It’s strange to admit, but I’m relying more and more on the internet for photos, descriptions and opinions regarding fruit varieties. I was definitely inspired by several books, but that was 30 years ago, and not only are they out of print, many newer varieties have since come along.

If you want something tangible, I think a good mail-order nursery catalog is good suggestion. Just keep in mind, seemingly everything in them is ‘the most delicious,’ ‘most prolific,’ ‘superior quality’ …in other words, you’ll rarely hear any downsides

As for online, beside a specific ‘apple search,’ I love sites like the following, which in my opinion, is one of the best: http://www.orangepippintrees.co.uk/ Keep in mind though, it’s in the UK, with a more limited growing season than our Willamette Valley, they’re more like BC Canada.

After an hour of research online I can usually find far more information than within the multitude of books I have… Just stumbling onto this site and reading the opinions of those actually having grown such a fruit is extremely valuable to me. I mean an ‘apple’ may be delicious, but if the tree’s prone to a multitude of diseases and only sets well every 3 or 4 years … that’s the stuff you want to know before you’ve waited 5 or 6 years to find out for yourself. Books are great, but they’ve now some stiff competition from ‘the collective mind’ this internet has become.

As far as nursery catalogs, I’d start with the following three: https://www.onegreenworld.com/catalog.php?catalog=1 http://www.burntridgenursery.com/inforequest.asp http://www.raintreenursery.com/catalog_requests.html

If you can make it to our major Home Orchard Society events, we’ve usually got a vast array of the latest and greatest publications set up …where I have to purposefully avert my eyes as not to end up with yet another book on fruit trees