Perhaps you may get some worth learning from my painful experience, on heavy clay in the wet cool West, following fruit trees planted over the last two years. Being organic, I very religiously avoid chemical treatments, by the way. (Organic is my personal choice, but not necessarily my recommendation to everyone. I know from decades how much more work or genius or luck being organic requires. Sometimes it goes like a dream, and other times it is a nightmare. I stick to it because I know it is of overall benefit to nature, and not because I worry to death about consuming toxic chemicals).
1) Concorde Pear Tree in a pot from Focus bought in October 2010 in full leaf for £10, planted soon after. Survived the BIG FREEZE of 2010/11 easily. Thriving in often boggy conditions but not yet produced any fruit.
2) Russet Apple in a pot from Focus bought same time in full leaf. REFUSED to drop its leaves when the BIG FREEZE came, so by the time the thaw and spring came round, the whole top down to the graft was dead! My second biggest failure. Lesson is that fruit trees sold in pots in September looking like they are in full leaf often have been sprayed with hormones to keep them glossy and leafy and believing it is still summer, so if winter comes suddenly, they get killed.
3) Cox Apple bareroot bought from Poundstretcher in spring 2011 for £7, planted in good sun in often boggy conditions. Just surviving, I consider it to be a failure.
4) Comice pear planted in half-shaded area, bareroot from Pounstretcher also £7 in spring 2011. Struggled through spring this year, apparently from an attack of Fireblight, (Erwinia) after a hailstorm, but now growing very healthily, though not as quickly as I would like.
5) Laxton's Superb Apple bareroot, from Morrisons's bought in April 2011 for £5. Planted where the Russet Apple didn't even survive one season. THIS is MY ONLY real SUCCESS. There are over 30 apples half formed on it already this year, all looking very healthy despite the wet gull summer.
6) Stella cherry bareroot, bought from Poundstretcher in spring 2011 for £7, planted in full sun on heaviest clay slope. Barely grown at all, but still alive and not suffering from any diseases this year.
7) Greengage Tree (Old Greengage) in a pot, beautiful and in good leaf, bought from local botanical club last September, most expensive fruit tree at about £20, planted soon after. On St Julien A quince rootstock. Tried to put out a few leaves this spring, but died back, seemingly from bacterial canker (Brown Ooze from branch wound on main stem). The tree is now almost dead, with only one tiny shoot from one twig left. A painful warning against trying to grow old varieties in less than perfect conditions. Greengages like warmth and lots of sunshine and well-drained soil! My biggest failure, an ouch of such degree that I am glad it is nearly all over now.
Two other apple trees, a James Grieve and a Braeburn, bought from Morrisons for £5 each this year are doing fab in pots. Very happy with Morrisons fruit stock. One of them I bought bareroot only in early June, stuck it in a pot and it is looking very happy with leaves already. I only wish I hadn't wasted time on anybody else's rubbish. It breaks your heart in spring to find that a fruit tree hasn't survived. On clay, a vigorous root stock is essential, and although Morrisons does not state what root stock their fruit trees are grafted onto, it appears that they are on vigorous root stocks.
Good luck, make the best sense out of all the advice you find, and if anything still goes wrong, you have my deepest sympathy.
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December 01, 2006, 15:31