• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Home Garden Joy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Start Here
    • Seed Starting
    • Composting Basics
    • Vegetable Gardening
    • Growing Fruit
    • Growing Herbs
  • Recipes
    • Canning and Food Preservation
    • Vegetarian Meals
    • Salad Recipes
    • Soup Recipes
    • Dinner Recipes
    • Dessert Recipes
  • Books & Classes
    • Classes
    • Books
    • Books for Christian Herbalists
  • About
    • Advertise
    • Awards and Accolades
    • Privacy Policy

What Does Dwarf Fruit Tree Mean?

March 28, 2016 by Jeanne

What does “dwarf fruit tree” mean? What do the terms semi-dwarf and standard mean? I’ll explain what these terms mean and how they change how you grow fruit in your backyard.

What Is a “Dwarf Fruit Tree”?

A dwarf fruit tree is a tree that bears full-sized fruit but the tree itself needs only a little space to grow. Unlike a standard fruit tree which may attain heights of 20, 30 or more feet, and a crown that spreads 10-20 feet or more wide, dwarf fruit trees remain about 10-15 feet tall. That means you can grow a dwarf fruit tree in a suburban backyard or in a pot or container on a city balcony or deck.

Why Are Dwarf Trees Small?

Dwarf fruit trees are grafted onto standard tree rootstock. Grafting the process by which stems of the same species of trees are cut and joined together until they heal and create one circulatory system, effectively growing into one single tree.

Many fruit trees are created by grafting. Grafting usually helps a less sturdy variety survive better by merging it with a hardy root system. If you purchase a ‘fruit cocktail’ tree sold in catalogs, it’s a grafted tree. Multiple species of fruit – apples, pears, peaches, plums – are grafted onto a single sturdy rootstock to provide variety on one tree.

The adult size of a dwarf fruit tree may vary. The size is determined by the scion, or the top portion of the graft, and the rootstock, or the bottom portion which contains the root system of the tree. The combination of the two will give your tree its final height.

Fruit Tree sizes

Is the Fruit Different on a Dwarf Fruit Tree?

Dwarf fruit trees produce standard-sized fruit. If you pick a peach from a dwarf peach tree and one from a standard peach tree and place them side-by-side, they look very similar except for varietal differences. The taste is also the same.

Dwarf Fruit Trees for the Home Garden

One thing you need to know about growing dwarf fruit trees: they should have a permanent stake or support. The place on the trunk where the scion was grafted to the rootstock can be weak or weaken over time. Apple trees that snap in a strong wind usually break at the grafting site.

Dwarf fruit trees can be planted only about 10 feet apart, making them perfect for the home garden. Keep in mind that apples and many other fruit trees need a different variety in order to set fruit or pollinate. The flowers of both trees must bloom around the same time, or within days of each other, so that bees visiting one tree can carry pollen to the other and vice versa.

dwarf fruit trees

Dwarf fruit trees like this peach tree are much easier to care for and harvest the fruit.

To pick the best dwarf fruit tree varieties for your garden, you’ll need to look for information locally. I can give you recommendations, but my varieties will differ from those in other growing zones. Some fruit trees like cold weather, others prefer hot. You need to know what will grow in your part of the country.

A great place to start your variety search is on your local Cooperative Extension website. You can find your local office using the map on the USDA website.

 

The Orchard at My Farm, Seven Oaks

We planted our orchard in 2007 and are always adding new trees. We have approximately 10 apple trees, 10 peach trees, 4 pear trees, 2 nectarines, 3 fig trees, and apricot, plum, and cherry trees. To date, the peach, apple, and pear trees have produced the most fruit, with the apples leading in fruit production.

All of our trees are standard size except several new peach and nectarine trees we added last year. We switched to dwarf fruit trees to make pruning and harvesting easier. While we do have tall ladders and equipment to help with both activities, it’s so much easier to prune and pick fruit with dwarf trees!

 

dwarf fruit trees

After all, it’s all about the harvest!

More Information on Growing Fruit in Your Backyard

I hope you’re enjoying my series on growing fruit in your backyard. It’s fun to share what I have learned about growing fruit trees over the past eight years with you. More to come, but if you’re just getting caught up on the series, here are additional articles that may be of interest to you:

  • How to Grow Fruit in Your Backyard
  • What Fruit Trees Can I Plant?
  • Where to Plant Fruit Trees
  • Growing Fruit Trees in Containers

Happy growing!

dwarf fruit trees

Fruit from our home orchard.

 

 

First Published: March 2016 Last Updated: April 24, 2020
Jeanne
Jeanne

Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.

Tweet
Share
Pin93
Share22
115 Shares

Filed Under: Growing Fruit, Uncategorized Tagged With: dwarf fruit trees, grow fruit in your backyard

Previous Post: « Growing Fruit Trees in Containers
Next Post: Three Surprising Health Benefits of Dandelion »

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Backyard Garden Design Ideas: Landscaping with Edibles - Home Garden Joy says:
    November 2, 2018 at

    […] dwarf apple tree, a peach tree, or a pear tree doesn’t take up much space and provides shade during the summer […]

Primary Sidebar

Let’s Connect!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • YouTube

Featured

logo of the american horticulture society

Home Garden Joy was featured by the American Horticultural Society on #plantchat.

My Books on Amazon

cover of plan and build a raised bed garden

Visit my author page on Amazon to find all of my fiction and gardening books.

Herbal Academy Teachers

Footer

a browned overcooked coconut bar on a blue flowered plate

Recipe Fail – Coconut Bars

Each weekend, I dig out my favorite cookbook – the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 13th Edition. I flip through the pages, skimming the recipes, checking to see if I have the ingredients to make those that catch my eye. And then, I make the recipe, usually late Sunday afternoon after all the chores are done. It’s…

Read More

peach tree cuttings in a pot on a windowsill

Propagating Peach Trees from Softwood Cuttings

We decided that propagating peach trees from softwood cuttings was the way to go when we couldn’t find the variety we wanted at the store this past week. The best eating peach we’ve ever grown here at Seven Oaks Farm is “Red Haven.” It was recommended by our neighbor, a man whose family has farmed…

Read More

soul in a yellow mug against pine panelling

Made From Scratch Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too. As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup…

Read More

A loaf of bread on a plate

Water Bread – Recipe Review

Once you make water bread, you’ll never eat store bought white bread again. In fact, you won’t be able to look at a loaf of “white bread” from the market and consider it bread, in any sense of the word, after you’ve taken a bite of the real thing. Hot. Crunchy crust. Tender, flaky, soft…

Read More

Copyright © 2022 Home Garden Joy on the Foodie Pro Theme