I decided to expand our selection of fruit trees in our backyard. Unfortunately, I didn’t own any useful gardening books on fruit trees, particularly ones that would help me decide which fruit trees are suitable for Brisbane’s climate and are less than 5 metres so that I can cram in a ton of different trees.
Fruit trees for Brisbane
Here’s my mega list of fruit trees suitable for Brisbane:
- acerola cherry
- apples, dwarf sub-tropical (Golden Dorsett , Tropical Anna, Tropical Sweet)
- avocado, dwarf
- banana
- barbados cherry
- blueberries (Sharp Blue – self-pollinating and low chill)
- calamondin
- crab apple
- custard apple
- dragon fruit
- fig
- grapes
- grumichama
- guava
- jaboticaba
- lemon
- lime
- longan (protected from birds and possums)
- lychee
- macadamia (pot)
- mandarin, dwarf (freemont)
- mango, dwarf
- mulberry, dwarf (red shatoot)
- native raspberry (scrambling bush)
- nectarine (low chill)
- orange – washington; Lanes late; Valencia and red ruby;
- pawpaw
- pepino
- persimmon (but you’d need to prune it to under 5m)
- pomegranate
- plumcote
- pomelo
- sea grape tree
- soursop
- tamarillos
- thai apple
Thank you to the knowledgeable people on the Brisbane Local Food ning group who helped to compile this great list of small Brisbane suitable fruit trees.
I’d love to hear if you are successfully growing any other fruit trees in the Brisbane area?
Tangelo Minneola – delicious juicy fruit! Sad when we left our old Tarragindi home so we are about to plant one for our new place!
Acerola Cherry and Barbados cherry are the same plant. Although the fruit taste nice enough if left to go well ripe, I have given up because they just get destroyed by fruit fly and the plant is too hard to net without the net getting wrecked… 🙁
Thanks for your feedback. I’ll have to amend the list.
Have you tried the eco-lure fruit fly traps? “Eco-Lure male Queensland fruit fly trap uses a wick containing pheromones to attract male fruit flies and an insecticide that quickly kills them. Hang in trees and around plants as a monitoring device to let you know when fruit flies are active in your garden. When it starts catching flies begin spraying eco-naturalure fruit fly bait concentrate to protect fruit from egg-laying females.”
Do you carry or have a connection for Calamansi trees for personal gardening?
Thank you very much
My carambola also known as starfruit is fruiting successfully in Pullenvale Brisbane. My chocolate pudding fruit or black sapote is growing very well but not old enough to fruit yet. A friend at Benowa on the Gold Coast has a very successful fruiting black sapote.
Looking for an App that recognises different plants. Can you recommend one please . I have 2 young unidentified avocado trees and a tree with fruit that looks a bit like a chocolate pudding fruit but wary of tasting so thought an App may help.
Try the PictureThis – Plant Identifier app.
Joppa orange trees grow real well in se qld
Am approaching 5 years on my Brisbane acreage which was used by previous owners for grazing cattle. The soil is terrible, clay and rock. Almost anything planted in the ground dies (unless it is something adapted to the area like a Eucalyptus, Acacia, or Brushbox). Various techniques have had variable success, but most success is from growing in raised beds. The following is my experience:
Grows well in the ground with no improvement: Inga mortoniana
Grows well in the ground with a little improvement: Banana, Guava, Mango, Feijoa, Pananma Berry
Grows well and fruits in raised beds (of good soil) or significantly improved ground: Black Sapote, Mango, coffee, tamarillo, Atherton raspberry
Grows well in raised beds (but no fruit yet): Longan, Lychee, rollinia, acerola, wampee, citrus
Still trying: Soursop, star apple, custard apple, canistel
Very little success: Papaya, avocado (though seedlings show more promise than grafted).
On the last point, in such an unpampered environment (compared to suburban blocks), trees grown from seed thrive much better than cuttings or grafted trees – the aim will be to graft these in-situ when the time is right.