Blossom Buddies: Your Guide to Growing More Fruit

Find out which fruit trees are compatible with our cross-pollination cheat sheet

Winter is the best time to plot out your dream backyard orchard, where the kids or grandkids can run out and stuff their faces silly with Christmas cherries. Fruit tree blossoms, however, have to contend with strong Tasmanian winds, late frosts, and a decline in pollinator numbers. So how do you maximise your fruit yields? 

The old adage of ‘less is more’ doesn’t work when it comes to fruiting trees. Often people come into the nursery with the intent of buying one apple, one pear and one plum. But if you want an abundance of Cox’s Orange Pippins, for example, you need a Golden Delicious. If you want an abundance of greengages, you need a compatible plum tree to go with it, and so on, and so forth. It’s not so much the variety of apples or plums that’s important, but when they tend to flower.

It’s simple science: trees that bloom at the same time get pollinated at the same time, which leads to an abundance of fruit. Some trees are self-fertile and don’t need soul mates — these trees are great for smaller gardens. Others need two or more to produce enough fruit to feed a small family. 

It can be a lot of information to take in, so we’ve created a handy guide of fruit trees we stock at the nursery and their compatible counterparts for you to plot out your little home orchard.

Self-pollinating fruit trees

Most apricots, nectarines, peaches and quinces are self-fertile, unless otherwise specified. You could probably get away with one apricot and one quince, but if you don’t want to buy supermarket nectarines and peaches, you may need to grow more than one tree each. 

Fruit trees requiring cross-pollination

Some fruit trees will only be available in mid- to late-July. Please contact us for a current stock list.

Come in to the Nursery and talk to one of our friendly garden experts today!