3 Cold-hardy Perennial Plants for Months of Fruit

Tl;dr: strawberries, raspberries, dwarf everbearing mulberry.

One of my goals for my garden is to have snackable fruits available all season. I though it would take a lot of different plants with different ripening times to achieve it, but it turns out it only takes 3 plants to have a near-continuous supply of fruits to snack on from your own garden.

Small and delicious Alpine Strawberries.

3 low-maintenance perennial plants to have fruit from May to October:

• Strawberries: Choose day-neutral strawberry varieties (or delicious and tiny alpine strawberries) for fruits that ripen May-June. Strawberries are immediate payoff because they will fruit in the first year. There may be a few extra berries that ripen when the temperatures cool in the fall too.
• Raspberries: Raspberries can be harvested in June from the second-year canes; this is called the Floricane method of growing raspberries. The canes are biennial so they will die after their second year  and need to be pruned out, but the roots are perennial and will send up new canes every year. You will need a variety that fruits in June: junebearing or everbearing.
• Mulberries: Mulberries are delicious, and everbearing varieties have a long harvest season: late-June through early fall (August). Mulberry trees can grow huge so get a dwarf everbearing mulberry tree to have something more compact. Everbearing mulberries are self-fertile, so you will only need one tree but other types are dioecious.
• Raspberries (again!): Fall-bearing raspberries have a long harvest from mid-July until a hard freeze, usually October. Make sure you get a fall-bearing or everbearing variety. Cut all the canes down to a few inches (lawn mower makes it easy) in the winter because it is the first-year canes that produce fruit. This is called the Primocane method of growing raspberries. Plant in an area with late afternoon shade to avoid fruit sunburn during the hot summer months. And... yes, you can plant an everbearing variety that will work with the primocane and floricane methods, and you just have to prune them differently.

Want to add a month to fruit production? Add in a Persimmon tree.

• Persimmon: Persimmons ripen October-November and make a sweet cool-season treat when they are soft and ripe (some varieties can be very astringent when unripe). Colder zones plant an American Persimmon (USDA zones 4-9), for warmer zones plant an Asian persimmon (USDA zones 7-10). American persimmons are dioecious so you will need a male and female to produce fruit, Asian persimmons are self-fertile.

All of these plants I've chosen will be low maintenance and do not require regular spraying to prevent pests and diseases, unlike cherries, apples, peaches, and pears. Those great fruits will get certain pests and diseases guaranteed if you do not follow the spray schedules, but the plants I chose here are resistant to pests and diseases. It doesn't mean they'll never have problems, but it is less likely that they will.

Maintenance:

• The maintenance you can expect to do for these plants is fertilizing, pruning, and weeding.

Problems to watch for:

• For the raspberries watch for raspberry cane borers. Prune dead canes in the spring for floricane raspberries. Watch for iron chlorosis.
• For the strawberries you may have to combat slugs and potato bugs. You may also need to protect them from birds by covering with bird netting.
• Birds may go after the mulberries as well.
• Persimmon fruit are known to attract deer and possibly other wildlife like canids and wildcats. Which may or may not be a problem, depending on where you are located and how much you like having them visit.

So there you go, only 3 types of plants to give you months of fruit!

Do you have comments? Other plants ideas? Do you have plants that fill in the gaps between the ripening times of strawberries, raspberries, and mulberries?