Being a Hennepin County Master Gardener is great.  Among other reasons, we have monthly meetings with an education component, and the speakers are usually pretty great.

I recently saw a presentation by Rebecca Koetter, who manages demonstration plots at the Urban Forestry & Horticulture Research Institute at the U of M.  She was kind enough to post her presentation (a powerpoint file) to her blog for anyone to download.  So have at it!  There were a couple slides that I found particularly helpful:

Slide 6: a breakdown of commitment levels and fruits to match.  Basically, she breaks fruits down into three levels of commitment:

Relatively low time commitment: elderberry, currant, gooseberry, juneberry, apricot
Medium time commitment: pear, plum, tart cherry, blueberry, kiwifruit
High commitment: apple, grape

Raspberry isn’t on this list but I’d put it somewhere between low and medium.  Standard strawberries are also low-medium, while alpine (wild) strawberries are low.

Slide 19: another great slide that shows the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (aka antioxidant power) of various berries.  The two highest berries (by far) just happen to be ones that we can grow right here in USDA hardiness zone 4: choke berries (aronia berries) and elderberries.  Sadly I have NEITHER of these in my yard.  This will have to be remedied.

Slide 45: a while back I saw a whole bunch of beautiful pictures of apple trees growing up the sides of walls; apparently training an apple (or other fruit) tree to do this is referred to as the art of espalier.  Traditionally it was done to achieve certain aesthetic goals; today it is very useful for growing fruit trees in really small spaces.  I am intrigued and a little intimidated by the concept.  Now that I know the name of what I’m looking for, I will search the library for a book on it.

Anyway, those were the slides I enjoyed most, but if you’re thinking about fruits you could try in your yard, there are a lot of options in the presentation.  Enjoy!  And if you have any questions about the content, feel free to ask in the comments and I can check my notes.