Small quince tree

[Gman]

Hey folks,

Looking for a bit of advice re quince trees. We have a wall about 5’ tall by the Terrace our house sits on. It’s south facing so gets lots of sun and warms up a lot through the day.

Feels like an opportunity to grow some fruit that might not otherwise grow well here (dundee) and we wondered about a quince. However, we would not like a tree here to block sunlight from our windows, or our view, so ideally we’d want to keep it to around 7pm or so. Probably planning free-standing tree rather than fan/espalier (no skill at pruning, wall likely to need redone in next few years)

I understand that as they are tip bearers, it may be less than ideal to prune them to a certain size as this may lead to not fruiting. Is it possible to get a quince on a rootstock that will keep it to this size? Quince C? If I were to conquer my fear and fan train it would this keep it shorter? And how difficult is this to do with quince? Several companies seem to be offering a “patio quince called sibley”. Is this any good if I plant in the ground? Or am I better to give up on quince and plant something else (if so, what)? I currently have a few apples, pear Concorde, 3 plums, morello cherry and a walnut and also plagued by squirrels and wood pigeons.

Thanks

[nickdub]

One thing you could try, and let me stress I have not done this myself, and so I'm not sure how well it would work, is to restrict the roots of the quince to inhibit its growth - this used to be done a lot in Victorian times for fig trees in particular to stop them growing too vigorously in real good soil.

The general idea is to take a LARGE container say a half plastic barrel - make some BIG holes in the bottom and the sides and lump in some rocks, broken slate, gravel etc in the bottom and fill it up with good compost/soil and use that to plant your tree in. You then make a hole in the ground a bit larger than the container, push the container in the hole so the top is below ground level and Roberts your Mother's brother. BTW the Victorian and Edwardian gardeners made their restricted root growing containers by digging a roughly cubical hole and lining the sides with stones slabs and then chucking smaller stones and other rubble in the bottom - you could still do something like that, but unless you have free access to a stone quarry it would be hideously expensive.

[Gman]

Thanks nickdub, perhaps I’ll give this a try.

[It never rains..it pours]

Gman you could probably upgrade from a quince, this bloke grows figs, plums, apples, pears, grapes in Dundee. Think only his peach/nectarine failed to produce
Scottish Artist and his Garden: 2019

[Gman]

Thanks INR..IP,

However, I suspect that there may be a difference in skill between someone winning the award for “best plot at the allotment” and someone scraping a “best veg patch in my garden” award..