"Rupert" wrote in message
...

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...
anyone know of a place either in the midlands or mail order where I can
get a apple and plum or pear and plum? I seem to remember reading about
them but cant find them have tried googling but no joy. or maybe I was
dreaming???

You can buy what are commonly called "Fruit Cocktail " trees which contain
as many different fruits as a green grocer.

knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those fruits
would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and am willing to
listen to any advice either way.
e.g..
http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556
Not certain that they perform particularly well.
Somewhere it is suggested that if you are limited for space planting
different varieties in the same hole may be a solution.
This however sounds promising would they stunt each others growth though? if
this is possible what about apple, pear and plum in the same hole? I think
it would be pretty cool if they twined around each other.

Dwayne & Angela wrote:

"Rupert" wrote in message
...

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...

anyone know of a place either in the midlands or mail order where I can
get a apple and plum or pear and plum? I seem to remember reading about
them but cant find them have tried googling but no joy. or maybe I was
dreaming???

You can buy what are commonly called "Fruit Cocktail " trees which contain
as many different fruits as a green grocer.

knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those fruits
would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and am willing to
listen to any advice either way.

I can't see plum or any other stone fruit working well on an apple or
pear root stock. But you can get family trees which combine two or three
compatible and cross pollenating cultivars of apple (or pear) on a
single root stock. I have one Egremont Russet & Sunset that works well
though you have to prune more carefully to keep them in balance.

e.g..
http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556
Not certain that they perform particularly well.
Somewhere it is suggested that if you are limited for space planting
different varieties in the same hole may be a solution.

US advertising standards need to be considered carefully.

This however sounds promising would they stunt each others growth though? if
this is possible what about apple, pear and plum in the same hole? I think
it would be pretty cool if they twined around each other.

I expect they will fight pretty badly. Plums really detest being pruned
and apples/pears require some pruning to perform well.

Nectarines and peaches are pretty well impossible to grow in the north
of England (and fairly easy in Belgium). I know I have tried.

In the UK nectarines & peaches are martyrs to fungal attack by peach
leaf curl after our damp cold dank winters. Surprisingly the extra
warmth of a few degrees further south makes all the difference.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin,
I wouldn't go as far as to say impossible, for I have seen several good
examples of peaches grow in the North.
Last September I saw members of the Northern Fruit Group exhibiting
peaches at their show at Harlow Carr.
The variety -- Perergrine, a white fleshed peach which in the groups
experience is reliable against a warm wall.
In the Northern Fruit Group's leaflet "Suggested Fruit Cultivars for
the North" the variety Rochester is also recommended, with members
suggesting that it is a reliable cropper.
There are varieties of peaches refered to as Patio, which are grafted
on to a special dwarfing rootstock that will remain in a pot. The
rootstock is much more knarled than St. Juliean or Pixy.
Clifford
Bawtry, Doncaster, South Yorkshire

This however sounds promising would they stunt each others growth though?
if this is possible what about apple, pear and plum in the same hole? I
think it would be pretty cool if they twined around each other.
Knowing what to google for has thrown some good links up this tree on this
page (dont think its a fruit tree? but it looks good anyway.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/gardeni.../grafting.html

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...

"Rupert" wrote in message
...

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...
anyone know of a place either in the midlands or mail order where I can
get a apple and plum or pear and plum? I seem to remember reading about
them but cant find them have tried googling but no joy. or maybe I was
dreaming???

You can buy what are commonly called "Fruit Cocktail " trees which
contain as many different fruits as a green grocer.

knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those fruits
would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and am willing
to listen to any advice either way.
e.g..
http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556

snip

I have never seen a multi fruit tree-so I suppose they are not that
successful in the long term.
Martin is quite correct that attempting to prune different trees in the same
hole would require a lot of dedication.
If you want to have a go then pay attention to the type of rootstock and
make it a big wide hole.
I would settle for one good single fruit and buy the rest from the
Supermarket:-)

Dwayne & Angela wrote:
"Rupert" wrote in message
...

You can buy what are commonly called "Fruit Cocktail " trees which contain
as many different fruits as a green grocer.

knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those fruits
would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and am willing to
listen to any advice either way.

These are some of the ones I've seen:

http://www.kenmuir.co.uk/products.php?catID=7&subID=58
http://www.kenmuir.co.uk/products.php?catID=7&subID=89

James

Dwayne & Angela wrote:
"Rupert" wrote in message
...

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...
anyone know of a place either in the midlands or mail order where I
can get a apple and plum or pear and plum? I seem to remember
reading about them but cant find them have tried googling but no
joy. or maybe I was dreaming???

You can buy what are commonly called "Fruit Cocktail " trees which
contain as many different fruits as a green grocer.

knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those
fruits would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and
am willing to listen to any advice either way.
e.g..
http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556
Not certain that they perform particularly well.

The site says "Pick nectarines, peaches, plums, and apricots all from
the same tree. Harvest bushels of fruit." I wouldn't be surprised to see
such grafts take -- note that they're all stone fruit -- but I refuse to
believe it would work well. The four branches would presumably grow at
different rates, which must be the main problem with any "family tree".
That way you'd end up with one type taking over.

But I'm reasoning, not reporting: I've never actually tried it.

Somewhere it is suggested that if you are limited for space planting
different varieties in the same hole may be a solution.
This however sounds promising would they stunt each others growth
though? if this is possible what about apple, pear and plum in the
same hole? I think it would be pretty cool if they twined around each
other.

I don't know how one would avoid the problem of different rates of
growth; and, as you guess, I imagine they'd starve each other even if
they did grow at the same rate. Note how rarely you see two trees
growing arm in arm in the wild, even though seeds must germinate next to
one another all the time.

--
Mike.

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006 20:09:24 +0000 (UTC)
"Dwayne & Angela" wrote:


"Rupert" wrote in message
...

"Dwayne & Angela" wrote in message
...
[]
knew I had seen them somewhere although I doubt if some of those fruits
would fruit properly here, but I am new to all this stuff and am willing to
listen to any advice either way.
e.g..
http://www.directgardening.com/detail.asp?pid=5556
Not certain that they perform particularly well.
Somewhere it is suggested that if you are limited for space planting
different varieties in the same hole may be a solution.
This however sounds promising would they stunt each others growth though? if
this is possible what about apple, pear and plum in the same hole? I think
it would be pretty cool if they twined around each other.



As a lad for a while we lived outside of NY in the US, and had a
multifruiting apple tree. It was large and quite mature, and
produced a good crop. IIRC there were 4 or 5 different varieties,
the usual boring american 'Golden Delicious' sorts of ones.

Of course a radically different climate, long and very hot summers,
snow and cold winter to shut things down well. Lots of sun.

-E

--
Emery Davis
You can reply to ecom
by removing the well known companies

The site details that the hight of the tree is 10 feet, which suggests
that the rootstock is either Pixy or one of the Grizela series. These
dwarfing rootstocks for peaches and plums are relatively short lived.
The come into fruit quickly after 2 years compared with 4 years plus on
St Julian or Brompton.
Whilst with apples it is easy to produce cordon trees, for the stone
fruit such a tight pruning is not possible, so need the space to fan
the tree out against the wall.
Many of the main mail order people are based in the South of England
and produce to the local gowing conditions. The dwarfting apple root
stocks (M9 and to a lesser extent M27) do not fare well in northern
England, they don't like the colder wet weather. I am currently
reading a book by Michael Phillips entitled The Apple Grower - a guide
for the Organic Orchardist. He is a commercial fruit grower in New
Hampshire, USA. In the book he describes commercial growers eperience
the same problem over there. So to achieve the advantages of a
commercial orachd at 6ft tall they use a M7 rootstock, which is similar
in growth characteristics to the M111, then use an interstock of M9 to
obtain the reduced hight.
I am putting together a little plan to see how it fares over here.
Clifford
Bawtry, Doncaster, South Yorkshire