Where do you get your trees?

Please tell us your favorite place to get trees, especially high value fruit and nut trees.

VanWell in WA is the most economical source of good grafted fruit trees. If you purchase a total order of like 20 trees, they will sell you them at a wholesale cost that is under $10 each. You can mix and match varietals to get your 20 total, so it is a great deal. Apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, apricots, nectarines.

Burnt Ridge Nursery is WA is great for more speciality fruit/nut trees. Their trees are more like $15-20 each. Good for persimmons, quince, hardy almonds, rare plums, rare pears, etc. Great nursery.

Fedco Trees in ME has good trees. More expensive but good selection of rare apples especially, and colder climate stuff as well (zone 3-4).

Double A Vineyards in NY is great for grapes and cane fruits. Huge selection, good prices (especially if you order 50 total grapevines and get wholesale pricing).

Nolin River Nut Farm for walnuts, pecans, hickories, etc. Not cheap but grafted nut trees never are. Excellent, personal service. Have to order like a year ahead.

Bay Laurel Nursery in CA for warm climate fruits. Diverse selection of fruiting trees, good for zone 7-9 growers.

love those trees! good luck!

used to buy mail order from Miller Nurseries but they were recently bought out by Stark Bros nurseries..which may be a good choice in the midwest..I plan to buy a few from them this year

Oikos Tree Crops, Raintree Nursery, and One Green World are a few others for fruit and nut trees.

IME Stark Bros is a mediocre nursery. Honest, but poor varietal selection and uneven quality on trees. I dont buy from them anymore. They have been around forever, my original Jonathan Apple trees came from Stark Bros in 1915. But now they seem to have rested on their laurels a bit, and I think there must be better quality nurseries in the Midwest. YMMV.

I find them .... Er .... Around.
Plant seeds And cuttings from friends

David

Just found Rhora's nut farm looking for pinenut trees. Seems to have a good selection, but this is not an endorsement as I have not tried them yet. Just an FYI. I am going to order in spring, and then report back. Thanks for the other ideas, very helpful.

My favorite nurseries are Burnt ridge, St. Lawrence, Oikos, and of course my own- Twisted Tree Farm.
Burnt ridge is very affordable and great selection
St. Lawrence is a little more expensive but has high quality trees, grown in a good way (as opposed to the typical industrial nursery model)
Oikos has unique trees but is expensive and has small plants.
Twisted tree farm is dedicated to living soil and healthy root systems. Check out my website if you like, I am just getting going here in my second year. I have lots of persimmons, chestnuts, apples, mulberries, and other plants all coming from outstanding genetic sources.

any good sources of fruit/nut trees from SEED?

Emily Aaston wrote:any good sources of fruit/nut trees from SEED?

If you want to grow seedling trees, I would recommend planting seeds directly. The reason is that transplanting causes a major disruption in the root system of the tree. Fukuoka talks about this in Natural Way of Farming, IIRC. For me, the benefits of grafted cultivars offset the negative impact of transplanting. But if you are not going to gain the benefits of a grafted cultivar, then I would go with directly planted seeds in order to have fully formed and vigorous root systems.

F.W. Schumacher has an amazing catalog of tree seeds. They now have a website, www.treeshrubseeds.com That would be the first place I would look for tree seeds.

I've been happy with fedco. I'm considering St. Lawrence nurseries which has nut trees from seed. Fedco didn't have mulberries this year and St. Lawrence does.

Like Adam, I've also bought high quality trees from both Van Well, and Burnt Ridge. Another good nursery located in California (no inter-state restrictions) is Rolling River Nursery. That's where I bought my cold hardy citrus that nobody else will ship to California.

A lot of my trees are commercially grafted from mail order nurseries, but I also I've cruised though backyards, parking lots, and botanical gardens, finding seeds from various trees that I think might be beneficial. Got some California Black Walnut seedlings from under a mature tree that is now in the ground at our homestead. Have also in the past collected seed off the trees of Carob, Black Locust, Mesquite, and Honey Locust. The carob was from the parking lot of the Palms Springs airport. Mesquite from a roadside tree near Phoenix. Black Locust from a university garden, and Honey Locust a combination of lawn shade trees, and store bought grafted (high sugar pods). Some trees like figs, pomegranate, and grapes were propagated by cuttings.

I've also tried my hand at home-grafting my own trees. Using the seed of store-bought fruit, I've grafted named varieties onto seedlings I sprouted myself. I've had success with apples, pears, and stone fruit. My personal best is 5 varieties of fruit on one single tree. An almond, peach, nectarine, Japanese plum, and an apricot; all on one tree. I've gotten scions off of neighbor's trees, Home Depot stock, and a few varieties I snipped when no-one was looking. I thought grafting would be hard, so I grafted way more than I needed. Grafting turned out so successful that I was giving out grafted trees to anyone that wanted one.

The one tree I've had total failure with is cherry. I've not been able to propagate any kind of cherry from seed. Tried stratification, planting fresh seed, even harvesting alimentary-processed seeds swallowed the day before. So, all the cherries I've planted are grafted commercially purchased stock.

I'm supporting the Arbor Day Foundation's Hazelnut project. They are working on a faster-yeilding, more resilient Hazelnut. http://shop.arborday.org/Content.aspx?page=memberships-hazelnuts

I killed my first shipment of twigs by failing to plant them before snowfall last year (broke my ankle the week they arrived), so I don't know how well they will do. That's part of the project - reporting on the trees performance.

Is anyone in our permaculture community doing anything similar? With fruit trees?

Cummins Nursery out of NY has an amazing selection of apples on multiple rootstocks. Good descriptions on the website as well.

http://cumminsnursery.com/index.html

Raintree out of MOrton WA has a good selection of unusual fruit and other trees. I also like Burnt Ridge and One Green World.
John S
PDX OR

i just purchased 50 trees from van well.

anyone interested in getting trees from them should:
get your order in EARLY. we have to scrap ~1/2 our order because we were late getting it in.
be flexible - i had to substitute a few trees that were no longer available (i had an inventory not more that 4 days old)

we missed the forest service order this year too
seems i need to get on things a bit earlier

edit: because i dont feel like i added enough content, here is the url to van well. http://www.vanwell.net/

Kelly Smith wrote:i just purchased 50 trees from van well.

for those looking to order from VanWell:
if you are looking to get commercial pricing (www.vanwell.net/sales/commercial-us-price-list) you MUST order trees in bundles of 5.
so 5 of the like cultivar on the same root stock -

if you order less than bundles of 5, you will pay the full price, even if you buy the require TOTAL number of trees.
This is due to them having to unwrap a bundle, pull your trees out, then re-bundle/label the remaining trees.

sadly, my order total will be ~10-20% higher than planned because of this.

i dont think it is van wells fault, i just think it isnt communicated very well; as i asked if i would get the bulk discount if i ordered a variety. i should have been more specific about the quantity of each tree i was ordering.

hope this helps.

Does anyone know what conservation grade means? They are cheaper, but I don't know if they are worth anything or not.

I sneak out with my bypass pruning shears on Sunday morning when all the Baptists are in church and take cuttings.

There is a nice fig tree down by the river that I have cuttings from, and there is a willow under the bridge, and then there is the plum tree by the place where I got my last set of tires. Snip-snip and I'm on my way home with a bunch of new tree starts to pot up.

As far as tree seeds, there are too many bald cypress in town for me to collect all the seed cones. I have half a dozen plastic shopping bags full of bald cypress cones stratifying on my front porch. If you want to start a bald cypress nursery and raise a few hundred trees, let my know and I'll be glad to send you some seed.

@John...

I would like a batch of seeds; I can swap some of my extra seeds for them. Thanks!

John, I recently started using your method of getting trees anywhere you can but something crossed my mind. By using so many identical clones, are we limiting intra-species diversity for future seed saving on our own properties? Or maybe Im being too tedious.
Anyways I have some bur oak,black locust,arborvitae, or horse chestnut seed to trade if you are interested.

Cold Stream Farm has good prices and selection for bulk trees. Order goes out tomorrow, will see about quality.

Michael Qulek wrote:Like Adam, I've also bought high quality trees from both Van Well, and Burnt Ridge. Another good nursery located in California (no inter-state restrictions) is Rolling River Nursery. That's where I bought my cold hardy citrus that nobody else will ship to California.

ooo thanks. yeah , no one will ship trees to me. !
so i have been started stuff from seed...getting trades, etc....
i have some bookmarks somewhere of another california nursery.

already mentioned but worth repeating, F. W. Schumacher
i am going to buy tree seeds from them when next i can

F. W. Schumacher

http://www.treeshrubseeds.com/newseeds.asp

John Elliott wrote:I sneak out with my bypass pruning shears on Sunday morning when all the Baptists are in church and take cuttings.

There is a nice fig tree down by the river that I have cuttings from, and there is a willow under the bridge, and then there is the plum tree by the place where I got my last set of tires. Snip-snip and I'm on my way home with a bunch of new tree starts to pot up.

heheehe =) funny

yes i do this too, well anytime or any place. i am very careful and gentle though. just a few snips. i carry scissors/ pruners around sometimes just for this reason, or in my truck

around here i suppose i am very lucky, theres so many spaces to gather plants/forage/take cuttings
but its mostly all feral formerly cultivated trees or wild/native.
but i have done quite a bit of this, taking cuttings from random parks, gardens etc, and even have had permission on a few private property land holdings to get cuttings.
theres a couple of places here i have permission to snip anything too....

i remember talking with this elder sweet gardener lady once about this, she admitted to doing this quite frequently...it started as i was eyeing her passionflowers and thinking snip snip in my mind!
she started saying really cool things...saying maybe some people see it as being a weird thing, but that we basically owe it to the plants/trees...like its a service we do for them...even if landowners/public park managers/whomever doesnt understand...we work for the trees/plants themselves and they actually like this moving around and being propagated...

ah stuck in my mind. i think she's right =)
and i was kinda surprised....that she could articulate it....

One general rule of thumb I use when I do this is to try to take a cutting from a place that will improve or at least not damage the health of the plant: a part that needed to be pruned. Almost everyone who I asked said yes. Some plants are also leaning over public sidewalks, in public parks, etc.
John S
PDX OR

for any other californians:

https://www.fourwindsgrowers.com/store.html

been looking over these and have a few bookmarked

Feminello Lemon

Owari Satsuma Mandarin

varigated pink lemon

other edibles

though with citrus it is possible to get good "true to type" seeds...so i have been starting a bunch of seeds of lemons, mandarins, and got some trifoliate seeds too...actually at this point i am better off starting stuff from seed, and its so much cheaper...

just found some of the anonymous store bought lemon seeds i have been starting sprouted =)
so got some new baby lemon trees...

and i have a LOT of tree seeds that have been over wintering that are finally just starting to pop
have to just stick with what i got for now...
but it doesnt hurt to look and online window shop, and thats one of the best california places i found

but thanks again for this info on this Rolling river nursery.
these people arent that far away from me and i have never heard of them somehow.
well "california close" its less than a couple of hours away !

https://www.rollingrivernursery.com/component/virtuemart/berries-fruiting-bushes

https://www.rollingrivernursery.com/component/virtuemart/

looks like they ship to outside cal too...and i like that they have a place at the arcata farmers market...sometimes i get down to the coast to go there...

leila hamaya wrote:but thanks again for this info on this Rolling river nursery.
these people arent that far away from me and i have never heard of them somehow.
well "california close" its less than a couple of hours away !

https://www.rollingrivernursery.com/component/virtuemart/berries-fruiting-bushes

https://www.rollingrivernursery.com/component/virtuemart/

looks like they ship to outside cal too...and i like that they have a place at the arcata farmers market...sometimes i get down to the coast to go there...

I have purchased quite a few plants from Rolling River and they were excellent to deal with. I would highly recommend them.