Red Windsor® Apple Trees

Red Windsor® Apple Trees: Eating, Early Season

Red Windsor or Red Alkmene is an excellent sweet apple with cherry red skin. A relatively small tree, it still bears heavy crops and the blossom is resistant to spring frosts. Due to its disease resistance, reliably cropping, and superior flavour, it is considered an essential tree for growing in humid, Western parts of the UK.

Browse our range of apple trees, or all our fruit trees.
Read our guide to buying apples.

Delivery season: Bareroot plants are delivered in late Autumn to Spring, about November-March inclusive. Pot grown plants, year round. 

Features:

• Eating: Sweet, juicy, aromatic
• Spur bearer
• Self fertile
• Pollinator
• Pollination Group C.
• Harvesting: Mid September
• Stores 1 - 2 months.
• Scab resistant
• Top variety for the West side of UK
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Growing Red Windsor Apples

Apples like rich, well drained soil, and will thrive on clay in locations that do not get waterlogged in winter.
A full day of sun and shelter from the wind is ideal..

Rootstocks:

• Red Windsor Maidens & Standards are grown on MM106 rootstocks. These are suitable for espaliers or freestanding trees.
• Cordons are grown on dwarfing M9 rootstocks.
• Bush trees are grown on M26 rootstocks. These are freestanding trees with short trunks. Their final height is about 3 metres.

Pollination Partners for Red Windsor

Your trees are self fertile, making decent crops without a pollination partner, but still perform best with one.
Red Windsor is in Pollination Group C, which cross-pollinates with other apple trees in Groups B, C and D.

Use our Fruit Pollination Checker to quickly find pollination partners, or Apple Pollination Guide to learn more.

Did You Know?

This tree is a sport of a 1930's German tree called Alkmene. The sport was cloned from a branch that appeared on an Alkmene tree in Herefordshire, 1985. Alkmene was previously known as Early Windsor in Britain and renamed "Sweet Lilibet" by school children in a competition in 1998. Red Windsor / Red Alkmene is essentially the same apple, just with a red flush pretty much all over the skin, whereas the original Alkmene's skin only has a few red stripes and patches.

The parent trees are Cox's Orange Pippin and Geheimrat Dr. Oldenburg.

Apple Tree Delivery Shapes:

Most of our fruit trees are delivered in up to 3 shapes (maiden, bush, and half standard), and you can buy selected varieties as ready-made cordons and/or potted mini patio trees: scroll up to see what's in stock. 

Maiden: Unbranched tree, the most basic starting size, which you can train into the other forms (apart from mini patio trees).
Bush: Freestanding tree with a short trunk about 60cm tall. It will grow to about 3m. Ideal for small gardens.
Half-Standard: A freestanding form with a trunk about 120cm tall. It will grow into a full sized, "normal" apple tree, about 4m. Ideal for orchards, easy to mow underneath.

Cordon: Red Windsor is a spur-bearer, suitable for cordons and espaliers.
Mini Patio Tree: Only sold pot-grown, these use a dwarfing rootstock to drastically reduce the tree's vigour and restrict the mature size. They are suitable for large patio containers, and for small gardens where a normal-sized bush or half-standard form won't fit.

Guide to Fruit Tree Sizing.

Growing Mini Patio Trees in Pots:
Dwarf trees do well in large containers of Rocket Gro Fruit & Veg Compost. During summer, it is essential to provide consistent moisture, without overwatering, and to feed lightly. 
Change as much of the compost as you can every three years.

Notes on planting apple 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.

Prepare your site before planting:
Improving the soil helps trees establish quickly and be productive for years. Preparing weeks or months in advance gives best results: fill the planting hole back up, don't leave it open to either dry out or fill with water.

• Destroy weeds and grass (use Neudorff WeedFree Plus weed-killer for tough weeds),
• Dig the soil over, remove stones, then mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades, unless you are on heavy clay:
• On thick clay soil, only dig over the soil to break it up. Apply organic matter as a mulch over the soil after planting.

Spacing apple trees:

• Freestanding bushes: 15-18 feet (5-6m) between trees and rows.
• Freestanding half-standards: 18-30 feet (6-10m) between trees and rows.

In general, allow 1 more metre between rows than between trees along the row.

• Wire-trained cordons: 60-100cm apart along a row.
• Espaliers: 10-18 feet (3.5-6m) apart.

• Watch how to plant a fruit tree for a bush or half-standard.
• To grow a cordon or espalier, you need to install sturdy training wires.

Pruning apple trees: 

• Maidens can be pruned in any style, including into bushes or half-standards.
• Bushes - start here when you buy a bush.
• Half-standards - start here when you buy a half-standard.

Accessories:
For bush and half standard apple trees, a tree planting pack, which includes a wooden support stake & rubber tie (a bamboo cane is enough support for a maiden), and a biodegradable mulch mat, with pegs, to preserve soil moisture stops and prevent weeds.

We strongly recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all transplanted trees.

Winter wash and greasebands are effective, organic pest prevention.