Spartan Eating Apples

Spartan is a super little eating apple. It boasts a glorious red colour that deepens to a maroon red when fully ripe with whiter than white, crisp and fine flesh. Visually therefore it is tempting to eat and in practice its sweet, slightly vinous flavour makes it very popular. Cropping in October it is a relatively late eater. Its single, white blossom is very pretty and is at its best in the first half of May. Spartan is very much not so in that it is fulsome with its crop which it bears generously every year, rarely succumbing to any of the common apple maladies like scab or canker. It lives up to its name however in being hardy in frost pockets and grows well and easily even in the far North. A good choice, but you can also take a look at the rest of our apple trees if Spartan is not for you.

A City State for Spartans

Being an excellent pollinator, Spartan is a useful apple to include in an orchard where you may have triploid or other Groups B-D apples. Leave the apples on the tree for as long as you can because the flavour improves as the colour deepens. The apples do not store well because the flesh becomes woolly and soft. Keep them for up to a week only. Spartan juice is delicious and well worth the trouble so if you have excess fruit, juice them and freeze what you can. With its blossom early in May you could also surround Spartan with an array of bulbs to make for a wonderful spring display. Some Triumph tulips like Blueberry Ripple would look fantastic and continue with the fruity theme or go for the elegant Lily Tulips - White Triumphator would look lovely.

Features

Height: to 4.5 m
Use: Eating
Pruning: Spur bearer
Pollination: Self Fertile
Picking: October
Apple colour: Red
Pollination Group: Group C
Pollination: Excellent pollinator

Factettes about Spartan

This apple has nothing to do with Greece at all and in fact and unusually is the product of a formal scientific breeding programme carried out during the 1920s in Summerland, British Columbia. Rarely do we find apple varieties coming from the Americas to us but it has proved to be a fortunate move and the apple is now grown widely across the UK having been introduced in 1936. One of Spartan's parents is the American apple McIntosh which also displays the deeply coloured skin and white flesh that we see in Spartan. Its pollen parent is said to be Newtown Pippin.

Remove the turf (if any) in a circle of about 100cms (3ft) diameter. Soak the tree roots in water for about an hour before planting.

Dig a square hole that is about 20cms comfortably wider in both directions than your Spartan roots but only a little (maybe) 5 cm deeper. Do not plant less than 30cms from any wall.

Hammer in a tree stake off centre in the direction of the prevailing wind if the tree needs support (so the wind blows the tree away from the stake).

Loosen the soil in the bottom of the hole and add or take away until, when the tree roots are on it, the soil mark on the trunk is at the level of the ground outside the hole. Keep the graft (if there is one) at least 5cms higher than the surrounding soil. Tie the tree to the stake and position ready for planting. Wet the roots again, sprinkle Rootgrow on them and return the soil from the hole, firming it down every few centimetres.

Water well, mulch the circle in the grass and water weekly thereafter through the first summer. Use a tree guard if you have "vermin"

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, Self fertile, Spur Fruiting
Area	Frost Pockets, Scotland & The North
Pollination Group	Pollination Group C
Fruiting	Late Season
Type	Eating

	NUMBER OF PLANTS Inc. VAT
SIZES	1-2	3-9	10-24	25+
MAIDEN	Plenty of Stock£18.00	Plenty of Stock£17.00	Plenty of Stock£16.00	Plenty of Stock£14.00
BUSH	Plenty of Stock£27.95	Plenty of Stock£26.95	Plenty of Stock£25.95	Plenty of Stock£23.95
1/2 std Bareroot	Plenty of Stock£31.50	Plenty of Stock£30.50	Plenty of Stock£29.50	Plenty of Stock£27.50

Spartan Apple Trees

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Spartan Eating Apples

A City State for Spartans

Features

Factettes about Spartan