Heritage Fruit Trees

Rob — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:41:34 +0000

OUR 2010 MAIL ORDER SEASON IS NOW CLOSED
A big thank you to all our customers, new and returning. We have had a great year – sales are way up and it’s been raining cats and dogs with around 170mm for August! Who could ask for more …
… how about 87mm so far for September (Sunday 5th)!!

WE ARE STILL OPEN FOR RETAIL SALES HERE AT BEAUFORT
Fridays and Saturdays from 10 to 4 until the end of November.
Check location.

Rob — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:39:08 +0000

We sell our products by both mail order and on site at our Beaufort, Victoria property (directions at bottom of page). Generally the mail order range is smaller (to comply with Australia Post requirements) than nursery stock. Sizes, dispatch and opening hours are explained below.

MAIL ORDER STOCK

Fruit Trees

Our mail order range are 1 year old trees, generally called ‘whips’ in the industry. This is because they are normally simply a single stem. Sometimes they may have one or two short laterals (side branches). We send by Australia Post in secure cardboard tubes which helps ensure trees arrive undamaged. The maximum dimension allowed by Australia Post is 105 cm. Trees longer than this are cut to length. Trees may be shorter than this, from approx. 60 cm long, depending on variety and rootstock. We find the length of a whip does not affect the rate of growth in subsequent years and healthy young trees will reach their potential as long as conditions and maintenance are appropriate. We only dispatch trees we are satisfied are healthy.

Raspberry Canes

Canes are around 45 cm in length and like our trees, are dispatched bare-rooted during July and August in secure cardboard tubes.

DISPATCH

Trees will only be dispatched after cheques have cleared or funds have reached our account. Bare-root trees are sent by Australia Post during July and August. While dormant bare-root plants can survive in the packaging for more than a week, the sooner they are unpacked and healed-in* after their arrival the better. Keep packaged trees out of direct sun in the meantime. We notify customers by email when their order is dispatched.
*roots covered with soil or mulch to keep them moist

RETAIL STOCK

Medium Trees

These are 2 year old grafted fruit trees, available bare-root and potted, ranging from around 1.2 to 1.8 metres tall. Depending on variety and time of year these trees normally have laterals (side branches). In the industry they are termed ‘feathered’ trees.

Raspberries

These are available as bare-root canes during winter and in pots during the growing season.

NURSERY OPENING TIMES

2010

Fridays and Saturdays only, between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm.
From mid-July (Friday 16th) to the end of November (Sat 27th)

2011

To be advised

NURSERY LOCATION

‘Glenview Park’
297 Back Raglan Road, Beaufort.

Turn north off the Western Highway at the Shell Roadhouse in town, travel about 200 metres and cross the railway line, turn left immediately into Back Raglan Road, we are 3km along on the LHS.

Accreditation

Rob — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:00:10 +0000

PS27 Level of Accreditation for the Interstate Movement of Plants

Heritage Fruit Trees is now accredited to send bare-rooted plants to NSW, QLD, SA, ACT, TAS and of course, throughout Victoria. This includes trees, shrubs and berry varieties.

Unfortunately this does not include WA. Perhaps that should be Fortress WA! It is virtually as difficult to send our products to the wild, wild west as it is to import them into Australia. Indications are this will change – fingers crossed.

We receive many enquiries from WA suggesting that, unlike other states, there are no sources of heritage fruit trees. If anyone knows of any please let us know so we can pass on the details when asked.

Why Bother?

Many believe that nurseries only need accreditation to send material to WA and Tassie. In fact there are many circumstances where accreditation is required, and can be difficult or impossible to gain, to send plants around mainland Australia.

Important considerations revolve around particular pests including Grape Phylloxera, Western Flower Thrip, and Potato Cyst Nematode among others. Nurseries located close to outbreaks of these pests or within exclusion zones can have difficulty in gaining accreditation to export plants and in some cases buy them in. In some circumstances compulsory and costly testing and monitoring programs can make interstate plant sales prohibitively expensive.

Plants grown in soil, even though it is washed off before dispatch, may not be considered safe in some circumstances. Our decision to grow in professionally produced, sterilised, soilless potting mix was a big plus during the audit process leading to accreditation as was the properly constructed hard stand area - meaning pots do not come in contact with soil.

The Bramley Story

Rob — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:20:34 +0000

In 1809, the same year that Charles Darwin was born and Captain William Bligh was Govenor of NSW, a young English girl called Mary Anne Brailsford planted some apple pips in a pot. For almost fifty years, one of those apple seedlings flourished in the family’s garden at Southwell near Nottingham in Britain.

Original Bramley Seedling

By about 1856, the garden was owned by a local butcher named Mr Matthew Bramley. The son of a local nurseryman, Henry Merryweather saw potential in the prolific apple tree and was given grafting wood by Mr Bramley.

Grafted trees of the new ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ (often abbreviated to Bramley) were first sold in 1862. Remarkably, the original tree grown by Mary remains growing today in the same garden in Nottingham.

In the following 40 years, ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ became a common commercial orchard apple and remains today an important fruit variety in the British apple industry. It is still available in British supermarkets and demand continues for its cooking qualities.

The Bramley is a very acidic apple and hence its culinary qualities. When cooked, it makes a great apple sauce or baked apple. Additional qualities of this late-season apple include its ability to store well and retention of its flavour over a long time.

In the UK, the current annual production of this iconic British fruit is 80,000 to 100,000 tonnes. The annual harvest is sold as fresh fruit, used for commercial processing for various products including pies and crumbles, juice and cider.

The Bramley Seedling’s Timeline

1809 – The first Bramley tree grew from pips planted by a young girl, Mary Ann Brailsford, in her garden in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, England.
1846 – A local butcher, Matthew Bramley, bought the cottage and garden.
1856 – It was while Matthew Bramley lived in the cottage that a local nurseryman, Henry Merryweather, asked if he could take cuttings from the tree and start to sell the apple. Bramley agreed, but insisted the apple should bear his name – hence ‘Bramley’s Seedling’.
1862 – The first recorded sale of the variety is in Henry Merryweather’s book of accounts on 31 October 1862. He sold “three Bramley apples for 2/- to Mr Geo Cooper of Upton Hall”.
1876 – Fruits of the grafted apple were first exhibited before the Royal Horticultural Society’s Fruit Committee on 6 December 1876. They were highly commended.
1883 – Bramley Seedlings received a First Class Certificate by the Committee of the Royal Jubilee Exhibition of Apples held in Manchester in October.
1889 and 1893 – Bramley Seedling was awarded a First Class Certificate by the Committee of the Nottingham Botanical Society and at the Gardening and Forestry Exhibition in September 1893. The Royal Horticultural Society’s Apple Show awarded further First Class Certificates to the Bramley in August 1893.
1900 – Disaster struck when the original Bramley tree blew down during violent storms at the turn of the century. However, the tree somehow survived and is still bearing fruit more than 100 years later.
1914 – During the early 1900s the Bramley trees were extensively planted, with the fruit a useful source of food during the First World War.
1944 –The 1944 fruit census comprised more than one third of six and a quarter million Bramley’s Seedling trees in commercial plantations in England and Wales.
1989 – Bramley growers themselves are working closely together to expand their market opportunities and, through the Bramley Campaign, which was set up in 1989, are running successful consumer campaigns funded by voluntary subscription.
2003 –The Bramley tree was one of fifty great British trees chosen by the Tree Council’s country-wide network of tree wardens, as a special way to mark the Golden Jubilee and to celebrate fifty great years – one for every year of the Queen’s reign.
Today –The old nickname for the Bramley was “The King of Covent Garden” and still exists today in the New Covent Garden Market, where all specialist fruit wholesales can offer Bramleys to their customers for 12 months of the year.
The original Bramley apple tree continues to bear fruit to this day. Those few pips planted by a little girl in her garden in Nottinghamshire 200 years ago are responsible for what is today a £50 million industry, with commercial growers across Kent, East Anglia and the West Midlands.

References
“The Bramley: A World Famous Cooking Apple” by Roger Merryweather 1982 Newark and Sherwood D.C.
“Mr Bramley’s Apple” by Joan Morgan in “The Garden” (UK), March 2009 (Vol 134, part 3), pp 168-171.
“The New Book of Apples” by Joan Morgan & Alison Richards (2002), Ebury House, London.
The Bramley Apple Information Service

Organic, or not ….

Rob — Wed, 19 May 2010 04:39:59 +0000

I was recently asked if I would answer this question that appeared in a permaculture chat group. It raises some excellent questions particularly for those interested in organic growing.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

“A friend of <….> told him that a lot of the organic fruit trees available to buy are grafted onto non-organic and often genetically modified grafting stock. He knows of a nursery up in Shepparton that stocks non GM fruit tree grafts, but does anyone know of a place to buy any more locally? Would be great if people could offer any suggestions. “

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Crown Gall caused by Agrobacterium tumefaciens

There are two distinct issues:

organic vs. non-organic fruit tree production
genetic modification.

They are interrelated of course, but still separate issues.
The genetic modification referred to relates to a product used to treat Crown Gall. A very clear explanation of the disease and the treatment can be found here.

This product, Nogall, is clearly a GM organism and this means treated trees cannot be used for certified organic fruit production.

(WE DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT AND ARE CAREFUL TO SOURCE MATERIAL THAT HAS NOT BEEN TREATED WITH THIS PRODUCT.)

The issue of organic fruit tree production brings other considerations into play including:

pests and diseases that can’t be eradicated by organic means especially in a nursery monoculture,
crop-rotation/soil-health issues particularly in decades old stool beds,
plant nutrition in densely planted tree rows,
legal phyto-sanitary requirements for intra- and interstate plant export, etc.

Organic certification is generally, if not always, applied to fruit production rather than tree production. The only substantial concern for organic fruit growers is that their trees have not been treated for Crown Gall, because if they have been then the trees themselves have been genetically modified and can never be considered organic.

In other respects, after trees have been in their final location for up to one season, the minimum required for crop production, the impact of any prior chemical treatment would have disappeared. (Different considerations would apply to vegetable seedling production of course.)

Most, if not all, tree producers would follow some practices which would be considered non-organic in a certification sense. To my knowledge there are no growers small or large that are certified organic and I can think of none that claim to produce trees organically.

In order to make organic fruit production feasible some chemical use in tree production is probably necessary. An organic grower is unlikely to appreciate receiving stock infected or infested with a disease or insect pest or contaminated with weed propagules such as seeds or plant parts.

Wooly Aphid is a good example of a very persistent pest. Dwarfing rootstocks in the Malling series, these are the ones that start with an M: M9, M26, etc., are highly susceptible to Woolly Aphid. No matter what anyone says, you simply cannot control Woolly Aphid without some chemical use. In order to sell clean trees on M series rootstocks some chemical treatment during production is necessary.

There are other considerations. For example by growing in pots, a practice that is increasing in popularity mainly for environmental reasons (esp. in Europe and the UK), you avoid many of the soil management and phyto-sanitary challenges and therefore minimise chemical (and water) use, but you do need to use soil-less potting mixes and plastic pots, both requiring manufacturing and transport energy, and artificial fertilisers. These can be accurately applied to avoid run off, but they are clearly not ‘organic’, (even if they are produced by organic chemistry!)

On the other hand importing relatively large quantities of manure to either manufacture compost or directly top dress in-ground production areas takes a lot of energy as well. Producing and transporting pelletised animal manures is even more energy intensive.

All we can all do is keep trying hard to improve our methods so that we don’t negate the environmental benefits of producing food plants with sloppy and dangerous production methods. And be honest about what we do.

Choosing Rootstocks

Rob — Fri, 14 May 2010 05:30:04 +0000

One of the wonderful aspects of growing fruit trees is the huge variety of each fruit type available. This is especially true of apples. But, even more variety is possible through the selection of different rootstocks on which varieties are grafted. Rootstock choice determines tree size and vigour.

We use three rootstocks with dwarfing characteristics to provide a good range of options for home gardeners and orchardists alike. The size of trees on each rootstock is expressed as a percentage of a seedling apple (with a rough height guide in brackets). A seedling apple tree is one grown on its own roots. This is a more reliable measure than a specific height as it takes account of variations in variety performance and local conditions which both influence ultimate size.

M.9 : Height* to around 33% of seedling tree (±2 metres), trees produce fruit within 2 years. Trees need staking or trellis support.

M.26 : Height* to around 40% of seedling tree (± 2.4 metres), early producer. Ideal for espalier or trellis.

MM.102 : Height* to around 45% of seedling tree (± 2.7 metres), early producer, staking not required.

Big is not necessarily best!

Beginning in 1912 The East Malling Research Institute in England selected and began trials of a range of rootstock material. Clones included ranged from those with a very dwarfing influence through to those with an invigorating influence on the cultivar. One of the interesting features of dwarfing rootstocks is that the dwarfing influence does not extend to the fruit. In fact fruit on younger trees is often larger.

The resulting Malling series, identified by the letter M followed by a number have gone on to play a major role in commercial apple growing throughout the world.

In 1928 work began on another equally important series of rootstocks when the East Malling Research Institute together with the John Innes Horticultural Institute began a program to produce woolly aphid resistant material, an attribute not found in the Malling selections. The resulting trees were named the Malling Merton series (denoted by MM and a number).

Some practical ‘modern’ benefits of clonal dwarfing rootstocks
Dwarf trees need less water in a dry climate, less fertiliser in a world of scarcity, take up less space in a smaller yard, have a lighter impact on surrounding plants, are easier to protect with netting, are safer to maintain and pick, produce more fruit per square metre (trials show nearly 50 tonne per ha is achievable, ie 5kg per square metre! And that is after only 2 years in the ground), produce fruit much quicker than seedling rootstocks and allow more varieties to be planted in a given space.

Malling 9 (M.9, ‘Jaune de Metz’)
A chance seedling found in France in 1879, this is one of the most widely used dwarfing rootstocks in use today with many commercial orchards changing their entire plantings to it. It is used to produce small, compact trees for the home garden and for high-density commercial plantings (which can reach 4000 trees per ha).

Adaptable to a wide range of soil types, but is reported to be unsuitable for dry, sandy soils. It can tolerate a heavier soil type and wetter soil conditions. It is susceptible to Woolly Aphid.

Malling 26 (M.26)
Introduced in 1959 it is a cross between ‘Malling 9′ and ‘Malling 16′. Produces trees a little large than M.9 and a little sturdier, although, except in the most sheltered situations, some staking or support is recommended.

A semi-dwarfing or intermediate vigor rootstock, M.26 produces a tree that is larger than M.9, but smaller than MM.102. Somwhat susceptible to Woolly Aphid.

Malling Merton 102 (MM.102)
MM.102 is a cross between Northern Spy and M.1 produced by the East Malling Research Station. It produces a tree a little larger than M.26, but still compact. Fruit production is good and trees do not require staking. MM102 has resistance to woolly aphid.

*Plant growth is always influenced by climate, nutrition, water availability, etc,
so height figures are always only a guide.

Pot Culture

Rob — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:47:56 +0000

The practice of growing grafted or budded trees in the ground for one or two years then lifting them for sale goes back centuries, well before modern pots and potting mixes were developed.

The practice has a number of shortcomings. A substantial proportion of the root system is left behind and the bits that do remain on the tree usually have damaged ends.

If you do plant such a tree make sure to trim cut and broken roots cleanly.

Root development after 1 year in 3L pot.

Field production can also lead to the build up of pests and diseases including Woolly Aphid and Club Root. Crop rotation must be practised and chemicals used to attempt to control or minimise problems. Weather can dramatically affect production through water-logging or drought stress.

The biggest drawback is slower establishment after re-planting. Trees with an intact root system will undoubtedly recover and establish more quickly.

Root system after 1 year in 90mm pot - ready to bare-root

Pot production avoids these problems by making possible controlled root conditions in sterile media, efficient water use, less land requirement and the opportunity to minimise chemical controls. Pots are re-used, after washing, and spent potting media is mixed, in our case, with farm manure and green matter to produce a great topdressing for our pastures.

Trees grown in root training pots arrive with a superior root system undamaged by being dug out of the ground. Trees therefore have a complete root system ready to establish quickly and without damaged parts that might allow disease entry.

Trees not sold by mail order as whips (one yr old trees) are grown on in larger pots (pictured) for sale through the nursery trade and direct from our farm.

Straight roots, no girdling, no broken roots – you can’t get that in a round pot or a bare-rooted tree!

Collections Pricing

Rob — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:46:51 +0000

Our Collections include a discount on the full retail price of trees as follows:

An Apple a Day
includes 4 trees
Full retail - 4 @ 24.00 = $96.00  Our price $90.00

Cider Sampler
includes 3 trees
Full retail – 3@ 24.00 = $72.00  Our price $69.00

The Larder Filler
includes 5 trees
Full retail – 5@ 24.00 = $120.00  Our price $115.00

The price shown in the Shopping Cart may be a little confusing as it does not show the above prices. We cannot offer a discount on the Post & Packing component of the price. As the Shopping Cart calculator counts each collection as only 1 item we have adjusted the collection price to include the additional postage, as follows:

An Apple a Day
Discounted price $90 plus additional 3 items for postage @ $1.50 = $94.50

Cider Sampler
Discount price $69 plus additional 2 items for postage @ $1.50 = $72.00

The Larder Filler
Discount price $115 plus additional 4 items for postage @ $1.50 = $121.00

Prices on our paper catalogue and order form do not include a Post & Packing component.

Rob — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:53:34 +0000

Farm Shed and Garage Sale

Saturday 12th June

8 am – 4:30 pm

_______________________

297 Back Raglan Road, Beaufort

Desks, tables, chairs, filing cabinet, doors.
Power, air and hand tools.
Sun Prong aerator, chisel plough, roller and hay rake all to suit small farm.
Books, sundry household, garden and shed items.
Scrap-booking items.
Horse brushes and trophies.

Directions:
Turn north off Western Highway at the Mobil Roadhouse in town, travel approx. 200 metres and cross railway line, turn left immediately into Back Raglan Road. Glenview Park is 3 km along on the LHS.

Lunch Box Apples

Rob — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:35:20 +0000

There’s nothing worse than a giant green apple in your lunch box! For a start, it takes forever to eat – kid’s are very busy at lunch time. A big apple also takes up too much room in an average sized lunch box.

Here’s some that won’t end up in the bin:
Geeveston Fanny
Small fruit, purple-red colour, sweet taste, aromatic which makes it a great choice for lunch boxes.

Snow Apple
One of the oldest varieties and a parent of the Macintosh. Also called the Snow Apple due to its pure white flesh. A hardy and heavy bearing tree ideal for home orchards. A firm favourite with many.

Spartan
A great favourite with children being small, juicy and delicious. Great eaten off the tree. Bred from the famous Macintosh it has bright red skin and white flesh.

Worcester Pearmain
Rated one of the very best, introduced in 1874 Worcester Pearmain soon became an important commercial variety in England. Leave to fully ripen on the tree for the strawberry flavour and colour to develop and eat soon after picking.

Yates
A US variety selected by Matthew Yates of Fayette County, Georgia around 1844. It keeps well and its small size and sweet flavour make it an excellent choice for school lunch boxes.