Hi all, I had a much anticipated order from a french nusery come in, but one apple arrived on M7 not M106 rootstock which is popular in france but not what I ordered and I’m worried it may struggle here in rainy Ireland.
I’m tempted to bury the graft union to try to get it on it’s own roots but it’s maybe 5" up and looks like a bud graft. Would burying this put the original roots too low? Will M7 just sucker like crazy when fully buried?
Or does anyone here have experience of M7 in rainy areas like PNW?
The cultivar in question is Belle Fille des Salins, which I’m very excited to see. In the same order I received:
Reinette D’Amboulne (M9)
Reinette du Mans (M9)
All are super late leafing, late flowering disease resistant guard apples (winter storage apples). I plan to mess around breeding them with Court Pendu Plat, Crawley Beauty, and will even try Malus Trilobata for that super late flowering if they manage to hybridise.
But based on the descriptions Belle Fille des Salins should be the queen of them all, so I’d like to improve its chances if I can.
I have free draining, sandy, stony sometimes heavy soil, don’t know much more about it than that. It’s raining here year round, -5 to 25°C.
M7 has been widely planted in the United States. Before commercial orchards moved to dwarf rootstocks, M7 was the dominant semi-dwarf rootstock that was widely planted in commercial orchards. Trees on M7 will be a bit smaller than trees on M106. But M7 will do much better on wet soils and soil with poor drainage. M7 also is better at resisting crown rot than M106. If you are in a rainy area with soil that is always wet I think you’re better off with the M7 tree that you got.
For a chart that compares both rootstocks (and many more) look at this link.
106 is very productive in soils with adequate drainage, bearing sooner than 111. I think you are conflating rainy weather with poor drainage. 106 does poorly in soppy, heavy soils, but soil that is kept moist by frequent rain needn’t be a problem as long as good drainage assures adequate oxygen in the mix. .
Home growers can counter poor drainage by creating mounds as individual plots for their fruit trees, functioning like a raised bed in a vegetable garden. For some species, like peaches, this can be beneficial even in soils with decent drainage.
Thanks. I mentioned my site has good drainage. I also use small mounds. However it seems most soils here risk waterlogging in winter when there’s no evaporation and the rain load is heavy and constant for weeks at a time, even with usually good drainage.
The rest of my apples are M26 to the south, and M106 to the north, with other fruit trees in a half acre hedgerow-sheltered back yard.
I once made a deal with a commercial grower to use replacement rows as 50% nursery trees, where we split the extra trees if I paid for them and planted them and he took care of the rows how he would have anyway.
The site had high clay soil and the soil would be pooled up with standing water every early spring after thaw. By the time growth started the soil would start to drain and all his trees seemed to survive it just fine. He had trees on 7, 111 and probably 106, but I’m not sure about the latter.