Hi Oriana,

For the most part, my initial strategy I outlined above is working well, with a few exceptions.

First, what didn't work:

I took out the fig tree and the permission tree, replacing them with a Nadia cherry/plum hybrid and a Shiro asian plum.  The fig and the persimmon have frost-tender leaves, and in Central Oregon all the foliage can get wiped out two or three times each spring.  The trees themselves survived, but I knew they would either never produce fruit with all the frost damage, or it would take me 20 years of fighting.  I have limited space, so out they went.

The Kolomikta kiwi went too for the same reason (frost-tender foliage), since replaced by a Nikita's Pride almond and an Oracle Almond - both cold-hardy cultivars from the Ukraine.  They are growing great, and while they're probably too young to get many almonds this year, they are doing well.  I have them fan-trained in a curved shape to produce shade for a pathway, with wires trained along one side, and hanging above, the path.

The Rainier cherry was growing fine, but my kid needed room for a swingset, and something had to go to make room.

The Polly peach had a disease from the nursery that I didn't catch when I bought it - ironically a wet-weather condition that got imported into my very dry climate.  The Polly also grew very slowly.  I ripped it out and replaced it with an traditional Italian plum variety.

The Roxbury Russet apple never grew above the graft line - I suspect the graft was bad rather than a problem with the local conditions.  I replaced it with an Egremont Russet, which is doing much better.

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Now for what is working:

• Apples
  • All of my apple varieties are doing well.  The Golden Delicious shows the most growth in the canopy size, while the Honeycrisps are producing the most quantity of fruit.  For the Belgian fence trees, Bardsey is easily the biggest, while Silken and the Evereste Crabapple have been the first to produce fruit.  I like the Silken apple for its unique white skin and flesh.  The size of the trees in the Belgian fence have been directly proportional to the available sunlight - more light = bigger trees.  You don't need a big rootstock to grow apples in Central Oregon, though I personally see no need to go smaller than M26 unless you are really pressed for space.
• Peaches
  • My Contender peach is MASSIVE and is easily outgrowing every other tree I have (except one).  I have to prune it several times each year during the growing season just to keep it under control.  I definitely recommend this variety over any other cold-hardy peach in the Central Oregon climate.
  • I planted two Crimson Rocket columnar peaches to fill space along a fenceline.  They have established pretty well, though there is a fair amount of dieback that I have to prune out.  I suspect this is just one of the liabilities of such a rare type of peach tree that hasn't been significantly developed by breeders.  But as long as I cut out the dieback, it does fine.  It has more upright branches than it needs to fill its space anyway.
• Cherries
  • The Lapins cherry tree is getting very tall (12 - 15 feet) on its Colt rootstock and produced some very nice cherries this season.  Aphids love to attack this one in my yard, so it's worth having a strategy to combat them as soon as you need them in late spring.  I'd recommend this variety for the region, both for its fruit and as a pollinator.  The only reason I use Colt is that a family member wanted me to grow a traditional tall cherry tree that resembled one in their parent's yard.  Otherwise, I'd use Gisela every time instead of Colt.
  • I added a Nugent cherry to my White Gold and Black Gold.  Gisela 3 rootstock is too small for Central Oregon soils...go for at least Gisela 5, or if you have a lot of room, Gisela 6 (as a Colt replacement).  I have these pruned as fans, though the newer technique of UFO (Upright Fruiting Offshoot) for two-dimensional training is brilliant in my opinion.  You can find videos from Dr. Greg Lang on the subject on YouTube.  For the UFO in Central Oregon, go for Gisela 5 or 6 rootstock.  I'm considering chopping the tops off of my sweet cherry fans and trying to convert them to UFOs.  In any case, sweet cherries on Gisela 3 or 5 rootstocks grow slowly in Central Oregon.
  • I've planted five pie (sour) cherry trees - two of North Star, one of Morello, one of Surefire, and one of Evans.  They are fan-trained and are planted in near total shade - maybe two to three hours of sun per day - and are doing very well so far.  Evans and Surefire are growing the fastest for sure, and are the two varieties I'd recommend, though if you are low on space than North Star is a good choice too.  The Morello is struggling a little compared to the others. 
• Plums
  • Plums work great around here.  Stanley is an old standby that produces a solid tree with tons of plums for drying.  But my biggest recommendation is Parfume de September (Mirabelle) - fantastic little orange plums with a complex floral quality that are my favorite fruit in the entire garden.  My other plums are too young to fruit yet, though I have to say the Shiro Asian plum has the fastest rate of growth of anything in my garden - faster than even the Contender peach.  Bodes well for the future.
• Pears
  • The Anjou and Highland varieties have shown the strongest growth on my multi-graft tree, while the standalone Seckel is doing better than the White Doyenne (which I knew was a long shot in this climate, but it has a solid reputation among cooks so I'm trying it anyway.
  • I added a Harrow Delight and a Summer Blood Birne this year as experiments.  Both are still getting established.
• Berries
  • Blueberries do well if you create a custom mix for them to grow in - there is no way the native soils would work.  I use about half peat moss, half wood chips, with a little compost and a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer thrown in.
  • My Seascape strawberries do very well, though my Tristars really have a tough time consistently producing.  I'm almost certainly going to take out the Tristars this spring. I got some Albions established this year that are doing well and spreading all over.
  • White, pink, red, and blackcurrants are all doing great.  Currants are nice because they can do well in the shade.  Some currants (not the ones I'm growing) are native to the area, so there is some natural affinity for currants in general in the region.

Biggest rules to follow in our region for fruit trees: get the latest flowering you can, and the earliest ripening.

If you have space, go for multiple cultivars within each fruit type to maximize the chance that you'll get some fruit and can work around the frosts.

Finally, nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic matter are all VERY low in most native soil around here, and pH is high.  So, add some of things these along with something like elemental sulfur and some azomite for micronutrients you'll be in a decent starting place.  Bedrock is generally about two feet down, so planting trees in raised beds is a good idea (almost every one of my trees is in its own raised bed, so I have at least three feet of soil instead of two).

If you're really ambitious you can mix a ratio of about 95% compost and 5% clay and use that to amend the soil in your raised beds to improve water and nutrient retention - it's very sandy around here.  Distributing the clay through the compost helps prevent you from making concrete (by mixing the clay directly with the sand).

Local nurseries with fruit trees are Eastside Gardens and Landsystems Nursery.  Both are fine choices, though they don't have a massive selection, and tend to carry more commercially popular varieties.  You also have no control over rootstock selection with them, and the trees will be too big to shape into any kind of espalier or fan shape.  I have purchased most of my trees through Raintree Nursery and had them shipped to me from their location in SW Washington state ( http://www.raintreenursery.com ).

That's a very long update that I hope helps you get started.  If you want to come check out what I have in person and chat that way, I'm happy to do so.  Probably waiting at least until the snow melts makes sense, so you could see things actually starting to grow in the spring.  Just send me a message with your contact info if you want.

Peace,
Paul