Urban Gardening - Growing fruit trees in the City with very little Space - Peaches, Pears and Cherries

That's what I call a perfect peach blossom, A beautiful light pink/violet color petals and everything that makes a flower worth growing.
Spring came late to New England this year but it came with a bang and the life that was holding its breath let it out all at once.

the cherry blossoms above have never come in this strong before.

My stiff branch, luscious pear tree is ready to produce

But my sweet willow pear tree is barely peaking out.

We even have a wild sugar maple (we just call them plain maple trees around here) being cultivated for its trimmings.

We have had our tulips in full bloom attracting those birds and bees were always hearing about for over a week now and these flowers are ready to help make some delicious fruit. These four trees alone should produce around 50lbs of food my family this year and we can't wait. Here is the kicker in all this though,

We're growing these tress on a lot the size of a postage stamp! That's my little guy Arturo in the background on the hunt for dandelions lol. Yup this is the inner city of the great state of New Hampshire and we all have to make the most of the land that we have. I bought this place about ten years ago and had to fight very hard to get the soil (and the neighbors) to come around to the idea that fruit tress were going to be growing out in the front of the house. We have a lot of pets around here (but none as cute as my Roxie, the puppy not the lobster,,)
and that can cause a lot damage to the soil, not only through bacterial contamination but it will give wild swings to the acid levels of the ground. The ph balance can read up to 5 points difference in areas 3' or 2 meters square apart, concentrating on the area closest to the sidewalk as well as near the where the rain comes off your roof onto the ground. When I came to cleaning up the soil to get it healthy, well that took some effort. There were a few years of trial and error mixing store bought dirt with homemade compost and I'm sad to say these were not the first trees in those plots. When I came to the neighbors, keeping things trim and pretty certainly helped. For a while I only concentrated on putting in food producers but I noticed that after I put in some fragrance flowers, to help pollinate the fruit trees, I noticed more and more people moving their dogs along instead of stopping on the grass. The times where kindly folk would let their dog's leashes out and have at the whole lawn slowed and thankfully stopped. I started putting in more esthetic plants and the respect level for the garden grow along with its size.
Being packed in with all these people isn't all bad here is a look at my next door neighbors have for a front garden for instance.

It may not look attractive now but they just began cleaning it up as the weather turned so late. Soon it will be filled with micro greens, tea, mints and exotic roughage from South East Asia. Even though there is a language barrier, (they speak Vietnamese, I do not) we still mange to share food when our vegetables come in. Another definite advantage to the urban garden is that my fellow residents grow there own fruit trees. As you guys may have noticed, I have two pear trees but only one peach and one cherry. They would never produce fruit if a close neighbor wasn't also growing cherries and peaches. The little flower bed in the front that is full of early blooming flowers kicks that off every year now.
Here is the "need to know" part of this article, hope were here together lol, there are disadvantages to gardening the inner city but there some things that really do make things easier and less expensive. Definitely take a long walk around the few blocks near your home and see what everyone is growing. This distance can vary on the plants you are growing but I would stay within an acre or two to where you're own plot is located. A lot of gardeners will be happy that you are contributing viable pollen back to their plants and it will most likely raise the level of respect people have for your garden.

In my next article I'll give some great tips on which species to select when choosing for your urban garden. We will talk both about how root structures effect sidewalks and how best to avoid overhead hazards as well as how to fit these trees in when there are laws and ordinances making things complicated.
Please feel free to share tips and photos in the comments. Thanks for reading and happy planting!