A New Orchard

Just to start with, what are the fruit trees that you want to get rid of, and what trees do you want to plant? And what kind of unhealthy are the old ones?

The fruit trees are x3 apples and a pear. I have no idea of the variety. Our neighbour has a bramley and 2 other apple trees, again I've no idea of the variety.

We would like 2 apples at least and possibly a pear or could have x2 pears if a fertiliser is needed.

I would like one to be a bramley and possibly a james grieve although this is subject to discussion at present.

We live in Leicestershire (South of Leicester), the orchard bit has an open aspect with no overhanging or shady trees and is south west facing. Our soil has a good open texture, good drainage, not sandy but not heavy clay.

Firstly, don't rush into anything.

There are many issues to consider before planting an orchard if you don't want to spray.

Some varieties are trouble-free without sprays; you just need to determine what your main problems are and select varieties to defeat the pests, diseases, soil or climate. I've just about defeated all my local pests and diseases.

We enjoyed a very nice apple jumble this evening (it was called an apple jumble because I used three different varieties for a crumble - whatever's available or whatever I can find laying in the grass!).

I would hope your fruit trees would have a few more years in them yet.

My mum's house was built on an old orchard, with many original trees still in the garden. She has been in the house for 42 years and has never sprayed and gets reasonable crops. She has lost the William pear but the cox and the blenheim orange still do well.

Oh, and the house was built in 1917...

Firstly, if you plant a young tree where an old tree of the same type (or related type) has been, the young tree is often very slow to establish due to the heavy load of pests and diseases in the soil from the old tree.

Secondly, why are your existing trees unhappy? There's no point simply replacing them with random different varieties which may succumb to the same problems.
If you put in a Bramley and a James Grieve, you'll probably be jumping from the frying pan to the fire; both can be rather prone to problems nowadays. I lost a James Grieve to canker only a few months ago.
The local Bramley's here have been badly damaged by scab (fungus which likes wet weather), with many fruits split and rotting fruits as a result. In fact, the Bramleys have also lost about half or more of their leaves.
If you want trouble-free, you need to look at the very rare varieties, which often did well for our ancestors hundreds of years ago, before sprays.

Thirdly, how big do you want your proposed new trees to get?

Fourthly, what are you looking for in terms of season of ripening (summer, autumn, winter) and the use for the apples (cider, eater, cooker)?

It's not so easy to grow Cox here in the UK, though, because there are so many old, diseased Cox trees (and Blenheims, and other popular varieties for that matter) so that a newly-planted Cox in particular is soon overrun by diseases from nearby old Cox trees.
Average life expectency for a Cox round here is less than five years before it is overwhelmed.

Blenheim is also quite widely grown, and some of my Blenheim fruits are showing a mysterious brown rot type of fungal damage on the skin. Not scab, not insect damage and not bitter pit.

Generally speaking, fruit diseases show a high degree of specialisation for attacking just one or two varieties. This is due to our tendency to grow vast orchard blocks of the same cultivar, therefore a disease specialised to attack that one variety can rip through the orchard in a matter of weeks unless stopped by sprays.
However, this modern-day evolution of diseases towards specialisation in attack of one cultivar often means that really rare varieties are effectively immune because the disease needs to completely re-evolve to break down the unusual resistance. This takes a very long time, and takes longer if there are fewer trees of a particular variety which the disease can use to adapt itself and perfect its attack.

For example: my James Grieve (about the third most popular apple variety in the UK behind Bramley and Cox) was overwhelmed by a huge attack of canker. Yet this canker did not spread to any of its neighbouring trees of different varieties. Had it been in a block of James Grieve trees, the whole block would have become infected from wind-drift and rain-splash of the canker spores.

Don't judge your present trees too harshly this year, it's been awful for so many tree fruit crops. I planted about 20 apples in 1990 and feel they're just beginning to reach their best now that they're becoming mature, and wouldn't dream of cutting them down now. I have never sprayed any of them and though on occasion one will get attacked by annoying pests, they usually shrug them off by the following year. The most trouble free and delicious of that batch is Kidd's Orange Red. A lot of the older books emphasize regular spraying but I think that's considered more harmful than helpful these days

Firstly thank you so much for all the advice. Yes, the trees do have to go, they are covered in Lichens and bits are breaking of them all over the place. Also they have ugly orange pustules on the leaves. I think the trees were once espaliades (think this the right word; fan shaped!) but now the supports are long gone and they are a very weird shape.

We like the idea of heritage varieties, we're going to the Malvern Show in September and they have an orchard section so should provide inspiration.

Good idea about planting in a different place. We can easily do this as we have about 8m square bit to manouvre in. We'd like the trees to be about 6/7ft as this is the isze of our neighbours and they can be easily picked.

Mum's trees (and house!) are in Reading, Berks. The area was originally large orchards, built on at the end of the FWW, but as you say mixed varieties rather than monoculture.

I will ask her about the fungal disease on the Blenheims. Too hot for them down here, alas, so we just have to collect a box full from her in the autumn.

Outof interest: who said that the tree was Cox?
A few people turn up claiming to have an ancient Cox, but when questioned further it turns out to be a Cox-lookalike such as one of its offspring.
Cox has an average life expectancy of just a few years where I live, unless heavily treated with chemicals.

In that case, it sounds as if the M26 rootstock is most suitable.

OK. I'm sure FB will give a lot of advice, but if your neighbour has a Bramley then I'd rethink that as a choice as you won't have the best setup for pollination. There's an interesting thread on here about triploids that'll explain more about it - perhaps if you had an earlier cooker you could swap fruits and have a longer season between you. As to lichens, I doubt if I could put a hand on any of my trees (or gates, or stones) without covering one, very much part of a healthy ecosystem in my opinion. In the 1950s it was commonly given advice to spray the trees to remove them, along with lime-sulphuring and DDT - a very harmful time for the orchard habitat.

I understand they took the fruit to be identified at Brogdale, many years ago. Sounds as though it may not be, though.

The tree is in line with the other old trees so they assumed it was part of the original orchards, although it could of course have been a later replacement. It would still have to be going on for 50 years old, though.

There is a lookalike offspring in the garden hedge.

The other problem with having two trees of the same type (especialy common types) in close proximity is that it quadruples the expected incidence of disease, due to the two trees passing the variety-adapted diseases back-and-forth between them, allowing the disease population to multiply up rapidly and being difficult to clear both trees at the same time.

Besides; if you grow something different, your neighbour might give you two "common" Bramley's in exchange for just one of your "rare" but tasty and healthy fruits. Bramley's are everywhere and not worth much as the supply is so great. Some people struggle to give them away.