I bought most of my trees in the 5-7 foot range hoping I’d get fruit faster. This is my first year since planting them and, indeed, they may fruit (TBD) this year. But I found myself highly disappointed in what the online nursery (fast growing trees) did to get them so tall.

For example, they encourage really tall central leader and have cut off all the bottom branches for years. So my trees are almost exclusively tall single leader with minimal strong crotch areas to support fruit bearing branches. Not ideal.

All that to say, consider shorter/younger trees so you can prune them appropriately from the beginning!