Apple Trees (Malus domestica)

Folks don’t plant apple trees in their yard as often as they did a few generations ago. While we can now buy a fair number of apple varieties in the grocery store all year round, none of them taste as good as an apple grown at home. Homegrown fruits have a better texture and a better flavor, and millions of Americans plant tomatoes each year for this reason. Yet many people may not be aware that two dwarf apple trees will take up about the same amount of room the yard as two tomato plants, will take about the same time to care for, and will produce a similar number of fruits per plant.

The reason for the apple tree’s relative unpopularity these days might be that most of us can remember grandma or a neighbor having a huge old apple tree in the back yard that took an enormous amount of work to care for. While a large amount of apples could be harvested from these trees you still ended up with lots of fruits rotting on the ground, attracting yellow jackets and making a mess. Another concern might be the trouble with having to spray an apple tree with pesticides. What home gardeners today might not appreciate is that these problems have been greatly minimized. With today’s new varieties of apple trees, it is not difficult to grow apples in the backyard and you do not need much space to grow them.