A question for my Texas friends

[urbpan]

This is the kind of question that's best answered with careful research, but more fun to toss out on my blog. And considering that most of people I know who live or have lived in Texas are students of the life sciences in one way or another (including one conspicuously horticulturally minded individual), asking y'all isn't such a bad idear. (Whoops I mixed up my Texas and New England there.)

ANYWAY my question is: What types of fruit trees could one grow in one's small piece of Texas property, assuming that property is in that little Rhode Island sized segment region including Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and surrounding space? And better: what fruit trees could one grow (or plant and have thrive) that make sense from an ecological point of view, that is, are not invasive and don't require input of too many alien elements such as water and fertilizer and such?

I asked this question of my Texas coworker, and she looked at me like I asked where I could store my flying saucer in Texas. (duh! Anywhere!) Eventually she remembered that there are trees that produce pecans and perhaps also plums, but couldn't answer my string of increasingly desperate and boring questions: "Avocados? Peaches? Oranges? Lemons?

It's one of the important side issues to the great "Where are we moving?" conundrum.

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Pawpaws are good and we're overrun with persimmons both wild and cultivated, but you might want to be careful about the bamboo. Most of the varieties that do well out here are also incredibly invasive and damaging.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there used to be bamboo in our backyard, and we swore there were pandas hiding back there. I think we eventually had to use a thermonuclear device to remove it.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

There's a stretch of major Dallas thoroughfare through which I have to pass that's lined with bamboo. Not only is the bamboo completely inpenetrable, but it's cracked the roadway several times and come up through two feet of concrete. I've even seen it crack concrete pools, so I'd never put it in any back yard unless I really hated the person in question.

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

Wow. Ours came with the house. Must have been the thing to do back in the 70's.

Now I'm in the land of the evil oriental bittersweet and autumn olive.