Discovery Apple Trees - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee

The Discovery apple tree produces an early season eating apple.

Browse our full range of apple trees or see the full variety of fruit trees for sale.

Characteristics of Discovery Trees:

Use: Eating. Sweet and crisp, with a fine flavour that has a touch of strawberry.
Partial Tip Bearer: suitable for cordons & espaliers, trained on wires.
Tree's growth habit: Average vigour. Upright / Compact / Spreading form.
Harvest: Mid to late August.
Store & ripen in a cool, dry place: Use within 2-3 weeks.

General description of Discovery:
Along with Beauty of Bath, this special apple is one of our favourite early cropping varieties. It has excellent texture and flavour: crisp, juicy and sweet. The taste is light, with a dash of fruity, strawberry like aromas and it is lovely when it is eaten from the fridge on a hot day. It is a pale yellow-green colour, ripening to red where the sun hits it.
Like most early season apples, Discovery doesn't store well, so we suggest that you estimate how many of them you'll eat in about 2 weeks and press the rest into juice to refrigerate or freeze.
The tree's compact size makes it ideal for smaller gardens. It is often slow to start its cropping life, but mature trees produce reliable yields.

Rootstocks:
All of our Discovery trees are grown on MM106 rootstocks, except for the cordons, which are grown on M9 rootstocks and bushes which are on M26..

Pollination Partners for Discovery:
Your trees are self sterile and their flowers must be pollinated to make fruit.
Discovery is in pollination Group C.
This means that they will cross-pollinate with other apple trees in pollination Groups B, C and D.
This tree's flowers have good frost resistance.

See our Guide to Apple Tree Pollination for a full list of partners & more tips about pollination.

Discovery Disease notes:
Disease resistance: Scab
Disease susceptibility: Can be prone to spider mite attack.

History & Parentage:
This tree was grown from a Worcester Pearmain apple by Mr Drummer, shortly after the Second World War. It was called Thurston August until J. Matthews began producing it in 1962. This fruit is often disappointing when you buy it in the shops because it isn't harvested at the optimum time and has a short shelf life.

How Apple Trees are Measured & Delivered:
Our fruit trees are delivered in up to 3 shapes and you can also buy selected apple trees as ready made cordons.
Maiden: This unbranched tree is the smallest starting size. You can train maidens into espaliers and cordons.
Cordon: Discovery trees are partial tip-bearers, so they are still suitable for cordons & espaliers.
Bush: This is a style of freestanding tree with a short trunk of about 60cms. It will grow to about 3 metres tall.
Half-Standard: This is a freestanding style that will grow into a full sized, "normal" apple tree, about 4 metres tall.

Notes on planting Discovery trees:
All fruit trees like a rich soil with decent drainage, protection from the wind and plenty of sun. Apple trees like clay soil, as long as it is not prone to bad waterlogging.
This tree is potentially suitable for organic growing in the more humid West and South of Britain, where scab and canker are more common. It is recommended for the North & Scotland because of its frost resistant flowers.

Prepare your site before planting:
Improving the soil in advance of planting your apple trees will help them establish quickly and be productive for years to come. After you have destroyed all the weeds and grass (use a glyphosate based weed-killer for tough weeds), you can dig the soil over. Remove any stones and rubbish and mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades.
You can do this on planting day, but when you do it weeks or months in advance, you will give the soil time to settle again.

Spacing Discovery apple trees:
Freestanding bushes: 12-18 feet (4-6 metres) between trees and rows.
Freestanding half-standards: 18-30 feet (6-10 metres) between trees and rows.
In general, allow 1 more metre between rows than there is between each tree in the row.
Wire-trained cordons can be planted in rows 60-100cms apart.
Espaliers need to be spaced at 10-18 feet (3-6 metres) apart.

Watch our video on how to plant a fruit tree for full instructions on planting a bush or half-standard sized tree.
If you are growing a maiden sized apple tree into a freestanding tree, a bamboo cane is enough support.
If you are growing a cordon or espalier, you will need to install training wires to support them.
Remember to water establishing apple trees during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Apple Tree Planting Accessories:
For bush and half standard apple trees, our tree planting pack includes a wooden stake & rubber tie to support the tree and a biodegradable mulch mat with pegs, which protects the soil at the base of your tree from drying out and stops weeds from sprouting.
We recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all new trees, especially if your soil is poorly fertile.

Read our full terms and conditions here.

Delivery: The basic delivery charge for orders of bareroot plants is £6.50 + vat, which increases to £12.55 + vat if you add any pot-grown plants, standard trees or fruit trees to the order.
Because couriers sometimes experience delays, we schedule delivery by week, not by day. Therefore, please plan your planting day for the weekend at the end of the delivery week or for the week following delivery, at the earliest.
We will email you the day before your plants are due to arrive.

*Surcharges to the Highlands and Islands still apply.

Payment: We do not charge your card until we begin to prepare your order for packing.

Guarantee: If any plants die within a year, we will replace them. We only ask that you follow our planting & growing instructions and sent us clear photographs of the dead plants in situ, so we can help to make sure that the replacement plants succeed. You only pay for the delivery of the replacements.

Please note that our guarantee is void if there is a hosepipe ban in your area: your newly planted hedging must be watered in dry weather while it is establishing. The best way to water is very thoroughly every few days: at least once a week if there is no heavy rain.

Our nursery has been supplying container grown and bareroot hedging plants to gardeners, farmers and town planners since 1949. Our website started in 2003, so we do understand the concerns that you may have about buying hedging plants online. If any of your plants are damaged when they arrive or if you are otherwise not satisfied with your order after you inspect it, please repackage it and contact us. We will give you a refund or send replacements and send a courier to come and collect the unwanted plants.

Misc	Pollinator, Spur Fruiting
Pollination Group	Pollination Group C
Fruiting	Early Fruiting
Type	Eating

	NUMBER OF PLANTS
SIZES	1-2	3-9	10-24	25+
MAIDEN	Out of Stock £15.49	Out of Stock £14.95	Out of Stock £13.95	Out of Stock £12.95
CORDON	Out of Stock £21.95	Out of Stock £20.95	Out of Stock £19.95	Out of Stock £18.95
BUSH	Out of Stock £23.95	Out of Stock £22.95	Out of Stock £21.95	Out of Stock £20.95
1/2 std	Out of Stock £25.95	Out of Stock £24.95	Out of Stock £23.95	Out of Stock £22.95

Discovery Apple Trees

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Discovery Apple Trees - Delivered by Mail Order from the Nursery with a 1 Year Guarantee