Preparing soil for fruit trees

[Naga]

I was thinking about getting some 1-2 year old apple/pear/cherry trees for next year but the soil in my garden is very alkaline. Should I dig in some iron sulphate? The area I want to use use is around 18x10.

[FB.]

It is often easier to choose varieties and rootstocks to suit your soil and climate.
If you want to neutralise the soil it might require repeated annual efforts because of leaching from nearby soil.
It might also discourage the tree roots from exploring for water and nutrients outside of the treated area, with potential drought-stress problems in such a low-rainfall part of the UK.

How big do you want each tree to get?
How intensively do you want to manage them (feeding, watering, spraying etc)?

My suspicion is that low rainfall combined with alkaline soil will make the trees very much smaller and slower-growing than expected - probably half the size stated in the books.
My MM111 and M25 trees (in dry, slightly alkaline soil) grow only about as fast as a semi-dwarf M26 tree would in orchard conditions.
In my conditions, the common rootstocks MM106 (apple), Quince A (pear) ad St.Julien A (plum) are poor performers (weak, sickly trees, fruit full of bitter pit or rotting from the core) because they are very sensitive to drought and in some cases very sensitive to higher soil pH.

[orangepippin]

How severely alkaline do you think the soil is? Are other plants growing normally?