Poundstretcher fruit trees

DLC2013

Hi all,

I got my hands on a cheap £3 apple tree from B & M last year and have been very impressed with how well it has grown.

Anyway, I seem to remember it was early November when i bought it and was just wondering if anyone knows if they or any other discount store are due to get these fruit trees back in stock this year.

I know they were available around late Spring but sadly i missed the boat on that one and I would love to add a cherry tree to the garden.

I've searched Ebay and various garden sites but looks like i'd have to fork out £15 + P & P (even for dwarf trees). Doesn't seem worth it if i know i can get my hands on one in a few weeks.

If anyone knows or can help i'd appreciate it!

_party_

lostinrates

We have healthy trees from lidl or Aldi BUT, they aren't what they purport to be. A red brambley apple? Leaf curl resistant varieties ( labelled as ) with leaf curl ( when we have other leaf curl resistant things with no leaf curl)

I plant to buy hard fruits from them again, but only for future firewood.

DLC2013

lostinrates wrote: »

We have healthy trees from lidl or Aldi BUT, they aren't what they purport to be. A red brambley apple? Leaf curl resistant varieties ( labelled as ) with leaf curl ( when we have other leaf curl resistant things with no leaf curl)

I plant to buy hard fruits from them again, but only for future firewood.

Well, I love Lidl as much as the next thrifty shopper, but sadly their offers and stock availability of desirable items is notoriously sporadic!

SailorSam

You should check out Morrisons they have good trees sometimes.

pambler

It might be worth checking out your local garden centre - mine has quite a few things very much reduced at the moment, including some fruit trees - they weren't quite as cheap as £3, but they were quite well grown trees, and looked like good value. I don't have room for them, otherwise I would have been tempted.

jonewer

Money saving on fruit trees is almost always false economy.

Consider that if you buy a healthy tree of the right, carefully considered variety, most fruit trees will outlive you, and provide you with a crop for every year that you possess it.

On the other hand if you buy cheaply from an unreliable source, it might not be the variety you thought it was, that you might only find this out several years after planting, and that the tree may introduce disease to your garden and die before it fruits.

All three of the trees I bought from local garden centres/homebase have been massively problematic in terms of disease. If I could turn back time, I'd gladly spend £20 on well-sourced bare-root maiden than £5 to £10 I spent on disease ridden foreign imports.

For me, its well worth buying from a reputable specialist nursery. Its also well worth researching for some rare varieties with decent disease resistance. The varieties you can buy in the shop typically depend on industrial scale spraying to produce acceptable fruits, and what’s the point in planting a variety you can buy from the shop anyway.

I have been eating my Ribston Pippins and Claygate Pearmain. They are incomparably better in terms of flavour than anything commercially available from any supermarket.

Yorkie1

The other thing to bear in mind is that you may not know the rootstock, so you don't know how big it will get.

rhosynbach

sorry to disagree with others but I have an orchard of about 40 trees mainly brought from aldi and lidl, most are between 3 and 7 years old and this year they were all laden with fruit, pear trees with over a hundred pears on each and bramley apples with really big apples like old fashioned bramleys I am really impressed and would definatly buy again.. and the cherrys did well but the birds got more than us ,

DLC2013

Well i must admit, i've been impressed with the apple tree i bought last year from B&M. Considering i thought it would be dead by the end of winter it's quite surprising how well it has flourished in a fairly shaded part of the garden. I just hope i can get my hands on a cherry tree soon.:)

RAS

Lidl and co can be good but their stock is often NOT what is on the label; a nectarine that turned out to be a white fleshed peach?

Or the multiple varieties of apple that all turned out to be Bramley.

And too often they have been shorn at about 4ft so are impossible to grow into chosen forms.

If you have £3 you can afford to gamble and do not want to grow a cordon etc; go for it. You might get something worth having or not.

For a little over £1 each I can make my own trees of the varieties that I really want; upt to £2 if I insist on an expensive dwarf rooting stock. Take a year longer but worth the wait (currently weighed down by apples although some will not be in eating condition until spring)

forgotmyname

My cheap, LIDL, and market bought trees are OK. But they are nowhere near as good as the expensive garden centre family trees.

The year after planting the family trees produced fruit. The cheaper trees take a while to get themselves established. And as mentioned the labels are often not correct. Cherry tree is actually an ornamental one and not edible.