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

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Noodles comes through again! Thank you kindly!

The three cities you cite are in very different ecological zones.

I suspected as much, and need to look further into it. That's the (very) general area we're interested in. Now that I look at it, the area we're considering is about 2.5 times the size of rhode island.

Are San Antonio and Austin that different, in terms of ecological zones?

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

It is my understanding that they are, I've not lived in either city. At the very least, all the gardening maps I've ever seen put them in different climate zones. I believe that the Hill Country is a little cooler and wetter than San Antonio.

Both cities are situated in the geologic transitional zone (see this map that runs across the state, so I think that there's quite a lot of variability in microclimate within a short amount of distance.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Quite a bit. Austin is part of the Central Texas hill country, while San Antonio is semi-desert. Fort Worth is right on the edge of the West Texas semi-desert, while Dallas is a weird fusion. We don't get enough rain to support the forests of East Texas, we get too much rain (and have such thick clay soil) for cactus, we get enough freezes that we can't support plants such as datura or citrus without assistance, and we don't get cold enough to support a lot of others. It's a real challenge as a gardener in Dallas (http://txtriffidranch.livejournal.com/53926.html), and that's half of the fun.

[artemii.livejournal.com]

Now that I look at it, the area we're considering is about 2.5 times the size of rhode island.

yeah, when i read that in your post, i thought, um, did rhode island take steroids?

DFW has an organic gardening club that hosts lectures, meetings, etc. i'd certainly think austin would have one too (or that it would be easy to start one if not) and wonder if san antonio might as well. you could write them questions before you move, but they would also be a good networking and information source afterwards, if you did pick one of those cities.