As far as I know, out of all the Geneva rootstocks the only one that was developed and tested for free standing trees was g890. Maybe g969. All others were developed for trellised systems. Large scale orchards with trellis systems aren’t worried about weak graft unions or leaning trees. In my opinion, if you want a free standing tree with dwarfing characteristics, your choices are probably g890, g969 or mm106. I have not done well with mm106 in my soil. I think it prefers more sand.
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M111, MM109 like sandy soils. MM106 wants perfect soil.
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Love crabapple jelly. Smucker’s used to make it years ago. I remember eating it on toast and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I was a kid.
Very interesting varying performance at different locations. I had a neighbor that lived right next door to me here and he had two M7’s that both had a lean to them as well. Probably the soil in our area. I was going over my rootstocks in my orchard. I do have one M7 apple tree that is not leaning. It has been in the ground for about 9 years.
What did you not like about the M111/M9? Or were they EMLA9/M111 as I have here. The M111 being the mainrootstock and the EMLA 9 being the interstem part.
Thank you for your info.
Mike,
It’s been nearly 30 years since I bought those M111/M9 trees from Bear Creek. Truthfull, I don’t recall if they were EMLA, MM or M.
EMLA and M or MM are the same, except that the EMLA selections have been cleared of viruses, and should express 5-10% greater vigor.
Most of the trees I had on M111/M9 leaned to 45 degrees or more, after 3-4 years, and had to be jacked back into upright position and propped up. Over the years, I’ve removed all but one of them(probably a dozen or more) - and it still has a concrete block shoved up against its trunk to hold it in a somewhat upright position.
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That is interesting. Now I have heard MM.109, M.111 and Bud 118 all lean.
Don’t forget about the M7 leaning badly as well. None of my M111 are or have leaned.
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Is Cummins completely sold out of rootstocks? The page was there for a while saying coming soon with a bunch listed, and…now it’s gone?
Has malus brevipes been tested as a dwarfing rootstock? A seedling dwarfing rootstock would be really nice provided it has other attributes desirable attributes as well. Soil adaptation looks like it’s pretty broad and good. Drought tolerance looks kind of iffy.
What is a FIL?
Arborists don’t necessarily know much about fruit trees, even famous ones like Alex Shigo, who once delivered a lecture at a NAFEX (fruit growing zealots) meeting that condemned the practice of topping trees, seemingly ignorant of the fact that all knowledgeable growers of free standing fruit trees end up topping them as soon as they reach the desired height.
So the ignorance of your friend is not something the person has to be ashamed of but experts on forest trees and what harms and helps them sometimes give the wrong advice to orchardists.
If a tree is going to eventually stand on its own “feet” it may benefit from swaying in the wind a bit to create taper in the trunk, thus strengthening it, but for a small fruit tree that is going to carry a lot of fruit weight in ratio to its anchorage, additional support is usually essential- that is, for fully dwarf trees. I have seen orchards on 26 without support, but a lot depends on the variety, soil and wind exposure. However, any tree with less vigor than that probably should be grown with support, and the issue has absolutely nothing to do with creating taper on the trunk. The support is going to be permanent, so trunk taper is a non-issue.
Commercial orchardists are often advised to use heavy metal conduit to support fruit trees grown on fairly vigorous rootstocks, such as M7, to keep them from blowing over on about their 5th year or whenever they bear their first heavy crop. The growers that do this usually just leave the conduit there which can become an annoyance when you prune the trees. If your saw accidentally runs up against one you can lose your edge immediately and the removal of an excess scaffold can become very difficult.
Father-in-Law
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That might complicate the matter 
.
Malus Brevipes has been used as a rootstock but never formally tested. There are a lot of species and varieties like that. I also note there are a lot of rootstock bred that was never widely published about. I think really the apple world has barely scratched the surface of available root stocks.
That is like China. They have had numerous Universities breeding for decades. Yet we have very little info available. Many EU countries have/had programs with nothing published widely.
Still a beautiful tree, even with the lean.