do not need to be above the tree to prune. You could have a branch that is 10' tall and cut it at 4'. You certainly wouldn't need to get on a ladder to make the 4' cut just because the branch is 10'. All the trees you mention except for the cherry, which you will probably kill doing what you want because they don't handle constant or heavy pruning well (and it sounds like you are going to cut a large central leader to make an open vase, which is why my old cherry tree split about 15 years after I had that idea), and the guava (which I just don't know about) fruit on last year's wood. Once you get your basic tree structure down your pruning will be replacing old branches when they get too big and heading back new branches to encourage fruiting and strength. You can bend the branches down to do the heading back and the branch replacement will be done at whatever level you decide your fruiting branches will come from. That level could be radiating from a central leader or it could be a system of scaffolds. I see a lot of overgrown "new wood" fruit trees and the reason is people didn't train them with the idea of branch replacement and to continue getting fruit they need to let the tree continue to get larger and larger. Let's say you decide your base will be cut at 4' and you will allow the trees to go no more than 10'. If the trees grow 12" a year or you head them back so they grow no more than 12" a year that means you will be replacing branches every 6 years. I don't know about zone 9 but 6 years is not a unmanageable branch. If it is you could decide to replace every 4 or 5 year branch and have an 8'-9' tree. If you are really stuck on having your trees only be 6' (which like I said above, there is no pruning reason to have to have them at head height to prune them since you will be removing well below the final height and can bend whips down to head them back) you would be cutting them off after every 2nd year. I'm not sure your trees would go for that, they may decide they don't have enough tree compared to root to bother trying to populate and growing tree is more important. I have a McIntosh that hates being espaliered to 5' and it's always trying to grow more tree instead of getting heavy with fruit. You may have to do some root pruning to make them satisfied with 6' of tree or do some other stress/extra dwarfing techniques to cause them to bear heavy so they don't have the energy to make more tree.

I am sure no one enjoys spraying fruit trees. If I did not spray my apples, every apple would contain a worm. Some people can live with that, not me. My peach tree would defoliate from peach leaf curl, and any peaches produced would likely be seriously blemished or deformed. Most years the apples would be seriously scabby. Plum foliage would be badly curled with aphids and most years shot hole fungus would be a problem on most of my fruit trees. I guess only time will tell how much disease and pests you can tolerate. Al

Many Cyrtanthus are evergreen of course, but many of the others are summer growers. I love my C. obliqquus and C. herrei for both the flowers and leaves (I've posted pics of mine here before) so I can recommend those whole-heartedly. I guess I imagined he would want something to grow during the winter. I do love my Stenomesson, Sprekelia, Crinum and Nerine, but mine are all dormant now for the winter. Adenium are wonderful in bloom and the caudex of course is maybe the main attraction for people like me. Good luck with whatever you decide to try and grow for the winter :o) Dan