fruit trees

Quote from: J_B on June 10, 2013, 09:14

i plan to buy a few for the patrio , dwarf stock, plan on doing cherries , plums ....any suggestion as to a goo dplace to buy some

A lot of people get taken in by the cheap offers available from chain store outlets and then wonder why they get hardly any fruit. The plant may be a good one but without an appropriate pollinator it will struggle to give you a regular supply of fruit which is what you are after when all is said and done. You need to make sure you have the correct pollinators and that information is readily available from a renowned nursery. I don't regret buying from Rogers Nurseries as all my trees have never let me down even in the most dire years when everybody else's apples were failing. But any good nursery will give that information.
Sorry to plug this again, but if you don't support your native varieties they will eventually die out. People tend to forget just how many different English apples there are because they've been fed with a limited number of supermarket varieties over the years and think that is about it.
I had a student come to stay for a few weeks and when he ate one of our apples he said that it was the best apple he had ever tasted and didn't know that apples could taste that good. He was in his 30's too and had eaten nothing but the usual supermarket culprits, poor lad.
 
You can plant your own garden of Eden but make sure the supermarket serpent is not lurking in your brain.
Up the English apple!

Great thread! We want to add some fruit to our garden plans and we're torn between planting some cordons in with the veg (in what will be a kind of informal potager) versus having some dwarf pyramids (apple & pear) and gooseberry/currant bushes further down the garden.

If we have cordons I suppose we can easily net them. Less so a 'fruit forest'. Is anyone successfully growing soft fruit WITHOUT netting?

Also on a technical note, I've read that Quince A is the "best" dwarfing rootstock for pear although Qunice C is smaller. Small sounds good - so what's wrong with Quince C?

so is it best to just call rodgers and talk with them as to what is good...since i need it for the aptio i need max 180cm tall or dwarf shoudl do fine....are they good at answering questions and providing suppport etc