You pays for what you get?

[broadway]

Hi folks,

Well the title is usually obvious but I thought I’d seek your valued opinions as I have never purchased these before.

I have a couple of beds at the bottom of my garden and would like to put an apple tree in one and plum in the other.

Now I know the various cheaper shops sell these but given I’m only getting 2 and they are for my garden should I consider going to a more reputable supplier?

[zazen999]

Probably!

I bought 8 fruit trees from Aldi last year and had a small crop off half of them last year. this year they are budding up nicely. I chose some to go in the ground and some will be kept in pots. I will [once I get the hang of it] graft on some other varieties onto them to maximise the benefits of having them.

However I do not know whether all the varieties are correct and whether these are completely disease free

So it's up to you really - I've bought from 'reputable' suppliers in the past and for whatever reason, have had to go back and get my money back. As they in turn will be supplied by someone and you don't know who they are.

At least with the cheap ones I knew I was taking a risk and that's why they all went in pots first.

[hailtryfan]

I tend not to buy many of the cheaper trees I see as they are usually the same varieties that you can get in the supermarket. Some of these are fairly bland as they are bred for their ability to be transported without bruising rather than flavour, or they need spraying to prevent them becoming diseased, or they struggle to ripen in the UK climate. Much better to get a selection of more unusual, tasty and disease resistant trees from a reputable supplier who grows the trees themselves. Go to an apple day at your local orchard, try all the apples and grow the ones you like the most. I would reccommend Keepers nursery in Kent. They have an amazing range of apple trees and have been very reliable when I have dealt with them before.

[FB.]

Here's a summary of my experiences and other who I have spoken to:

Cheap fruit trees have the following problems:
Limited selection of varieties - usually the shop types which are prone to disease.
Rootstock not mentioned so it might be a dwarf or a giant.
Rootstock mislabelled, so what was supposed to be a dwarf turns into a giant.
Variety mislabelled - sometimes an apple tree actually turns out to be a pear tree....or a plum tree.

UK nursery fruit trees have the following problems:
Due to decline in UK agriculture, they lack investment.
Due to lack of investment, the "mother" trees are often old and diseased.
Rootstock "stoolbeds" from which they propagate their own rootstock at the nursery are also old and diseased - often because of the same thing being grown in the same location (you wouldn't do that with your veg plot, would you?).
The above lead to slow establishment (or death) of the young tree. Many root diseases take 3-5 years to show after planting (although a good bit of drought stress soon sorts the men from the boys).

.

So my advice is to do one of the following:

Buy-in ungrafted rootstocks (they'll only cost a couple of pounds each) which have not been into contact with the diseased soil in the nursery. Then graft them yourself.

- or -

Go with a British nursery that is healthier than most - such as Keepers < LINK > or Adam's Apples < LINK >
Keepers trees, grown in Kent, are the biggest, strongest and healthiest I've yet encountered. Well worth the money. Old books often used to recommend Kent-grown fruit trees as the climate there tends to produce the best specimens.
Adam's trees are not as big, but they are healthy and well worth their money too.
I wouldn't shop anywhere else because even some of the often-recommended nurseries have supplied me (or others) with stock of low quality. One nursery in the UK suppled me with a big batch of M25 trees. All but one have since died (a few years after planting) from root diseases. I lost the following M25's, from that batch (but have never lost a M25 from Keepers or Adam's): Annie Elizabeth, ArdCairn Russet, Belle de Boskoop, Brownlees Russet, Court Pendu Plat, D'Arcy Spice, Edward VII, Liberty, Norfolk Beefing, .......
I have since replaced with healthy trees from Keepers and Adam's, or from home-grafted trees.

[FB.]

Here's a picture of a one-year-old maiden M25 from Keepers and I challenge anyone to find something bigger:

[sugar]

I always purchase my plants from trustworthy sources, and would never consider Aldi. But when checking the prices of the nurseries mentionned above, I'm am really astonished by the price for young fruit trees in the UK.
Over here (Belgium), I'm paying 7,5 EUR (£6) for a young fruit tree. I'm sourcing from a highly reputable source, growing its trees almost 100% organic and delivering topquality, well rooted material that exceeds the size of the tree pictured above (while grafted of a M26 instead of a M25, because those plants are two years old).

[SarzWix]

I bought my Jonagold from, I think, Morrisons. Grew it on in a massive pot for a year while I got the allotment sorted, then planted it out into the open ground 2 years ago. It gave me a massive crop last year, had to thin it out and then thin it again! The apples were sweet, crisp and juicy, hung well on the tree, and were every bit as good as the apples on my neighbour's tree which cost them 4 times as much...

So really, it just depends what you want from your apples. I would love to have a massive well-managed orchard with the money to buy old varieties, cider apples, etc etc. But I don't, I have a little allotment, and I'm skint. So I went for a cheap tree of a well known variety, looked after it well, and got a good crop of some well-tasty apples

[FB.]

Hi Sarah

I'd love to be able to dig a hole, throw in the tree, kick the dirt back into the hole and come back next year to harvest a bumper crop of fruit.

Unfortunately - as you've probably gathered from some of my posts - the soil here is almost like a radioactive desert wasteland. Even weeds and buddleia struggle.
The problems I face:
Very little rain (half the UK average).
Quite warm climate.
Very drying, persistent breeze (on the edge of windmill county; a handful of windmills not far away).
Thin soil (about 1ft, on top of mostly gravel) which doesn't hold moisture.
Traces of chalk in the soil (pH 7.25-7.5) which severely stunts growth and causes malnutrition, resulting in increased susceptibility to pests and diseases.

To have just a glimmer of hope that a fruit tree might survive - let alone grow or fruit - it requires more than the average variety or the average rootstock. As more people "grow their own", it is likely that many more people who think that they "don't have green fingers" come to realise that it's actually their awful soil, which requires a rare or specialised variety or rootstock.
That's what many of the old local varieties were for; they were ideal for the local conditions and grew better than most when the going got tough. Like the old Cambridgeshire variety "St.Everard" from the village (on dry chalky soil) of the same name.
Very few apple or pear varieties come from the area close to Cambridge; it says a lot about the conditions and the need for specialist varieties.

[SarzWix]

Yes, but I was replying to Danny's original post, and his soil may be perfectly nice loam...

[FB.]

Yes, but I was replying to Danny's original post, and his soil may be perfectly nice loam...

Heavy London Clay, somewhat acid and prone to waterlogging, I would think. MM111 would probably be the best choice.
Alternatively, just dig the clay out, chop it up into blocks and bake it in the sun to make bricks for a rockery or raised bed - and fill the raised bed with something more plant-friendly.

[FB.]

Yes, but I was replying to Danny's original post, and his soil may be perfectly nice loam...

If the soil is reasonable, or if someone can't be bothered to evaluate their soil, or for someone who doesn't mind what kind of fruit they grow, or someone who is on a budget, then a cheap tree will be fine.
Even those which turn out to be mis-labelled (such as a pear labelled as an apple) are usually identifiable before purchase by the bark colour and texture - and often the growth habit.