Q. I need academic journal articles on growing fruit trees for a speech.

It sounds like a great topic for a speech, but it might be hard to find academic articles. As I searched, I found that it might help you to narrow down to something like growing citrus. You might talk to your instructor and see if he is OK with you combining information that you find from Texas A&M with academic journal articles.

• Texas A&M has an excellent site with information on growing fruit trees and lots more, Aggie Horticulture. They do original research there, but the information you find online is not from an academic journal.
• OneSearch has some academic articles on fruit trees, but most of them are extremely scientific. It might take some work to narrow down to something both academic and usable for your speech. Try searching on growing citrus. The search was narrowed down to peer reviewed articles,  you can take that limit off to see more articles. You'll have to decide if you can find 3 articles that are not too scientific or technical to use.