Hoping not to beat a dead horse, here’s what I harvested today from a 6-year old Rox Russet on MM.111. See the linked post. The ~230 apples in the big bin (left) came off the tree. The uncounted number in the small (right) bin were drops, mixed in with some Liberty and Black Oxford. Probably ~300 RR in total. Then separately I picked ~50 off a 4-year old dwarf tree.
If you have a use for, say, 1500 apples (300 x 5 trees) or more, great. But some people find excess fruit to be a pain. Not me. We eat them ourselves, give them to friends, give them to the local food bank, and press them for cider. If 250 (e.g., 50 x 5) sounds better, stick with the dwarf.
So If I grow them on M111 I would be pruning them hard as I can’t do any of these things. I’m a reach up from a standing position and grab them with my hand capable person. that’s about it. Its a medical thing I would rather not talk about. I’ve brought it up before on the forum and I got some ableist nonsense. not looking to relive that.
I’m assuming you you’d get fewer if you pruned all the branches to reachable height (I’m 6’6 so lets say within 8 feet tall or so)
I empathize with your issues, and I don’t need to know more.
Given what you’ve said, I’d definitely recommend dwarf trees. There’s no point planting a semi-dwarf if you’ll need to prune it severely. And the same constrains that limit your picking will limit your pruning. In fact, it seems way harder to prune a 10’ high branch than to pick a 10’ high apple!
Dwarf trees have lots of advantages. They can occupy a small footprint (e.g., 8’ x 8’) so you can fit lots of them in the same space as a semidwarf. They can easily be kept under 10’ high. They can be highly productive, and they start producing quickly – your tree may want to set fruit the year it’s planted (don’t let it). You can harvest a very nice crop by year 3. The only disadvantage is that dwarf trees have shallow roots so need both reliable water and good support.
I’m nearly 73 years old, so I’ve given a little thought to eventually “downsizing” my fruit-growing activities. A dozen dwarf trees, spread across a mix of varieties ripening early / mid / late, would keep me rolling in dessert apples from August to November.
You can use 111 and keep it less vigorous by not pruning a lot of branches and instead tying branches down below horizontal with string and/or electric tape tied to stakes, or lower branches or even to the trunk itself. Don’t let the tree get above 10’. Once the branches become fruitful the vigor will decline and using this system that probably won’t take long. At first you allow a surplus of branches only eliminating any that much exceed 30% of the diameter of the trunk at their point of attachment to the trunk and rubbing or broken wood. Once the tree is bearing a good crop you remove surplus branches completely to create an adequately open canopy.
You will have dwarfed the tree in a way that speeds fruiting that then encourages dwarfing. Depending on the variety, it will take 3-5 years to begin getting significant harvests.
You’re getting what…5 leaves per apple and they still all ripen on time? What kind of sorcery is this? And nobody is commenting on it like that’s just the usual lol.
I don’t know how you did that but I’m really impressed.
M111 (Semi-Standard) 75% of standard size tree reaching a height of 15 to 20+ ft. Recommended spacing 15 to 22ft. Tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions. Drought resistant. A good selection for heavy, poorly-drained soils.
M106 (Semi-Dwarf) 60% of standard size tree reaching a height of 13 to 18 ft. Recommended spacing 14 to 18ft.
M7(Semi-Dwarf) 50% of standard size tree reaching a height of 12 to 16 ft. Recommended spacing 12 to 15ft. Adapts well to a wide range of soil types and climates. Has tendency to sucker.
M26 (Dwarf) 40% of standard size tree reaching a height of 10 to 14 ft. Recommended spacing 10 to 14ft. Precocious. May require permanent support.
Bud 9 (Dwarf) 30% of standard size tree reaching a height of 8 to 12 ft. Recommended spacing 8 to 12ft. Extremely winter hardy. Requires support.
M26 (40% of standard) would be a good compromise. At an average height of 12 ft it could be managed without a ladder (Pole pruner, picking pole). It might not need permanent support if it’s well pruned / thinned.
Here’s another example. Yesterday I picked 230 fruits from this Roxbury Russet tree (large bin on left). I also collected a bunch of recent drops (small bin on right). I picked the tree because (1) fruit seemed to be dropping spontaneously; (2) I brushed past the tree gently twice, and each time an apple dropped; (3) when I tugged a fruit, it released easily; and (4) the iodine starch test looked good – not no starch but definitely low starch; and (5) RR is supposed to ripen in New England in late Sept / early Oct; I’m located in far southern New England. But looking at the tree, it seems that there may be well more than 5 leaves per fruit.
I admit that the ratio for the Redfield trees pictured earlier seems lower but still maybe not <5. We’ll see whether these apples ripen on time, which would be in 2-3 weeks. Note that I did no manual thinning. I just trusted the tree to jettison what it could not manage; bugs and rots removed a bunch more.
They look awesome. Sometimes I see a picture of some fruit tree that makes me irrationally happy and those Redfields were one such case.
To answer the original question, I prefer semi-vigorous to semi-dwarfing rootstock. I don’t think it’s too much extra work to train the tree to mostly pedestrian height. I prune to as high as I can reach and the trees can grow another 2 feet during the season, which I then prune back to the same height.
You can also train them to grow more horizontally rather than vertically like Alan said.
On the other hand, supervising the drip-irrigation to make sure it doesn’t randomly stop working in the middle of a drought seems like a particularly cumbersome obligation. I sometimes take days or even weeks without supervising the trees and I don’t want a minor technical malfunction to end up costing me years of work.
The supplemental watering requirements are the main reason I prune semi-vigorous rootstock to dwarf height rather than use dwarf rootstock in the first place.
It’s interesting that those nursery vigor estimates of widely grown rootstock vary by 5 to 10% on different reputable sites. Relative vigor of the variety of couse also has a huge impact. The devil is always in the details.
Mike, does the area experience high winds where these apples will be planted? Winds were a major consideration for me in choosing 111. We just had TS Helene or whatever they called it. We got A LOT of rain and stong winds. On 111 I didnt have to straighten up a single tree. I would look at 39thparallel’s post and M26 or M7 based on wind strength. The last thing anyone would want is a uprooted apple tree.
The relative vigor of the grower is as important as the vigor of the tree. Also the importance of the longevity of the tree is relative to the longevity of the grower, or rather, the longevity of remaining years.
I’m 72 but still far prefer free standing trees to dwarfs for a variety of reasons, but if I was planting my first trees I might feel differently and want a tree that I didn’t have to wait too long to begin harvesting fruit, missing more than two seasons of harvest in ones remaining life is more an issue when you are in your 4th quarter.
If I want to taste a new variety, the quickest way to do so is to throw a graft on a vigorously growing bearing tree in my orchard. Sometimes I get fruit the following year and almost always by the 2nd.
The issue of space loses a lot of its relevance when you learn how to do a simple splice graft. Every one of my free standing apple trees eventually has at least 3 varieties on it. Apples are really easy to graft once you understand about 3 simple rules.
Yeah, this works well for me too. Very often there is fruit the next year. That contrasts with a 3 year minimum wait for a grafted stand-alone apple tree. I’ve waited 7-8 years for plums on standard rootstock.
It’s a digression, but I’ll tell a story. I’m growing Redfree on MM.111; it has been growing rather slowly but still produced modest crops. To test another variety, I grafted a scion onto an existing branch of the Redfree tree. Then I promptly forgot about it.
A couple years later, I noticed that the Redfree tree was growing very lopsided. It was like a tree with another tree growing out from the side of it – like a big guy with a really enormous left arm. This appendage was so vigorous that it was blocking the path I use to walk between rows of trees. So last winter I cut away more than half of the overgrown arm.
Of course, what was left continued growing. So now I’ll have to cut it again. And this year, the branch has a nice crop of apples. But I noticed that the apples on this mutant branch were large and russet – not Redfree! This sent me back to my records, which reminded me that I had grafted Egremont Russet.
I was amused to see that Egremont Russet could be so vigorous – and especially that it could completely outgrow the Redfree that was effectively serving as its inter-stem. If I can find the space I’m gonna plant Egremont Russet as a stand-alone.
nope, not particularly. If I end up with bud-9 all of my trees will be staked anyway and I individually cage all my trees to prevent deer damage, so that will provide additional support.
Examples pictured:
