Fruit Trees

[SteveA]

Just been watching a few of Ian Sturrock & Sons videos; well worth a watch & learn:

 

Choosing Your Tree and Site: Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

 

Planting: Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

 

Pruning & Picking:Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

 

Grafting: Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

 

Useful Tips (inc tools/ Silky Saw):Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

 

Altnative Orchard Design / Forest Gardening: Cultivation Video Guides for your Welsh Fruit Trees

[agg221]

Thanks for all the information, has been very useful.

 

I want to plant along the back end of the garden, that is 20m wide - just one single row.

want the trees to give some privacy along the back of the garden and some fruit would be really nice.

Had a cherry tree in the garden as a kid, did like that.

As for eating apple, I like Granny Smith & Pink lady – anything close to those two that will do well in a Scottish garden?

 

Soil type I would say is a mixture. Predominantly clay / sand. But, it has had Scots Pine growing on it for the last 50 years, so the soil is pretty rich and the top 4 inches is like compost, of pine needles, mulched bark etc.

Height wise - MM106 looks about right

 

For that size of area, 3 apple trees and a cherry tree seem right for a 20 meter line?

 

OK, something to work from.

 

I suspect that your soil is slightly on the acid side, and probably rather low in fertility - the mulch will help with soil structure as it works in but may also be rather acid. Fruit trees generally prefer slightly alkaline conditions, although if it's not too severe you should be OK, and you could add lime if necessary. It's worth using a soil testing kit, and planting in decent pits - about 1m across, working in some good compost and forking up the base of the pit. Make the pit conical rather than vertical sided, and dig out the centre first, then dig with the blade of the spade so its edge is against the pit wall, rather than its back. Both of these help keep the soil structure less compacted and easier for the tree roots to go out beyond the pit, rather than just winding round within it.

 

I would agree with MM106 for apples - it's very tolerant and does not need a permanent stake. I would use Colt for cherries. Regarding spacing/varieties - you need 4-5m/tree, so a row of 4 would be fine.

 

Most cherries are not self-fertile, and they do tend to crack when rained on whilst ripening. Not being self-fertile would mean you need two trees - the varieties suggested below are somewhat self-fertile so you could grow only one. Morello is a cooking cherry, which doesn't crack, but it depends if you want a cooking cherry. You could chance Lapins, which is good for cold climates and somewhat resistant to cracking, or you could think about whether you want to put a rain shelter over the cherry when fruiting (you'll need netting anyway against birds). If you did use a shelter then you could consider Sunburst. If there are plenty of wild cherries around in the area to rely on for pollination you could consider Governor Wood which is a black cherry, or Frogmore Early or Kent Bigarreau (Amber) which are white, which means they have a red skin with white flesh. These are all supposedly very hardy - the only ones I have grown are Morello and Kent Bigarreau, which has small fruit but in huge quantities and with excellent flavour (I once picked 225kg off a single tree!). An unconventional approach would be to try one of the Duke varieties. They are less common, less vigorous and not prone to cracking. They are less sweet than the normal dessert varieties, but if you have a surplus they cook better, and they have a good flavour for eating. May Duke and Archduke are both still available - not sure on hardiness.

 

Apples - there are more to choose from, but your preferences suggest that you prefer a more delicate flavour than something highly flavoured like Cox's Orange Pippin. Varieties that might suit include the trio of Court Pendu Plat, Crawley Beauty and Edward VII (cooker). These would be the most bomb-proof. Alternative groups would be a selection from Greensleeves, Golden Spire, Fortune (slightly more risky but might suit what you are looking for so long as the site isn't too exposed), Margil and Newton Wonder (cooker). Trees of this size can produce a lot more fruit than you can eat as it ripens, so I suggest going for at least two of the trees having long-keeping qualities. If it was mine, I would have the third one cropping slightly earlier - Fortune might be a good bet as it ripens over a fairly long season and is crisp and a bit bland to start with, going into softer and more 'scented' as it ripens fully. You can pick them over a good month.

 

You can find brief descriptions of the above here:

 

Keepers Nursery UK | Fruit trees for sale | Buy Online | Mail order

 

If you want full descriptions of any of these, give me a should and I'll dig them out.

 

Alec

[felixthelogchopper]

Alec, here are the pics of the orchard I want to restore. My apologies for the delay, it's been a bit manic down here. The spacings average about 6m centre to centre of the pits.

[agg221]

Hi Felix,

 

Nice location!

 

It looks like there are two generations of planting. The original generation appears to be the block in picture 2, and most of the ones in picture 3, which are open centre bush form apples of the early short stem type (used to keep the overall tree shorter before the introduction of a wider range of rootstocks). A couple of the trees in picture 2 (e.g. left foreground) look like they could have longer clean trunks and possibly be half-standards (4'6 or thereabouts of clean trunk). The early planting looks to have been well formed and looked after in their early years.

 

There then appears to be a younger planting of apples - picture 1 and picture 4 foreground. The tree in the foreground of picture 5 looks like a half standard plum? This younger planting appears to be mainly apples in the more modern bush form, with a 3' clean trunk, but it looks like they were planted as bush form and the pretty much ignored with no formative pruning. They also look like they are smaller trees, and are struggling a bit in full grass. My guess is that the smaller trees are on M9 or M26 stock and the bigger ones are on MM106, although it could be something slightly bigger - guess is dependent a bit on the soil type and fertility. It's partly based on the fact that there are quite a few gaps in between the newer planting, which suggests trees may have failed, and this could be associated with them blowing over which would be typical of M9 or M26 (although they don't always, particularly if grown in bush form - as evidenced by the trees at Mum's place which I would guess are on the old Paradise stock, renamed M9 and none have fallen over in the last 25yrs)

 

With regards to replanting, if you want to stick with apples I would be inclined to try to match the earlier trees rather than the later ones. It's more compatible with an orchard laid to grass, and will make 'proper' trees, which won't blow over. It will also create a nice old-fashioned orchard look. This would mean using MM106, or MM111 if the soil is really poor. I would try to keep them to just about prunable/pickable from the ground for simplicity - the tree in the foreground in picture 3 is a good example of what could be brought down to this height. The half-standards you'll have to accept as being a taller form but the trees from the younger planting could do with some heavy re-forming to get them back to shape.

 

I would also take out a 4' dia circle around each tree, keep it weed-free and mulch heavily with chippings (stack for a year first). This will particularly help with the new planting, and the trees that are struggling a bit.

 

MM106 is a very commonly used stock, so you should have no difficulties sourcing trees on that stock. If you need any contact details for orchards that stock anything in particular, give me a shout.

 

Alec