That makes sense! Thanks so much.
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I wish I could hire you to help me prune a couple of times. I really need to learn how to get more efficient at pruning.
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Do you have to permanently stake the M9 rootstock trees?
I don’t typically need to stake M9 trees. The two I have now aren’t staked and haven’t been for 18 yrs. They’re nice straight trees. Easily controlled and about 10ft tall. There is a big collar at the graft union but it hasn’t caused issues.
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M111 work great in our heavy clay soil. I get loads of fruit every year on our M111 Honey Crisp apple trees. The biggest negatives I have encountered is that there can be a lot of suckers at ground level coming out of the roots…and also can be susceptible to borers.
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my m7 is now leaning at a 45 degree angle. I attached a close line to it to hold it vertical early on at 10 degrees but … I do have an unstaked M9 Or bud9? that is quite vertical.
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Planted roughly a dozen M7 about 1991…still have 3 of them. They lean from 3 to 30 degrees. But, unless someone is OCD about things being straight, it never was a problem.
This year i tried m111 and m111 with a bud9 intersteam. On the m111 with a scrumptious apple scion grew over 7-8 ft this year. And the one with an intersteam and same scion is about 4 ft tall.
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I started out with M111 and in 2020 switched to BUD9/M111 and G41/M111 interstems. All were benchgrafted and grown in 2gal nursery pots the first season. That first year the M111 trees often grew to ~6’ tall.
By comparison the BUD9 and G41 interstem trees rarely make it to 4’. They’ve grown fairly well in years 2 and 3 though. I also only have to support them the first year, a simple piece of bamboo and some garden tape. They’ll hopefully be free-standing going forward.
No fruit from any of these younger trees yet, deer and late freezes. Can’t help the latter, new fencing before next spring will hopefully help with the former.
So I too decided “no more M111 for me”, or at least not it alone. It plus the greater dwarfing interstem piece though, will hopefully provide trees which are free-standing/vigorous/precocious and not too tall. It’s a gamble and an experiment I suppose, hopefully I’ve rolled the dice well.
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Problem is when they lean 90 degrees, which happens around here with 7 on about the 5th year pretty often- falls over when it bears its first big crop. Often commercial growers plant it with a well sunk piece of metal electric conduit, tying the tree to it for support. I used to prune a small commercial orchard and hated when my saw grazed the conduits he just to keep the trees upright.
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I used m111 for my first two apple trees, after having so much work to keep them out of the clouds I completely top both last year and this spring on my King I grafted several crab varieties to try to spread dominance and slow vertical growth. This seems to be working. Next year I will probably cut back each major scaffold to achieve more growth below horizontal. Next year I will prepare the top of my Cortland as I did the King once I observe how the King does one more year!. My last three were g890 rootstocks from Cummings Nursery. Those have been well behaved and shown good growth and support grafting and shaping per skill cuts advice so I am very happy to have g890 here. It could be a climate or soils effect as to why in some places they don’t work but I can only say I’m glad I switched
Dennis
Kent wa
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I’ve never had any of mine lay over enough to hurt anything…but maybe I’ve never had a decent crop either. I sold my honeybees about 5 years after I planted the apples on M7.
The only decent cropper over the years has been on a seedling.
I meant to add that top working with crab varieties seems to make sense. If they go vertical I only get better cross pollination, at least that is my hope
Dennis
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We had a M106 disaster a few years ago and that alone caused me to avoid it in future years. Everything grafted onto M106 was late going into dormancy (which I have read can be an issue with it). We had ALOT of die back and some complete loss of nursery stock that year from Winter damage.
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I live in the area of major commercial apple production before the industry moved to the northwest and their rain-free growing seasons. It is still pretty big business here in parts of NYS, but the orchards used to be closer to the Big Apple and orchard land is also ideal mansion land- rolling hills with beautiful views. The seedling rooted apple trees often found on estates can live well over a century and with decent management become apple factories.
I do not know about the relative productivity of apple trees grown in KY, but I assume varietal selection is very important. When I started growing fruit here I selected varieties only based on flavor, but, over the years, reliable cropping has become equally important to me.
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It is amazing how fertile land can grow such good apples and then later grow big mansions.
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Fuji, Braeburn, Granny Smith==commercial varieties all==in 3 decades never have hit the 1 bushel per tree goal. So I don’t know that better selection of variety was the issue…probably should have opted for seedling rootstocks and the trees might be producing bushels and also be standing straight.
But to be fair, the soil is poor, and I’ve not done a lot to remedy that. But M7 grew fine to 10-12 feet, just never very productive and I have already interplanted whips between them and I’ll eventually take a chainsaw to the old M7 trees.
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At least the first two tend strongly biennial here and Fuji is very difficult to manage on a vigorous rootstock. I believe Granny Smith also leans biennial but I only manage two of them. Braeburn is just plain fussy and disease prone, but it does send out a lot of spur wood and should crop well every other year.
Are your trees is pretty good light?
On south facing slope…country road just below…full sun and far enough from valley to usually escape frost.
A little fireblight, but Braeburn has been a fine tree, just stingy in production.
Came from Miller Nurseries around 1991.
Do you give the trees any supplementary N?
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