Fruit for Southern Alberta
You can grow a surprising amount of fruit in a Lethbridge yard: haskaps by early July, saskatoons later in July, cherries in August, apples in fall. The secret is choosing plants bred for the prairies and protecting them from our two big fruit enemies, a frost at blossom time and the winter sun. Here’s what grows, what to pair it with, and how to keep it going.
On this page
Start with prairie-bred fruit
Most fruit sold across North America was bred for Ontario, British Columbia or the northern US. Here it can survive a mild winter and then die back in a hard one, or flower so early that a frost takes every blossom. Plant breeders on the prairies, especially at the University of Saskatchewan and the federal research station at Morden, Manitoba, spent decades producing fruit that handles our winters. Those varieties are the ones to look for.
What it means for you: read the tag for a Canadian zone rating and, if possible, where the variety was bred. A fruit tree is a 20-year decision, so it’s worth the extra minute.
Haskap and saskatoon
Haskap (honeyberry)
Haskap is an edible honeysuckle (Lonicera caerulea) with long, dark blue berries that taste somewhere between a blueberry and a raspberry. The University of Saskatchewan rates it hardy to zones 1 to 4, which makes it one of the toughest fruits you can grow. It’s usually the first fruit of the year, ripening in late June to early July.
- You need two. Haskaps can’t pollinate themselves. Plant two different, compatible varieties that bloom at the same time, within a few metres of each other. University of Saskatchewan varieties include ‘Aurora’, ‘Borealis’, ‘Tundra’, ‘Honey Bee’ and ‘Indigo Gem’; check a compatibility chart or ask when you buy.
- Spacing: at least 1 m apart, in sun. They handle most soils, including clay, as long as it drains.
- Taste before you pick. The skin turns blue days before the inside is ripe. When the flesh is purple right through, they’re ready.
- Net them before the berries start to colour. Birds know about haskaps.
Saskatoon
The saskatoon (Amelanchier alnifolia) is a native prairie shrub, and the city of Saskatoon takes its name from the berry, through the Cree word misâskwatômina. Wild saskatoons grow in the coulees around Lethbridge. They are extremely hardy, handle alkaline soil, and ripen in July.
- Named varieties such as ‘Thiessen’, ‘Smoky’, ‘Northline’ and ‘Honeywood’ give bigger berries than wild plants. Saskatoons set fruit on their own; you don’t need a second plant.
- They sucker and spread into a clump over time. Plant 1 to 1.5 m apart for a hedge-style row.
- Keep them away from junipers if you can. A rust disease moves back and forth between the two.
Dwarf sour cherries
The University of Saskatchewan’s dwarf sour cherries changed prairie fruit growing. They’re bushy shrubs about 2 m tall, rated hardy to zone 2, and they set fruit on their own. “Sour” undersells them: ripe fruit is sweet enough that many people eat them fresh, although they really shine in pies, jam and juice.
| Variety | Notes |
|---|---|
| ‘Carmine Jewel’ | Released in 1999, the first of the group. Small, black-red fruit; ripens earliest. Good for eating and processing. |
| ‘Juliet’ | Part of the “Romance” series. Dark red, excellent flavour; the best for fresh eating. Ripens early to mid-August. |
| ‘Crimson Passion’ | Romance series. Large, dark red fruit with the sweetest flavour of the group. The shortest bush, about 1.75 m. May be less hardy in exposed rural sites. |
| ‘Romeo’ | Romance series. Dark red; ripens mid-August. May be less hardy in exposed rural sites. |
| ‘Cupid’ | Romance series. The largest fruit, on a taller bush (about 2.5 m). Blooms later and ripens about a week after the others; later bloom can help it dodge a late frost. |
| ‘Valentine’ | Romance series. A tall bush with medium red, tart fruit; best for pies and jam. |
- Wait for full colour. Most ripen from late July into August. Cherries left on the bush an extra week or two get much sweeter. Pick when they’re very dark and come away easily.
- Buy own-root plants if you can, so suckers that come up from below are the same variety.
- Net them, or the robins will harvest before you do.
Apples and crabapples
Apples are the classic prairie fruit tree, and Lethbridge has plenty of old backyard trees to prove it. Here’s something that surprises people: an apple seed doesn’t grow the same apple. Every seed is a new mix of its two parents, so every named apple variety is a clone, grown by grafting a cutting onto a rootstock. That’s also why hardiness depends on both the variety and the rootstock it’s grafted on.
| Variety | Hardiness here | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ‘Norkent’ | Very hardy (zone 2–3) | Juicy, sweet and aromatic. Let it fully ripen on the tree for best flavour. |
| ‘Goodland’ | Zone 3 | Crisp, sweet, fine-textured. Bred at Morden, Manitoba. Can be less hardy in some exposed locations. |
| ‘Honeycrisp’ | About zone 4; marginal | A treat when it works. Give it the most sheltered, south-facing spot you have and treat it as an experiment. |
| Prairie-bred “columnar” apples | Varies | Narrow, upright trees for small yards. The University of Saskatchewan’s ‘TreasuRed’ is a columnar apple with full-sized fruit. |
Apple-crabapple crosses
Crossing big, tasty apples with tough little Siberian crabapples gave the prairies a group of very hardy fruit with medium-sized apples, sometimes called “applecrabs.” ‘Rescue’ and ‘Kerr’ are classics, and ‘Dolgo’ is a true crabapple that makes outstanding jelly. They’re excellent choices for an open, windy lot where a full-sized apple would struggle.
What it means for you: apples need a partner of a different variety to set fruit (see pollination). In town, a neighbour’s tree or flowering crabapple is often enough. Choose a dwarf or semi-dwarf tree on a hardy rootstock for a typical city yard, and plan for about 4 to 6 m of spread.
Plums and apricots: the gamblers
Hardy prairie plums and apricots survive our winters well. The trouble is spring. They are among the earliest trees to bloom, often in April, and a chinook that warms the buds followed by a hard frost can wipe out the whole year’s crop. In some years you’ll have more fruit than you can use; in others, none.
- Plums: prairie hybrid plums such as ‘Pembina’ and ‘Brookred’ need a different plum blooming at the same time to pollinate them, often a native Canadian or American plum or a hybrid like ‘Toka’. Check the pairing when you buy.
- Apricots: prairie apricots are mostly selections of the very hardy Manchurian apricot, such as ‘Westcot’ and ‘Brookcot’. Plant two different ones for pollination.
- Help them along: plant on the north or east side of a building rather than the warm south side. Shade on the trunk and buds in late winter delays bloom by a few days, and a few days can be the difference.
When fruit trees are in bloom, check the forecast every evening. Open blossoms are generally damaged at only a degree or two below freezing. A bedsheet thrown over a small tree on a clear, calm night can save a crop. See protecting plants on a frosty night.
Raspberries, strawberries, currants and more
Raspberries
Raspberries grow well in Lethbridge with steady water and a little shelter. There are two kinds, and the difference decides how you prune.
- Summer-bearing raspberries fruit in July on canes that grew the year before. After harvest, cut the canes that fruited down to the ground and leave the new green canes for next year. Prairie-tested varieties such as ‘Boyne’ and ‘Killarney’ are very hardy.
- Fall-bearing (or everbearing) raspberries fruit in late summer on the current year’s canes. The simplest method is to mow or cut the whole patch to the ground in late fall or early spring. In our short season, choose an early fall-bearing variety so the berries ripen before the September frost.
- Both kinds spread by suckers. A buried edging or a mowed strip around the patch keeps them where you want them.
Strawberries
- June-bearing strawberries give one big crop, usually in early to mid-July here. Best for jam.
- Day-neutral strawberries flower and fruit from July until frost, in smaller amounts. Good for a steady bowl through the summer and great in containers.
- Cover the bed with 10 cm of clean straw after the ground freezes in late fall. Strawberry crowns are shallow and are easily killed by chinook thaws and bare, frozen ground.
Currants and gooseberries
Red, white and black currants and gooseberries are very hardy, tolerate part shade, and fruit in July. Most set fruit on their own, though black currants often crop better with two varieties. Watch for small green caterpillar-like larvae (currant sawfly) that can strip the leaves in late spring; pick them off or knock them into a bucket of soapy water.
Rhubarb and grapes
Rhubarb
Practically indestructible, and often the only fruit (it’s actually a vegetable) in an old Lethbridge yard. Give it full sun, lots of compost and room: a mature plant is a metre across.
- Don’t pick the first year after planting, and only lightly the second.
- Pull, don’t cut, the stalks. Stop harvesting by about early July so the plant can store energy for next year.
- Snap off flower stalks as soon as they appear.
Rhubarb leaves are poisonous. They contain high levels of oxalic acid. Eat only the stalks, and keep the leaves away from children and pets. They’re fine in the compost.
Grapes
Most grapes don’t survive a Lethbridge winter. A few very hardy types do. ‘Valiant’ is the most reliable, hardy to about zone 2, with small, blue, slip-skin grapes best for juice and jelly. ‘Beta’ is another very hardy juice grape. Others, such as ‘Frontenac’ and ‘Marquette’, need a sheltered south- or east-facing wall.
- Plant at an angle so the vine can be laid down on the ground in late fall and covered with mulch and snow.
- Don’t over-fertilize. Soft late growth is what gets killed in winter.
- Water during summer drought. A stressed vine goes into winter weaker.
Pollination partners
Many fruit plants can’t pollinate themselves. They need pollen from a different variety of the same kind of plant, carried over by bees, and the two have to bloom at the same time.
| Fruit | Needs a partner? |
|---|---|
| Apples | Yes. Any different apple or single-flowered crabapple that blooms at the same time. Double-flowered ornamental crabs have no pollen and don’t help. |
| Haskap | Yes. Two compatible varieties blooming together. |
| Prairie plums and apricots | Yes. A compatible different variety, often a native plum for hybrid plums. |
| Dwarf sour cherries | No. Self-fertile. |
| Saskatoons, raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, most currants and gooseberries, grapes such as ‘Valiant’ | No. One plant will fruit. |
What it means for you: bees don’t fly much in cold, windy weather, and our spring has plenty of both. Plant fruit where it’s sheltered from the west wind, and fill the yard with early flowers (crocus, scilla, dandelions in the lawn) so bees are already busy when the fruit trees bloom.
Frost, sunscald, water and birds
Blossom frost after a chinook
The cruellest pattern in Lethbridge fruit growing is a warm spell in March or April that coaxes buds to swell, followed by a sharp freeze. Swollen buds and open blossoms have lost most of their cold tolerance. Prairie-bred varieties tend to stay dormant longer, which is one of the best reasons to choose them. Late bloomers such as ‘Cupid’ cherry dodge more frosts. Haskap blossoms are known for tolerating spring frosts better than most fruit.
Sunscald on trunks
On a bright winter afternoon, the sun warms the southwest side of a young tree’s trunk, sometimes well above freezing. After sunset the bark freezes hard, and the repeated swing kills a strip of it. Months later you see a long crack or sunken patch on the southwest side. Prevent it by wrapping young trunks with a light-coloured spiral tree guard from late fall to early spring for the first several years, or by painting the lower trunk with white latex paint diluted with water. Take wraps off in spring so insects don’t hide under them.
Watering
- New plants: a deep soaking once or twice a week through the first summer, more in hot wind.
- Established fruit: a deep soaking every week or two in dry spells, especially while fruit is sizing up in July.
- Fall: give everything a long, slow drink in October before freeze-up, and again during a dry winter chinook if the ground has thawed.
- Mulch a wide circle around each plant with wood chips, keeping it a hand’s width back from the stem.
Netting against birds
Robins, waxwings and magpies can clear a cherry or haskap bush in a day. Drape netting over a simple frame of poles before the fruit begins to colour, and pin the bottom edge to the ground so birds can’t walk in. Check it daily; a bird caught in netting needs letting out.
What struggles here, and why
- Blueberries. They need acidic soil, around pH 4.5 to 5.5. Most Lethbridge soil is alkaline, above 7, and our water is alkaline too, so even a bed of peat drifts back up over time. In alkaline soil blueberries turn yellow and starve. Grow haskaps instead, or try blueberries in large containers of acidic mix, watered with rainwater.
- Sweet cherries, peaches, pears and grapes from the coast or Ontario are generally zone 5 or warmer. They may survive a mild winter or two before the cold catches them.
- Fruit in frost pockets. Low spots in the river valley and coulee bottoms collect cold air on spring nights. Higher ground or a slope lets cold air drain away from the blossoms.
Why do birds love berries? Plants want birds to eat their fruit. A bird swallows the berry, flies away, and drops the seeds somewhere new, with a little fertilizer included. That’s how saskatoon bushes ended up scattered all over the coulees. Bright colours are a “ripe and ready” sign that birds can spot from far away.
Wonder: if birds help plants, why do gardeners put nets over their cherries?
Try this: next time you have an apple, ask a grown-up to cut it across the middle instead of top to bottom. You’ll find a star made of seed pockets. Count the seeds, but don’t eat them. Each one would grow into a brand-new kind of apple tree, different from the one it came from.
Sources
- University of Saskatchewan, Fruit Program: Sour Cherry Varieties and Zone 2 Hardy Sour Cherries; University of Saskatchewan Gardening, sour cherry variety chart (2025).
- University of Saskatchewan, Gardenline: Haskap; Apples (varieties, pollination and sunscald).
- University of Saskatchewan, Fruit Program: Haskap Varieties and haskap pollination information.
- Sara Williams and Bob Bors, prairie fruit columns on grapes and dwarf sour cherries.
- North Dakota State University Extension, cherries and apples for northern gardens.
- Natural Resources Canada, Plant Hardiness of Canada.