• Learn how to grow huge fruit trees.Apple-tree branch image by Lucy Cherniak from Fotolia.com
  
  Enjoying fresh, organically grown fruit picked from trees in your garden is one of the great pleasures of gardening. Choosing the best species ensures bumper crops and large, healthy trees. Learn the secrets to growing huge fruit trees at home, including pruning techniques, how to fertilize and watering requirements, by following tips from expert gardeners.
  
  

Choosing the Best Varieties

• Quick-growing easy-care varieties of fruit trees that need less intensive watering inspire confidence in gardeners new to the subject. Apples, Asian and European pears and figs are all good choices for first-time fruit growers. Peaches, cherries and apricots are more difficult due to disease susceptibility. Trees that suffer from pests in one area do well in another region, so ask local nursery professionals for up-to-date information on the best species for your garden. Asian pears often bear fruit in the first year; varieties include "20th Century" (self-pollinating) and "Hosui." Apples like "Freedom," "Jonagold" and "Liberty" are disease resistant. "Anjou" and "Bartlett" are the most popular varieties of European pears.
  
  

Food and Water for Fruit Trees

• For maximum crops on large, healthy trees, ensure they receive plenty of water during the growing season. Apples, figs and grapes (established vines) need the least water; pears, apricots and plums require a medium amount of water; peaches, mangoes and citrus fruits need the most. To feed fruit trees, start applying fertilizer no closer than a foot from the trunk, to prevent the nitrogen present in most types burning the tree. To avoid washing fertilizer away when watering, first run a rake lightly over the area to "scratch" fertilizer into the soil.
  
  

Pollinating Fruit Trees

• Pollination is necessary for trees to produce fruit; bees, butterflies and birds carry pollen from the flowers of one tree to another. To increase crops, provide fruit trees with a minimum of two other trees for cross-pollination (pollination between two species). Some varieties of fruit trees are self-pollinating and good choices for a single fruit tree in any garden; examples include "Golden Delicious," "Jonagold" and "Braeburn" apples, "Moonglow," "20th Century" and "Starkcrimson" pears and "Brown Turkey" and "Lattarula" figs.
  
  

Training and Pruning Fruit Trees

• Pruning your fruit trees to remove diseased, dead and excess branches allows more light to reach healthy ones and increases productivity and growth. Removing older branches encourages growth, but take care not to cut off too many each year, since fruits like apples, pears and plums set fruit on short spars which grow from them. Prune during the winter for increased growth and in spring (after fruit is formed) to reduce or correct the size and shape of trees and remove less productive branches.