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Fruit tree advice for a newbie!

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  • #1

    Fruit tree advice for a newbie!

    Hello everyone, I would like to plant up half my allotment with fruit trees this winter but given that it's going to be a considerable investment I'm a bit nervous about making a stupid mistake!

    The plan is to have several rows of espalier trees and I'm looking at:

    Apples - I want to have a range of both taste and colour so I'm considering Scrumptious, Egremont Russet and Spartan.
    Pear - maybe Williams. I love blush pears.
    Peach - probably Avalon Pride as I've had horrible leaf curl on a container-grown peach before (even after bringing it indoors for the winter) and I know there's leaf curl on the site.
    Plum - there's a plum tree on the site that produces the most gorgeous, huge blue-purple bloomed plums. Nobody knows what variety it is but Marjorie's Seedling sounds similar. Also, in the house I grew up in there was a fantastic plum producing green-yellow fruit - it produces more fruit every summer than four hungry and slightly feral children could eat I remember one of my parents saying they thought it was a gage rather than a plum, so I'm looking at Oullin's Golden gage or Cambridge gage.
    Cherry - would love to have one black and one red so looking at Kordia and Stella
    Possibly an apricot fan-trained against the south side of the shed - looking at Tomcot.

    Do these seem like sensible choices? Are there any suppliers that you'd recommend or advise to steer clear of? Blackmoor and Keepers both seem pretty good (and it's good to see them recommended on here) but I'm fairly late in the season so not everything I want is in stock there. Would I be better off leaving it another year rather than buying from a less reputable supplier?

    Things to consider:
    - We're in London, and in an area that was once an orchard before it was all built up (a number of trees from then still surviving in back gardens. None in ours sadly).
    - Allotment site rule is trees to be kept under 2m (although there are several that are taller and the managers seem to be a bit relaxed about them).
    - Like most Londoners with a family, we don't know if we'll be here forever so I don't really want trees that will take over 5 years to see a return.
    - I'm looking for fruit that aren't easily available in supermarkets, but don't need a huge amount of work/expertise.

    Sorry for the mammoth long post!
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Generally you mention some sensible choices - bear in mind that giving the trees space will mean they are healthier and crop better as they get older compared with cramming the maximum number you possibly could in - unless you have an exceptionally favourable site I'd be inclined to give the peach a miss myself (they can do OK against a warm wall as that keeps them drier too in the Spring).

    If you have plenty of room between your trees when they are small you could plant gooseberries, currants etc between them with a view to removing the soft-fruit when the trees get larger.

    Finally, nothing to say you can grow an extra variety or two by grafting some scions on to branches of your existing trees when they get larger in future years.

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    • #3
      Thanks Nickdub! What spacing would you recommend? The plot is a bit of an odd shape - 6m North-South and 23m East-West. I was going to allow 3m spread for all except the apples (2m) but don't know how far spaced the rows should be. I'm looking at M26 for the apples, but some advise Quince C and some Quince A for the pear. For the plums VVA1 and for cherries Gisela 5.

      I have to say I've had such misery with leaf curl on peaches before, it's put me off them a bit. They are my favourite fruit to eat though...

      Oh, another fruit I'm considering is figs, although I've just read an article saying unless they're in a greenhouse forget getting a decent crop . What do you think about those?

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      • #4
        figs I'd say unless against a brick or stone wall are a waste.

        Spacing on the apples I'd say 12' - pears/plums a bit more say 15' - cherries are another option if you can keep the birds off them which usually means netting.

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        • #5
          Do I need to leave the same spacing between the rows, if they're espaliered? Or can I get away with rows closer together? 1m would give me plenty of space to work between rows, but would that be too close for the trees?

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          • #6
            Hi and welcome!
            According to Keepers, not all trees that you want are suited to Espalier-ing https://www.keepers-nursery.co.uk/es...ined-trees.htm

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            • #7
              Espaliers require a lot of careful and knowledgable work to keep them in shape and healthy - to my mind they are best left to people who are specialists - for the average grower a bush type tree will take up a lot more space than an espalier but it will produce a lot more fruit every year and require very little work after the first few years of its life - I'm a lazy gardener and prefer to grow my trees on the basis that they will produce fruit even if neglected completely for a few years.

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              • #8
                Sorry veggiechicken, I should have been more clear! I was planning to espalier the apples (and the pear but the guy I spoke to at keepers a couple of days ago said pears can be tricky) and fan-train the others.

                I do hear what you're saying nickdub. I guess the veg take so much time and attention I sort of see even espalier fruit as a lower maintenance option. But I'd only have room for a third the amount of trees if they were bush types. And some things will only work if fan-trained against the sunny side of the shed (so I just have to decide which of those I like the most )

                We have a south-facing border in our garden too which is long enough for a couple of trees at least; it only has a leylandi hedge on the other side though so won't provide the same shelter that a wall would.

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                • #9
                  Cherries are hard to net! That can be time consuming and if you don't do it it's unlikely you will get a crop - the birds eat the lot.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by csa26 View Post
                    Sorry veggiechicken, I should have been more clear! I was planning to espalier the apples (and the pear but the guy I spoke to at keepers a couple of days ago said pears can be tricky) and fan-train the others.

                    I do hear what you're saying nickdub. I guess the veg take so much time and attention I sort of see even espalier fruit as a lower maintenance option. But I'd only have room for a third the amount of trees if they were bush types. And some things will only work if fan-trained against the sunny side of the shed (so I just have to decide which of those I like the most )

                    We have a south-facing border in our garden too which is long enough for a couple of trees at least; it only has a leylandi hedge on the other side though so won't provide the same shelter that a wall would.
                    No worries - there are really no absolute answers to this sort of question, as what will work for one person won't work for another. You seem to have a pretty good grip on what you are able to do, so I'd say go for it - if you need to keep costs down then don't reject grafting as an option because even a cheap tree from a supermarket can ultimately be swapped over to a variety you want.

                    I wrote quite a long post a while back on planting fruit trees BTW, so you might want to have a look at that for a few do's and dont's.

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                    • #11
                      I'll be blunt, unless you're intending to keep your allotment for many years, I wouldn't spend a lot of money on planting it with expensive trees - keep those for your home garden.
                      How about growing soft fruit? Cheaper to buy, easy to propagate for free, not so fussy about pruning and you could be picking fruit next year.
                      Plant fruit trees and you could be waiting several years for a sniff of a fruit.

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                      • #12
                        I would also add that it's not just the cost of the trees you need to consider - the wood for staking/ tree ties, and I also used rootgrow mycorrhizal fungi which all adds quite a few extra pounds per tree.

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                        • #13
                          Also trees get diseases and die just like anything else and it is heartbreaking to rip something out or spend 1-2 years wondering whether to nuture or cut your loses. I wasn't aware that plums could be trained well in any form and I would also lose the cherries. The peach is worth growing if you love them - the flavour of Avalon is no better than supermarket but it is the fact you can pick it ripe instead of those rock hard things that never ripen properly. Also Avalon Pride will still suffer from leaf curl just not as much. I do a weekly pick over of leaves and spray with a smidge of homemade salad dressing in a bottle of water and it works a treat. I have avalon on South facing and on north west facing and both produce well.

                          With the fig do you know anyone you can pinch cuttings of as they will take like any other cutting (no grafting etc. however figs do tend to take up to 5 years to fruit)

                          If you get the knack of apricots please let me know.

                          If you don't grow trees what else would you grow? If it is surplus space then I would be tempted with cheapy trees and playing about (if you get anything it is a bonus and you can graft them as you like)

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                          • #14
                            I'm obviously late to the party on this one, and maybe you've already bought your trees. If not I just wanted to say to carefully consider your choice of rootstocks if gardening in London clay as most of the dwarfing rootstocks need lighter soil to thrive, and particularly with our increasingly hot, dry summers will struggle. Even for trained forms I would go with Colt rather than Gisela 5 for cherries, Quince A for Pears, MM106 for apples, St Julien A for Plums. It's better to have too much vigour and control it through pruning than too little.

                            You've had some great advice already on varieties, but one suggestion might be to consider a Morello (cooking) cherry rather than a sweet cherry. I inherited a Morello on my allotment and I absolutely love it - needs no special care, is ignored by the birds and the fruit is amazing for all sorts of culinary uses. Sweet cherries are adored by birds who will happily peck through netting to get to the fruit. Pears I would definitely recommend, I find they do really well in London conditions.

                            Personally I don't find espalier training that difficult but fan training is, so I would limit the number of fans. You could also consider cordons or stepovers for your apples and pears, which are probably the easiest forms of training for beginners. A guy on my site has a row of cordons that he's trained into a fruiting arch through the middle of his plot, it looks amazing.

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