Apple and Almond Advice

[chris]

Whoa! Alliteration!

On holiday is Cornwall at the mo, and have found a great nursery, with an amazing selection of trees, unlike anything local to me back home.

Quite tempted by a couple of trees, one being "Robijn" almond and the other a beautiful shape apple tree, Fiesta/Red Pippen.

There are a few apples around me (unsure of what try are/pollination groups) but how well Would this apple do in South Wales? The blurb on it says most places in the uk, I have a fence that can offer some shelter to it, my soil is pretty good too, seems to drain well. It goes on to say good disease resistance, but as I live in Wales... It can be wet here (scab?)

Likewise the almond choice is that robijn or ingrid. They're on St. Julien A, which I think is a decent size for our garden. The Robijn seem to be more prolific in the flowering, and leave side of things. When buying a nut tree, should you avoid buying ones with nuts on already?

Planting wise, both are container grown, can I plant them after ive cleared the area they are going in? I plan to put both by a fence and grow clematis/thunbergia or similar up the fence, would these climbers be a problem if they eventually latched onto the trees? I know thunbergia is an annual (the type I'm after anyway) so not too concerned about that one, bit I have a few clematis ready and waiting.

Almond wise it also says they grow in every uk region? Is that just sales guff? My garden is pretty much south facing.

Thanks.

[FB.]

Fiesta/Red Pippin is a good performer for me, in the dry East of the UK.
For me, it has almost no noticeable problems with disease or pests - including better overall disease and pest resistance than "Winston", which is heavily praised in some catalogues.
Fiesta is also good reliable cropper. The fruits are average in flavour and quality. Not as "Cox-like" as many would have you believe.

However.......
There have been many bad reports for Fiesta from wetter areas, with considerable complaints of both canker and scab. In fairness, the really wet parts of the UK are just too damp for most apple varieties to thrive unless sprayed.
I would be cautious about planting Fiesta in a wet part of the UK without spraying, unless someone near to you has proven otherwise.

............

Regarding almonds....

Yes, they'll probably grow in most parts of the UK, but they can crop irregularly due to frost damage of blossoms and they seem to suffer from the rather nasty disease: peach leaf curl.

Whether it has nuts on already probably doesn't make much difference, other than the earlier a young tree fruits, the slower it tends to grow.

St.Julien A reaches about 3m, but plum rootstocks (yes, St.JA is a plum!) tend to be very sensitive to soil moisture. Good, deep, fertile, moisture-retaining soil can make huge plum trees, while they may not grow at all in shallow, poor, dry soil.
The apple rootstock MM106 is also particularly fussy about soil moisture; it can be as small as M26 on dry soil, or as large as MM111 on moisture-retentive soil. MM106 also happens to be quite good in alkaline/chalky soils.

............

There's no reason not to plant straight away, since it will prevent them getting pot-bound. If planting now, you may need to ensure that they don't dry out during the summer.

[chris]

Thanks FB, glad I held off buying! The Robijn apparanty had very good resilience to peach leaf curl (my aprigold however has been battered by it).

Hmm tough call! I may buy the almond and not the apple. I don't know that many people here, so wouldn't know about the performance of the fiesta here.

I've just read that you can actually eat the almond flesh as it's in the same family as peaches etc (presumably why the St J.A works?).. Interesting !

Bah, I wanna move down here- came across about ten true Cornish apples that sound amazing

Thanks for your help again.

[FB.]

Why can't you grow a Cornish apple?
They'll probably be right at home in wet Wales.

From the varieties that I've grown (admittedly in the lower-rainfall East), I'd fancy the following to have a better-than-average chance of success in Wales:

Annie Elizabeth
Crawley Beauty
Grenadier
Belle de Boskoop
Brownlees Russet

Also consider Irish varieties, which should also be fairly tolerant of wet conditions.

[chris]

Just assumed the climate here is so much warmer. I do pLan on getting indigenous apples (I.e that bardsey (i think it's called) apple that was almost extinct - bar 1 tree), and a fee others that are extremely rare, one if which originates 3 miles away from where I live.. Space is an issue though, so will have to choose wisely

Thanks for the recommendations, I'll have a read about them.

[jackie j]

How you gonna get trees home lol

[chris]

Shove the wife in the back I think!

Just had a thought, would a nectarine near by cause bitter nuts? T&M's site advises against planting near a peach for this reason.