fruit trees for my new allotment?

[Mintygreen]

I have just aquired an allotment and the tidying and preparing is all almost done, and im looking at putting a couple of fruit trees at one end of my plot, preferably an apple (for eating and cooking) and a peartree (dont know if you can get multi purpose peartrees, if so then one of those) but need some help with what varieties i should look for!!

they would be in full light pretty much all day

i would appreciate any advice or info on what people have already grown/ learnt about thier trees?

[FB.]

Allotments sometimes come with restrictions on the size of fruit trees that you can grow, since the shade that they create can upset neighbouring plots.

You will generally find that a dual-purpose variety is not as good as having specific varieties for cooking and eating.
Dual purpose fruits tend to be a bit sharp as eaters but a bit lacking in flavour as cookers.
Cooking apples stored for a few months can often make quite pleasant eating apples.

It may be better to grow multiple varieties as cordons, or pick unripe eating apples for use as cookers.

Growing more than one variety of each will improve pollination - especially with pears, which are quire rare nowadays.

You'll also find pears difficult to keep for more than a couple of weeks once they're ripe, so you won't want to grow too many.


You'll need good disease resistance if you don't want to spray them. Many of the well-known varieties are quite prone to disease - but it doesn't matter to the orchards because the apples are sprayed many times per season to keep them healthy, -so I recommend going for more unusual varieties with proven resistance.

You will find that earlier-ripening eaters are more prone to attack by pests, since pests are more active in the warmer weather of summer.

[hailtryfan]

Hello,

If you are only going to grow one apple, I would heartily reccomend Sunset. Tastes delicious, is a heavy cropper, fairly disease resistant, is mid season and the apples keep for a month or two in the fridge. It also has the advantage of being self-fertile so you don't need a pollination partner and has beautiful blossom. It's a spur bearer to so it's suitable to be grown in a restricted form such as espalier or cordon if your allotment association don't want you growing big trees.

yum yum

[Snadger]

Hello,

If you are only going to grow one apple, I would heartily reccomend Sunset. Tastes delicious, is a heavy cropper, fairly disease resistant, is mid season and the apples keep for a month or two in the fridge. It also has the advantage of being self-fertile so you don't need a pollination partner and has beautiful blossom. It's a spur bearer to so it's suitable to be grown in a restricted form such as espalier or cordon if your allotment association don't want you growing big trees.

yum yum

I concur! I have mine growing as a cordon and it usually fruits well. Similar to Cox, the flavour isn't quite as sharp as a Cox though, (which I also have growing at the allotment)

[Mintygreen]

thank you for all of your advice, still not 100% as yet as to what im going to choose, but from the looks of things im probly going to go with an eating apple, and seing as sunset has come recommended it may be that due to not bweing allowed to let them grow over 8 foot, seems strange tho as the only place it will giove any shade is my own plot!!! but have any of you had any experience of the Redlove (red fleshed apples) that i have be seeing a lot of?

[FB.]

My suspicion is that the red-fleshed apples have been bred for looks, but not for taste, quality or disease resistance.
In my mind, it has gimmick written all over it.
If you want some redness in the flesh, combined with an easy-to-grow, disease-resistant and easy-to-manage tree/bush, I can recommend "Red Devil", but the redness will usually be only just under the skin or occasional streaks running to the core.
However, like many other mid-season, red-skinned, sweet-ish eating apples, Red Devil will suffer some damage from maggots, wasps and earwigs.