Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi,

I was looking for a quince tree just about in every garden centre in my area as well as online to no avail. I ended up buying a chaenomeles japonica off Ebay.

Is it possible to graft a quince on it (or, indeed, on any other fruit tree, like apple or pear), should I succeed in finding one. There's not much space in my garden for both the quince and the chenomeles.

Also any ideas on where to look for one?

Thanks!

Pears are grafted on to a form of Quince rootstock, but that is a Cydonia not Chaenomeles. However, if you wanted the fruit, you can use that which usually appears on the Chaenomeles in exactly the same way as that found on true quince Cydonia. The differnces between the two are minor botanical ones by the way, the Marmalade/jelly tastes just as good!.
A nursery near to us was offering both commonly available Cydonia at £9 for bare rooted half standards up to last week. Sadly they do not do mail order and it is a bit far from you to the Welsh Marches.

Thanks,

I just thought it would be nice to have both chaenomeles and cydonia fruit on the same tree

Keepers Nursery have them to order but they are not available until autumn. Nevermind, I'll keep looking.

Update: just found these seeds on Ebay. Would they grow a fruiting quince tree or will it still need grafting?

There is absolutely no difference that I can see in the fruits, so there would be little point having both, to be honest.
What you would get from seed might take a long time to grow to a fruiting size tree and there is no guarantee that it would be a decent productive plant anyway.