Garden Centre

Monday, April 28, 2008

Apple blossom time

This is one of my favourite sights – apple blossom. It annoys me that I have to crane my neck to see it in my garden, because even after three years of remedial pruning, you can’t reach the apples in my garden without a ladder. Infuriatingly, the previous owners didn’t prune the trees for over a decade and ten years is a long time for a tree to grow unchecked! We actually reduced their height by nearly half, but they are still too tall and the branches we are working on are bigger round than my thigh, so there’s little hope of getting them any shorter.

There is a lot of confusion about “dwarf” apple trees. What makes an apple tree dwarf? Why would somebody want a dwarf apple? How dwarf is dwarf? Apple varieties must be cross-pollinated to set fruit. This means that apple flowers must have pollen from a different apple/crab apple variety in order to set fruit. This is why you have to plant two different apple varieties - unless you have a crab apple nearby because they pollinate anything.

The seeds produced in the apple will be a hybrid of both parents but the fruit will always be the same as the parent tree so you can’t plant seeds from an apple and have it bear the same fruit. To propagate a named apple variety, a branch from the desired tree is grafted or budded onto a rootstock. There are many “dwarfing” rootstocks that will reduce the size of the apple tree – some to as low as ten feet, some to around fourteen. Of course, you still need to prune them.

How tall are my apple trees? Twenty feet plus!

Labels: apple blossom, apple trees, pruning fruit trees

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:59 AM

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