Where to buy a cheap fruit tree?

rolstherat

Hi

There are lots of discount retailers such as poundstretcher and the likes selling cheap fruit trees.

Can anyone recommend them or is it just a false economy?

I am after an apple tree to plant in the garden

Any advice welcome?

Cheers!

Linda32

In the first instance and speaking generally, the cheaper the tree it should just mean they are younger trees which might mean they won't fruit for maybe three years if you are happy to wait. You simply pay more because they have been grown for longer without them being sold.

We bought a plum tree from Wilkinsons for £5.00 The label said it would take 3 years to fruit and indeed it did.


With regards to apple trees you need to look at the label and the ultimate sizes as they vary quite a lot. Depends how big your garden is.

Mojisola

How big is your garden - that will determine what size you want the tree to grow to and which rootstock to look for.

Are there any other apple trees in neighbouring gardens - apples need to be pollen from another tree.

What kind of apples do you like?

A lot of people buy the cheap trees and are happy with them - if you can wait a few years for fruit and aren't too fussy about what you get, go for it.

rolstherat

Cheers, I have a large garden, I know there are apple trees a down the road, I will look around thanks

Funky_Bold_Ribena

I bought 8 from Aldi at £2.99 each a few years back, so that I could graft onto them. Most fruited in the first year and now they are all budding nicely, and the plums and cherries are already flowering.

You just don't know what varieties they are.

You should be able to pick some up with mail order at a decent price at the moment. I know of a few sales as it is the end of the bare root planting time of year.

jonewer

The best low cost local nursery is adams apples.

http://www.talatonplants.co.uk/

I'd repeat what I said in another thread about apple trees;

Just a word about organic growing and common varieties of apple trees.

Most of the apples you buy in the shops are selected for their appearance and keeping properties. Disease resistance and indeed taste being minor considerations.

Growing Braeburn, or indeed Golden Delicious, Spartan, Cox or Bramley, organically is going to be very challenging because they all have poor disease resistance.

You are going to have to do some spraying and even so called 'organic' substances like Bordeaux mixture are toxic and nonspecific. Thats bad for the environment.

You can get disease resistant varieties that also have fine aromatic flavour profiles that well exceed the bland sugary lumps of pectin you get in the supermarket.

A good guide is to look up the history of the cultivar. If it is pre-victorian, it is also pre-agrichemicals and as a rule of thumb will have good disease resistance (makes sense, why else would that cultivar have been selected and passed down the generations?).

Theres something else to all this too. Buying and planting one of the old and endangered cultivars not only helps to preserve valuable biodiversity and puts you in touch with the food our ancesters ate, it gives you something fairly unique, something you will never find in any shop, and you will derive great satisfaction from that.

Of course if dont care what your apples taste like, nor about local nurserys, nor preserving heritage varieties, then fill your boots with the cheap stuff from aldi or poundstretcher.

Yorkie1

The main issue for me with the supermarket-sold trees is, as another poster has mentioned, the fact that you frequently don't know which size rootstock they are on. If you only have a small garden, you don't want an unrestricted size tree.

SailorSam

I've just bought a pear and a plum that were reduced to £1.99 in B&M, they were dried up and i went through the rack to pick what looked the best. I left them in a bucket of water a couple days and think they're going to be Ok. I thought for a couple of pounds each i'd take a chance.

Mojisola

SailorSam wrote: »

I've just bought a pear and a plum that were reduced to £1.99 in B&M, they were dried up and i went through the rack to pick what looked the best. I left them in a bucket of water a couple days and think they're going to be Ok. I thought for a couple of pounds each i'd take a chance.

Well worth a go at that price!

Leif

jonewer talks sense. Yes you can get a cheap tree, but the ones I saw in Morrisons did not say what the root stock was, so you have no idea how big they grow. And they were in pots. Apparently bare root establish quicker. 1 year old trees are cheaper than 2 year old trees, but is the price difference worth the loss of a crop for one more year? And what price do you attach to a variety on a suitable root stock, which has good flavour and disease resistance? Is it worth saving £10 for a tree that may be in the garden for 20 or more years? I ordered from Keepers nursery as they have a huge selection, and were the only source I could find for dwarfing Quince and Medlar. Blackmoors are said to be good too. And I am sure there are other good sources. Many trees I see in garden centres look less than happy. That said, Longacres near Windsor had lovely trees on display, probably because they have a good turnover.

However, the trees I saw in Basingstoke Morrisons a few weeks ago looked to be in very good condition, again because they have a good turnover, so they don't sit round for long. So they are probably a good buy, and £10 each, so if money really really is an issue ...

cyclonebri1

Even if you have a large garden rootstock variety is critical, it's no fun trying to either prune or collect fruit 20ft up.

I inherited a small orchard of very large trees 17 years ago, I've been replacing them 1 by 1 with smaller varieties ever since.
The only 2 trees I have left and I keep them simply for ornamental and screening reasons and to pear trees.
I have knocked them back to around 12ft at least twice over the years, within 5 years they are back at around 22ft, they are taller than the houses to our rear, (which is why I've kept them).

So be careful what you choose as the other issue is, if they are too large and require heavy pruning, the debris is so awkward and knobbly with it's fuiting spurs that shredding is almost impossible unless you have a 3" plus machine.;)