Fruit trees and fruit brands

[Betonov]

So here's the situation.

3 plum and 3 pear trees will be chopped down next week in my backyard and since I'm a tree huger I must plant 2 more trees per one I chop down.

So I need some advice.

Apple brands, I need a type that has sweet and large fruits. I plan to plant 3-4 of them

Cherry, about 2 cherry trees, I need a type that has nice red fruits that are crunchy.

Plums, maybe 2 trees, 2 pear trees if space permits. I need dessert fruit, the kind you pick and eat.

The climate is alpine. Warm summers, cold winters, about 600m above sea level, on a sunny slope. Soil is rich but clay occurs after only half a meter.

I'll take any brand name and even latin names. Thanks :D

[Dan D]

How about an old fruit, a quince (tree)?

I have planted a quince tree in my garden which was a good decision.
It is almost always green, it has beautful blossoms and the fruits smell, look and taste great. You need to cook them and then preserve them in rosewater syrop. If you add those fruits to fried birds in autumn/winter, that tastes great. The fruits can be picked by the second half of October, which is late in the year. Quince trees are tough.

https://www.weinquelle.com/artikel/Gansloser_Zier_Quittenbrand_11019_e.html

[Jimbuna]

My neighbour has a few Bramley Apple trees but that's the sum total of my knowledge on fruit trees :doh:

[kranz]

a banana and a coconut tree.

[Betonov]

Riiiiiight, and a papaya plantation and a cannery in my garage :O:

Curently I'm going with golden delicious and red delicious with apples. 2 of both kind. Maybe one brand more to make it interesting.

No idea on cherrieas an pears.

I took a look into the Quince. Looks good but getting saplings might be a problem :hmmm:

[Oberon]

You might want to try Braeburn, nice crisp apples, and IIRC they're Scottish so they'd be quite hardy.

Plum wise, Victoria is a nice plum, and the trees are hardy, popular in Sweden so should take in an alpine climate, you can pick and eat them straight away, just keep an eye out for wasps, they do like them :haha:

Conference Pears are probably the most common in this country, although you might want to take a look at Pyrus Pyrifolia, a different taste to the traditional European pear, and grows at altitude.

Cherries, couldn't say, Morello (Prunus cerasus) is the most common in Southern England, not sure how it would take to altitude though, and it's a bit of a bird magnet :haha: You might want to look at some Japanese breeds, it's quite hilly in Japan and they're very fond of their Sakura, although that's more orientated towards the flower than the fruit.

The clay soil is quite good though, anything that gets down to it will get a good anchorage, so less likelihood of going horizontal in the wind. :yep:

[em2nought]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripps_Pink Pink Lady is a very nice apple, so is the braeburn. Fuji too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_%28apple%29 I prefer those three over the golden delicious, and definitely over the red delicious.

[the_tyrant]

Ever considered a vinyard?

I have a friend who is a major homebrewer, and he has a vinyard in his background. i enjoy homebrewing, and I recommend that you give it a shot.

Try to focus on reisling and chardonnay and other white wine verities. On land like yours, you can get very, very good yields. In fact, with the climate in your region, you can even try to pull off ice wine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine

[Betonov]

We already have vines. They're used for providing shade for the picnic bench on our backyard. The grapes are mostly sour to unedible :)
Our region of the country is probably the only place you can't grow wine. Winters are just too long.

OK, fuji apples are quite common here so I'll rather switch the red delicius for fuji. Nice catch, thanks. :up:

[Betonov]

With pears I'll go with Viljamovka.
I might get some money from the local brandy producers because viljamovka brandy can be quite expensive.

http://g2.img-dpreview.com/4B1323CB83F849B09D32CC4FBAB02320.jpg

There's only one way to get a pear into a bottle. By inserting it while it's small and let it grow and rippen inside.

[Platapus]

I don't know how it works in your country, but in the US we have something called a "County Agent", which is a local government official whose job is to help citizens with such agricultural related questions.

Do you have such a person in your local government?

You want to make sure that which ever type of tree you plant is compatible with the Eco-system in your area.

Good luck with this and thank you for planting more trees. :up:

[Betonov]

Advisors can be found in the agriculture ministry and local farmers cooperations. But their knowledge is the same as that of an agriculture student. How to plant, enrich soil, protect and spray. Something I already know.

Thought about chestnut, the edible kind, but I'll rather plant that one in the forrest next year.

[em2nought]

How about an old fruit, a quince (tree)?


Great looking tree, love those gnarled branches. I think I'm a bit too far south for one of those.

OK, fuji apples are quite common here so I'll rather switch the red delicius for fuji. Nice catch, thanks. :up:

While reading the Fuji wiki I noticed that with refrigeration they can be kept up to a year so another bonus. Never would have thought that about an apple, delicious are usually bruising before they even leave the supermarket.

[Diopos]

If you want healthy fruit trees (and fruits) plant local varieties. The reason? They're already acclimated to your local conditions. Anything else needs some studying or advice and it will be an "experimentation" of sorts. And with novel varieties your "gardening level" must be somewhat ... :hmmm: ... advanced. If we were talking flowers or bushes it would mush easier to just go for it, but trees ...

.

[Betonov]

Hell, if I can grow tobacco in the Alps they're pretty advanced :O:

I kid I kid, that's why I'm looking only for local types. But I need names. I'd get a pretty strange look if I just got there and said: give me 4 apple trees.

[Dan D]

I took a look into the Quince. Looks good but getting saplings might be a problem :hmmm:

I bought my quince tree as a half standard size tree from an online-shop of a nursery specialised in fruit trees. It has cost me 24,95 € including delivery. There are a lot of nurseries out there that are specialised in fruit trees who use the internet to distribute their goods to fruit tree enthusiats. On their homepages you find very detailed information about each brand. I could choose from a list of something like 10 different brands of quince trees.

May be you can get some info from there to make your decision.

Btw those fruit tree nurseries offer cold hardy variants of almost every kind of fruit tree. For example, you can plant winterhard fig-trees and peach-trees in Germany nowadays, if you want.

If you want seed or saplings of a quince tree, I could send you some to your postal address, I guess.

[Betonov]

The pear trees simply died of old age. Over 70 years.

Don't know what happened to plums. Probably the overgrowth of wild branches.

[Betonov]

OK, here's the sitrep.

2 cherry trees, one VAN, one BURLAT. Both types have those big crunchy cherries and ripen one after another.

2 pear trees, both VILJAMOVKA. one those pears is the only one still not planted. The rocky ground means I'll have to dig a little more.

4 apple trees. 2 BEFLER, red and sweet like fuji, only more resistant to frost. 2 CARJEVIC, yellow and sweet, like golden delicius.

Spring is going to be interesting, when I'll have a crash (and burn) course in pruning :)

[Aktungbby]

Have you considered a Paw Paw tree, once a staple of the American and Native Americans' diet. The fruit is quite good for baking and custards and is making a comeback. The Lewis and Clark expedition, on return from their three year trans-continental discovery mission was down to eating moccasins when they came across some pawpaw trees and feasted.:up: