Our Fruit Trees are Here!

Last summer, on the way back from our garden-visiting holiday in Kent, Jo and I stopped off at the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale. It turned out to be the day of their annual cherry festival, which looked like a huge amount of fun, but we weren’t there to eat pie or spit pips. No indeed, we had only one thing on our mind: apple trees.

We had two apple trees at our old place – prolific ‘Discovery’ and zero-fruiting ‘Bloody Ploughman’ – and we knew that when we moved we’d really miss having fresh fruit to pick from right outside the door. They’re also an essential part of our Cottage Garden Project plan; to include a good mix of herbs and edibles amongst or alongside the mainly decorative planting beds.

After half an hour talking to Brogdale’s Sales Manager about suitable varieties for our Northern climes, pollination compatibility and dwarfing root-stock suitable for container growing, we placed an order for three apples: ‘Cornish Aromatic’, ‘Herefordshire Russet’ and ‘Blenheim Orange’, one crab apple: good old ‘John Downie’ of the stunning blossom displays and excellent jelly-making, and, yes, one cherry: Morello – I do love ’em sour, and a fig: ‘Brown Turkey’, apparently the most reliable cropper in the UK climate. Of course, they weren’t for immediate delivery. We had to wait for winter, when the trees were in a dormant state, suitable for transporting and transplanting. And wait we did…

…until, as I sat in the pub after my four RHS exams on Tuesday afternoon, a text came through from Jo to say that the end of our driveway was now occupied by a pallet of trees. Huge excitement! Couldn’t wait to get home and take a look. Couldn’t see much in the dark when I got home, of course, except that the order seemed to be all present and correct, and was well-wrapped in cellophane.

Yesterday morning, I headed outside with my trusty knife and, like a kid at Christmas, unwrapped our delivery.

First off: I was very pleased with the manner of the delivery. Although I was out, due to a minor mix-up as to the delivery date (which was entirely my fault for saying “any time after the 7th” rather than stressing “the 8th onwards”…) the delivery driver still not only dropped them off, but fork-lifted the pallet up the drive and placed it neatly behind the bins into the bargain. Fair play and thank you to them for making the extra effort. All the trees were in great condition; a couple of small twigs had snagged in the cellophane and snapped, but nothing worse than that, and certainly nothing you wouldn’t expect on a journey from Kent to North Manchester.

The unwrapped trees all looked great. We’ve invested in 2+ year old bush standards rather than maiden whips or feathered maidens – apart from the cherry – to give us that head start on fruit production, and all the trees have a decent amount of lateral growth, as you can see when they were lined up ready to move round to the back of the house:

Two of the trees – the crab apple and the fig – are quite small, but that works to our advantage. We don’t want the crab apple to grow too big, based on where we’re hoping to place it in the planting scheme, and the fig is hopefully going to be quite vigorous, so starting off with a small specimen gives us a chance to prune and train it to suit the space.

We also ordered a couple of Jostaberry bushes, which you can see in the pic below. (They’ll be heading down to the allotment in about half an hour…)

Here are the technical details of the trees we’ve bought:

Malus domestica ‘Herefordshire Russet’: M27 rootstock (extreme dwarfing). Pollination group C(3). Diploid. Harvest September.

Malus domestica ‘Cornish Aromatic’: M9 rootstock (dwarfing). Pollination group D(4). Diploid. Harvest September.

Malus domestica ‘Blenheim Orange’: MM106 rootstock (semi-dwarfing). Pollination group B(2). Triploid. Harvest October.

Malus ‘John Downie’: M9 rootstock. An effective cross-pollinator for all three maincrop apples and a source of fruit for crab apple jelly, as well as pectin for other fruit jams.

Prunus cerasus ‘Morello’: G5 rootstock (semi-dwarfing). Self-fertile. Shade tolerant. Harvest July to August.

Ficus carica ‘Brown Turkey’: Figs are propagated by hardwood cuttings, so no rootstock applicable. Self-fertile. Pollinated by Chalcid wasp. Harvest when ripe, late summer onwards, hopefully.

The next stage will be to transfer the three apples and the cherry into the Air-Pot containers that we’re planning to grow them in for the first few years, at least. All the varieties are grafted onto dwarfing or semi-dwarfing root-stock, so we’re hoping they’ll develop strong root systems, courtesy of the Air-Pot’s air-pruning characteristics and not suffer from having a lack of open ground to grow into.

Formative pruning will be carried out after potting, either as columnar cordons or compact bush shapes. The idea is to fit all four potted trees along the fence outside the back door, without risking the branches becoming congested or tangling with each other. I’ll be reading up on the pros and cons of both methods before I make any cuts, and asking the gardeners down at Ordsall Hall for their advice, when I’m down there volunteering tomorrow.

The fig will be planted into the fig-pit that I prepared last summer. And the crab apple will be planted out in pride of place in the shed bed, once that has been suitably edged, back-filled and the soil considerably improved. It should be happy enough in its pot until that’s done.

What do you reckon? All sounds good, or is there anything I’ve over-looked? Are you a bit of a pruning expert, or have you grown potted fruit trees yourself? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences, down below in the comments.