I hope to get Mere Pippin going this year. From Nigel Deacon’s description & preliminary photo it appears to be a columnar tree. Or it has the potential habit if pruned accordingly.
Skillcult had something to do with its introduction to the States & is my scion source. He seeks (from what I gather in his taste tests on YouTube) something that hangs onto the tree long after ripening & likable eaten from the tree. Mere doesn’t seem to have that feature. Nigel wrote me to say he waits until March before eating any, after he has run through the others that cannot keep as long. By then it is no longer terribly hard (like Gold Rush, maybe) and not so sharp. Sounds good to me, so I hope to get a graft or two going.
In the meantime, my son-in-law wants to grow two columnar apples. Some of the catalog descriptions say 8 or 9 feet tall, even on MM106. They sound like semi-dwarf at best for size. Is that your (you all’s) experience?
Also, to re-state the questions at the top of this thread, any strengths or downsides I should pass on to him, besides the tutorial for pruning it to grow upward?