Apple tree suggestions

[Babru]

On another thread we were talking about apple rootstock etc, and I said I was looking to plant a couple of trees next year. Nickdub kindly suggested I outline what I'm looking for, for suggestions, so here it is, thought I needed a separate thread.

I've taken a few notes looking at the Orangepippin website and a few others, and have whittled possible varieties down. The heart says choose something heritage with a a lovely name, like Scotch Bridget or Bloody Ploughman, but my head says choose two varieties that are as disease-free as possible and produce the goods! I'm more practical than romantic really.....

My garden faces south, one tree will have full sun the other a bit less but still good. I'm near the sea so relatively mild, but we do get frost from about November through till April, sometimes later. Often quite windy (Edinburgh is a windy place), but no salt on the wind. We get plenty of rain. My soil is good, not sandy, and the bed will be well dug over and rotted manure added in advance.

I want two cookers/dual use that crop at different times. At least one has to keep reasonably, preferably the later one so I have fruit into autumn and winter.

I don't want big trees. I'd like to be able to reach them to pick easily once I'm old and decrepit (I hope never to move again, so would like to have these apples for the next 30 years), so probably M9.

I'm thinking at the moment of Grenadier and Howgate Wonder on both on M9. A friend in Edinburgh's dad has a Grenadier and it produces lots of good apples every year. It's also not too sour so doesn't take so much sugar to cook.

Other options are Fiesta, Sunset, Charles Ross, Bramley 20. No doubt other possibilities too.

Very difficult to choose! Any thoughts and suggestions welcome.

[veggiechicken]

Do you have other apple trees nearby as you need to think about pollination.

[Babru]

Hi VC, I can see a crab apple just over the wall in the next garden, but I can't see any others. I expect there will be some, as the gardens round here are about 80 foot and have plenty of room.

Oh, and there are hens three gardens away (I can hear them when they've laid), and I would have a guess that they would have apples too!

[Snadger]

I have Sunset which is a self pollinaing Cox derivative. Lovely Cox flavour and heavy cropping last year but for some reason it was very poor this year.

[Babru]

Do some trees not do well one year and not so good the next? Maybe Sunset is one of them.

[FB.]

In my experience, there is no perfect apple tree.

Every variety has one or more issues.
Some drop their fruit before it is ripe. Many more suffer from bitter pit than 'the books' say.
Some are biennial. Some suffer from codling maggots.
Some suffer from fungal diseases (scab, canker, mildew).
Some suffer from woolly aphids.
Some dislike certain soil types. Some dislike certain climates.
Some blossoms get caught by a late frost while others are frost resistant.

It's better to grow several different varieties so that when one or more are having an off year, something else might be doing well.

I'm not a fan of Fiesta because I have one and the fruit is usually flavourless or tastes of TCP and suffers severely from bitter pit. This year I plan to re-graft it with something else.

I also have Bramley 20 and it grows like Jack's beanstalk even though it's on M26 and rarely produces much fruit - it seems to be a pure tip bearer. With Bramley being so widely grown many people have problems with scab.

I like Grenadier. Don't worry about pollination for Grenadier because when I had one it was always a heavy and reliable cropper that was disease-free. Mine died because it was on a dwarf rootstock and was overgrown by ivy and weeds.

I had a Howgate Wonder but it died after a long battle with canker. It was on MM106 rootstock which doesn't do well in my soil so that won't have helped its ability to fight disease.

[nickdub]

cooking apples are sort of vague category because any apple can be cooked - I'd suggest Bramley for one as a good all round tree - crops well, disease free, strong grower so best on M9 or similar - I've got over 100 Kg from my two trees having done nothing to them at all for the last few years - keep until January no problem ( one of theses trees I grafted myself 25 years ago)

as for your other 3 trees you definitely need one form each season to maximize how long yo can eat fresh apples for ie
1) early apples :- George Cave is a good early (starts in late July) doesn't grow very strongly so probably best on MM106 or similar

2) mid-season apples :- lots to choose from, Sunset as mentioned is reliable but not quite as good quality as Cox, but Cox is a temperamental apple to crop - Fiesta is probably a good choice

3) late apples :- these are apples to store before eating and I'd say dual purpose, as you can cook with all of them too - remember to store apples you need somewhere cool, damp and rodent proof - inside a house is usually a poor option as its likely to be much too hot - 4 or 5 degrees is ideal and frost free. My favourite is Ashmead's Kernel - if you can grow these well and store them into January in proper conditions, then you probably will never eat a better apple anywhere :-)

PS with 4 different trees and neighboring gardens you shouldn't have any pollination problems.

[chrisdb]

I've grown a couple of the ones you mentioned:

Howgate Wonder crops heavily, keeps well, and in my experience doesn't really have any major disease problems. The apples are perfectly acceptable eating apples after a bit of time in storage to ripen. I did have a couple of other problems with mine though:

1. It was attacked far more by codling moths than the other apple trees I have, to the point that most of the apples had an added extra in there somewhere

2. It leaned so heavily that it required hefty supports to keep it upright. My parents, who also had a Howgate Wonder, had the same problem: even on a rootstock that should be capable of producing a self supporting tree (e.g. MM106), Howgate Wonder needed serious permanent support to prevent it becoming more or less horizontal.

I have a Fiesta and it's pretty good for me mostly. It doesn't really have many pest or disease problems, the apples are nice, and they keep well. It is a bit biennial, even with thinning, but a lot of apple trees end up like that. It's also not really a cooking apple, although of course you can cook with any apple if you really want to.

[chrisdb]

One thing to bear in mind if you want trees to last a long time is that I think very dwarfing rootstocks tend to limit the life of the trees compared to more vigorous rootstocks. Personally I've increasingly given up on less vigorous rootstocks since they always seem to have problems.

In my family's gardens:

Cherry: Gisela 5 - died, Colt - lived
Plum: VVA-1 - almost dead despite vigorous scion (Marjorie's Seedling), although to be fair I lost a couple on St Julien as well.
Apple: M9, M27 - dead (my garden), M26 - most cankered or dead (parents' garden), MM106, M25 - generally no problems
Pear: QA - runted, barely grown in 5 years, under 2m tall, tiny fruit, Pyrodwarf - much bigger fruit, more vigour at same time

And it's not like I didn't do everything you're supposed to do, like keep the ground clear around them, water them in dry spells etc.

Better to have fewer healthy trees than a load of weak, disease prone ones.

[veggiechicken]

I agree totally with the "you can cook any apple" advice.
All I'd add is that there's less to cook on a small apple than on the larger fruiting varieties. Regular thinning of the fruits would give you larger fruit but they still may not be as large as you'd like for cooking.

[nickdub]

some very good advice from others above - one thing I should add is, just because you only want to grow 4 trees that does not restrict you to only 4 varieties - its fairly simple to graft over one or two branches of a an established tree to another variety - all you need is a bit of commonsense a few simple things like a good knife, and the scions of the new variety - in the past various members on here have been kind enough to post spring prunings from their trees so we can all try something new for minimal expense.

PS now is the ideal time to plant a tree or shrub - best done asap, in case we get frosty weather.

[veggiechicken]

I thought it was 2 trees, not 4.

[nickdub]

probably my mistake VC - who's counting anyway ? - "go forth and multiply" the Bible says

[veggiechicken]

That's the polite version, Nick.

[Babru]

Yes, it's two trees - but there's a free crab apple over the wall for pollination. It has loads of little apples on it right now - very pretty too - so either it's self fertile or there are other apples nearby.