In central Yukon I have been growing apples, pears, sour cherries and grapes in pots and wood boxes since the 1980s. The technique allows me to grow a bunch of trees while being able to move them into insulated cold frames in the winter so the trees do not face the -50C temps we often get. Most of the containerized apples are on Siberian crab or Columbia. The biggest trees in boxes, 8 feet tall with trunks 4" diameter, grow into the ground during the summer as the boxes have heavy wire fencing for the bottoms which allow easy root growth. In the spring, we dig a depression, fill it with rich compost, bonemeal and hen manure then drag the tree box over that and let the roots feed all summer. Once the fruit and leaves are off in the fall we slip a sharp spade under the box and knife off most of the summers roots…then drag the trees back into the shelter for the winter. Watering the soil well before freeze-up in October. We do loose trees some years so I always have new ones coming along. Dwarf apple rootstocks cannot take the colder , winter soil temps of boxes. I use Cottoneaster and Saskatoon roots for the pears, grow the cherries on their own roots and the grapes spend winters in a root cellar and summers in cold frames.
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I am considering g890. What do you think?
Thats awesome. Im considering g890 but im not sure. Maybe i should go with b118
Thats what im going to do with potted fig trees.
Do you root prune ever?
So, pears graft to cottoneaster ok?
Make for a small tree?
(Or you use something like cottoneaster bullatus?) (Hollyberry cottoneaster).
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The only root pruning I do is if I move a container and it has roots into the ground…I cut 'em, and perhaps move plant to a larger pot if it looks like it’s required.
My guess is 890 would be good. I once left 10 plain 890 rootstocks in a 3 gallon pot for 2 years and most of them survived.