Columnar Fruit Trees

We love fruit. Never grown fruit trees before so we thought we'd start with columnar apple, crabapple and peach trees from Stark's Brothers. We have 1 scarlet red, 1 emerald spire, 1 crabapple, and 2 peach.

This first pic was taken June 2008. Ignore the weeds and temporary frames.

They went into the ground in around March last year (2008), leafed out beautifully, and even produced flowers. We had heard that they shouldn't be allowed to fruit the first year, but the day before we were planning to pull off the flowers, a huge wind storm came and blew them away! They stayed green the entire summer, as long as we remembered to water them. Of course, since they were right by the corn patch, it wasn't too terribly hard to remember.

This second pic was taken May 19 2009. Again, ignore the weeds. One tree is kinda hiding behind another in the middle.

During the winter, though, they looked like sticks in the ground. Dead brown wood. But look at them now! I hope they produce fruit before we have to move. Because chances are, we won't be able to successfully transplant them.

Sidenote: These trees are called columnar because they grow up straight, don't branch out and the fruit grows close to the trunk. They don't get very large, so they can be grown in containers, and are easy to pick.