Looking for the right apple trees.

Kran

Hi everyone, I'm clueless when it comes to gardening so I'd appreciate some help. Ive a big lawn and was hoping to plant a little orchard at the back of my house. I had apple and plum trees in mind but that's only because I can't think of anything else that will grow here. My site is pretty open to wind at the minute as my hedge is only just planted. I live on the Cork/Limerick border. Just looking for advice in general on where to get some good apple trees and what ones to get. I'd like a good crop of apples and prefer a crisp and juicy red apple. I don't mind if the trees grow pretty tall as I've plenty room for them. Thanks in advance.

_Brian

Future Forests in Cork are exceptional. Contact them and they will help you choose something suitable.

magicbastarder

an alternative to future forests would be irish seed savers, also specialise in fruit trees. i think they're in clare.

Oldtree

Either of the above are good. Try and taste the apples before you invest your time in them.

gillad

I planted 2 trees, 6 years ago.A Tydesman Early and a Cox pippin.
The Tydesman Early has grown very fast and the apples are large,red and sweet.Its disease resistant and requires no mainenance,lots of apples.

The Cox pippin beside it, is a disaster,it's small and slow growing and is covered in apple scab which rots the apples and they drop before they get ripe.I have not ate 1 apple yet and I will cut it down next year if I fail to keep it disease free next season.

Make sure to get a disease resistant tree and try to taste before you buy
I recommend the Tydeman Early

macraignil

Got some Gala variety apples that gave a good crop of juicy nice tasting apples this year. The first couple of years the crop was not as good but the trees seemed to respond well to some hard pruning that I did because they were getting a bit of an angle to their growth. The site they are growing in is fairly exposed. In fact the main reason I planted them was to give a bit of shelter to a poly-tunnel. You will need to give strong support stakes and proper tree ties to the newly planted trees to stop them blowing over if you do have an exposed site. Most apple trees now are sold on root stock that prevents them growing very tall as it is much easier to harvest apples that you can reach without going climbing. Bought these at Aldi when they had a range of fruit trees in stock but if you are talking about an orchard then you probably would need to go to a professional supplier as a supermarket wont have the required number of the variety you want. You also have to be more careful with the trees you pick as the cheaper trees wont be as good as the ones you get at a professional tree supplier. Would have got about twenty apples per tree so an orchard could give more apples than you really want unless your going making cider. The gala ones I grew have not stored very well so most went to waste on the compost heap unfortunately. Hillside nurseries might be worth considering but their website wont have all of the available varieties listed. They might be able to order in the number of trees you need if you phoned ahead.

Kran

Thanks everyone for the replies. Hoping to go down to Future Forests next weekend. There website seems excellent which says a lot. Think I'll just plant 8 trees for a start and go from there, I might get 4 varieties and 2 of each.

howsshenow

You won't beat Englishfruitnursery.ie for range. They're based in Wexford. They specialise in all fruit trees etc. E15 delivery. Personally very happy with them.

Kran

howsshenow wrote: »

You won't beat Englishfruitnursery.ie for range. They're based in Wexford. They specialise in all fruit trees etc. E15 delivery. Personally very happy with them.

Yeah they have a lot of stuff going by their website. I'd like to talk to someone in person though and neither place is exactly close to me but Bantry is 1h50 and Wexford is 2h45 of a drive.

Kran

So I went to Future forests yesterday and picked up 2 Discovery and 2 falstaff red apple trees along with a Victoria plum tree and a Conference Pear tree. I found them absolutely excellent. The owner who's name I never got is a gent. He went through the whole planting process and the how and why of pruning and did a bit of pruning on the trees I bought. Massive range there and it was nice to be in a proper garden center rather than the usual ones who focus more on making money off of a restaurant.