Mike Tully’s Fruit-Tree Wisdom

Fruit trees are an easy way to grow your own food, while providing shade, bird habitat, and seasonal visuals to your property. My modest-sized suburban yard is packed with lime, orange, fig, apple, mandarin, kumquat, avocado, Meyer lemon, finger lime, and apricot trees — all of which find their way into various salsas, sauces, juices, marinades, and salads throughout the year — and I’m on the lookout for one or two more.

So I called Mike Tully, the owner and operator of Terra Sol Garden Center for advice on what to plant next. But our conversation actually started with what I couldn’t plant — or, as he put it, “Say goodbye to backyard citrus,” because there just aren’t that many more trees left for residential planting across Southern California. 

“The nursery industry has been absolutely slammed blindingly like we’ve never seen before due to increased demand,” said Tully of what’s happened during COVID. “People have more time on their hands and are returning to their roots and trying to grow their own edibles.”