David, now that I think of it, they do sell dwarf fruit trees, but they are
grafted onto dwarf root stock. I haven't seen them down here, but when I lived
up north I know we used to sell them. However, we did our own grafts. I didn't
actually do it, the director of deciduous trees did it.

Have you been able to get to the Natural Gardener? They have a small grove of
fruit trees in the yard near the herb garden. I believe it wheelchair
accessible. It's all in the pruning. People who are ambulatory prune their
fruit trees so they can reach them, as well. The fruits at Natural Gardener are
wide, but not more than about 7 feet, if I recall correctly.

Don't quote me on this, but if you remove the central leader, you encourage more
lateral growth, this a canopy, but not very tall.

V-may I ask how you became wheelchair bound? Was it an accident? Either way,
I'm touched that you have to endure it, but have found ways around it. Did you
ever read the book The Abled Gardener?


On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 20:38:27 GMT, David Wright wrote:


I have more than one variable. Since I'm gardening from a wheelchair,
I want trees that are small enough that I can drape them with
bird-proof cloth to protect the fruit, and also so that I can get to
them when my wife isn't around. And, if my fruit trees grow higher
than 8-10 feet or so, they will block the light to my tomatoes.

'Tis a puzzlement.

BTW, avoid fruit trees from Park Place, they've had the same trees in the
sand for a couple of years now.

Now that I've been thinking about small trees, I remember having
bought some from Stark Brothers way back in the '70s when I lived in
Idaho and was still ambulatory. We had a backyard full of little trees
that had nice apples and pears.

I've found some nice looking matches
http://store.starkbros.com/info.html

David