Growing fruit trees in containers

So I've always been asked to do a video about my experience of growing trees in containers and we have quite a nice range. We've got cherries and apples and pears and it really makes a big difference to our diet here in the garden. We've got lots more trees, a much bigger range on the allotments but it's always nice to have fresh fruit in the garden. So I thought I'd just take you around the few trees that we've got here and show you how they're growing. So I thought I'd take you on a little tour of the trees and as you can see there are quite a few cherry trees. They're all in these galvanised bins and there's a range of different types but basically they're all a sweet cherry. And these are about 10 years old and you can see that the trees look a lot older than that. They really age at quite a rate by comparison with trees in the ground but that said if you don't have space for trees in the ground and we didn't at the time that we put these in they really have been kind of wonderful as a way of getting fresh cherries. Now by contrast the pear tree is doing really beautifully and it's much healthier apart from that bit of damage there that I did than the cherry trees and it's growing really big so even though I keep pruning it back it's not overly constrained by being in the container. So I say pear trees are really great and you get a fantastic harvest. The cherry trees maybe not quite so good. Now let me just talk about how I do these so basically about the top six inches of this is wood chip to reduce evaporation. Underneath the wood chip is a lot of this Marshall's Organic Extra farmhouse manure composted with seaweed and a few handfuls of bloodfish and bone and a handful of chicken manure pellets each year basically so quite a lot of food. These older trees unfortunately I'd have to really damage the roots in order to dig this out so there's just you know as much as I can squeeze in of the same mixture on the top surface but these get a lot more evaporation so when you're planting the trees really it's a good idea to leave at least sort of eight inches below the rim of your container which is what I've done and all the new ones. I water them each week with about 12 litres of water and in summer I might up that to maybe 18 litres but basically I water until I see water running out the bottom once a week and they do seem to be doing okay and then apple trees they seem to like it in here as well and I've just started transplanting more apple trees so basically as these cherry trees die on me and one did last year I'm planting apple trees and these are grafts that I did last year I'm really happy with them. Obviously I'm not going to leave that many apples on this tree. Another apple tree that I grafted in this much smaller container but again it seems to be quite happy in there and then we've got another cherry tree and this does better because although this is in a container it's sunk in the ground so it's cooler but also it's split the roots have split the container and so I've got access to the ground but they're still restricted and to the size of the tree so it's not grown anywhere near as big as you'd expect a cherry tree to grow but again a lovely harvest of cherries here and obviously because of the location of this tree you can't really afford for it to grow too big because it's in the middle of the back garden you don't really have any more space for trees in this garden you've got that perpetual kale which is kind of the size of a tree but that is the kale patch and there's actually quite a few more perpetual kales at the back there growing and then just put this new cherry tree in here which replaced an apple tree and this isn't in a container but it is fairly constrained in terms of the amount of water it gets because it's in the middle of the patio but again pretty fabulous proper cherries on this one and I suspect that you know this really is the way to grow cherries and just to prune this tree so that it doesn't grow too big so basically a bit like a cordon to my thing. The only other perennials that I've got in the in the garden in containers are these blueberries and they seem to do pretty well I think they like it in these bigger pots they were originally in these and then a bit too small they got a little bit too hot in there and again these are mulched with wood chip. When I planted these trees in the containers I just used tree and shrub compost and as I said each year I just put in quite a bit of effectively farmyard manure but the Marshall's organic extra it's just a dried concentrated form which is just ideal for getting as much goodness as possible into a smaller space as possible which is kind of what you need for these trees. So I hope you like this quick video my name's Steve this is the Seaside Allotment channel and I'll see you soon.