Apple trees in pots

[Llamas]

Years later.....(found this in a random google search for tips on pot grown apples)

An FYI about ballerina trees from Ken Muir, I think I'm right is saying that those can be a bit funny. They're essentially vertical cordons, or basically a straight up and down tree with fruiting spurs and not other main branches. They do fruit wonderfully, but are actually maintained by having been treated with a growth regualting hormome of some sort. So, in later years I've heard that some trees will still be fruit wonderfully and not growing enough to require any major maintainace, but others will have shrugged off their growth inhibiting hormome and be romping away like triffids. Anyway, I haven't actually grown or seen this happen myself, it came up in a conversation with a nurseryman (Crown Nurseries in Suffolk). FB will know. Hope your trees have been growing well and you're enjoying the joy of homegrown apples!

[southlondongardener]

I am growing a ballerina tree. It has not given any apples yet but it has only been there for 3 years.
It has apples this year. I think it liked the rain - I want more rain.

[FB.]

Years later.....(found this in a random google search for tips on pot grown apples)

An FYI about ballerina trees from Ken Muir, I think I'm right is saying that those can be a bit funny. They're essentially vertical cordons, or basically a straight up and down tree with fruiting spurs and not other main branches. They do fruit wonderfully, but are actually maintained by having been treated with a growth regualting hormome of some sort. So, in later years I've heard that some trees will still be fruit wonderfully and not growing enough to require any major maintainace, but others will have shrugged off their growth inhibiting hormome and be romping away like triffids. Anyway, I haven't actually grown or seen this happen myself, it came up in a conversation with a nurseryman (Crown Nurseries in Suffolk). FB will know. Hope your trees have been growing well and you're enjoying the joy of homegrown apples!

I'm not familiar with the hormone treatment which you mention, but I am aware that many plants are manipulated by using hormone supplements to "trick" the plant into doing things.

The true "ballerina" trees - of which there are only several with mostly weird names* - were bred from a McIntosh variant which was found to have a dominant gene which suppressed branching but instead caused fruiting spurs to develop all the way along the "trunk". The result being a column/upright cordon/minarette shape, with only occasional side branches (the long ones of which should be pruned-off in winter).

I suppose for other varities to be supplied as ballerina's, they may have been treated with a spur-promoting hormone which, unless repeatedly given, the tree would be expected to convert all those spurs into side branches as per its normal habit.

The true ballerina types tend to be grown on stronger rootstocks than most apples, since the large number of spurs tends to result in more energy going into fruit and less into growth. So they need MM106 or MM111 to make them grow like an ordinary variety on M26.

*
Names (some go by more than one name for the same variety):
Bolero/Tuscan
Flamenco/Obelisk
Telamon/Waltz
Polka/Trajan
Charlotte
Maypole (crab apple)

[FB.]

I am growing a ballerina tree. It has not given any apples yet but it has only been there for 3 years.
It has apples this year. I think it liked the rain - I want more rain.

Noooooo!

No more rain or I'll have to build an ark and I don't know if there'll be room for you.

Seriously, though - my fruit trees are on monster rootstocks in order to manage to cling on for dear life in what are usually drought summers on shallow, infertile soil.
They tend to have very big root systems adapted to gather what little water there is, from far and wide.

Too much of this rain and it'll be like Jack and the beanstalk.

Interestingly, though, I noticed that lots of local people who had fruit trees in their gardens which hadn't grown or fruited in the several years since planting ("runted-out") due to shallow, dry soil, have suddenly burst into life.
(The "trees" are te usual garden-centre rootstocks MM106, Quince A and St.Julien A - none of which cope well with soil which dries in summer and therefore will just sit there for years, doing nothing).

[southlondongardener]

Noooooo!

No more rain or I'll have to build an ark and I don't know if there'll be room for you.

Seriously, though - my fruit trees are on monster rootstocks in order to manage to cling on for dear life in what are usually drought summers on shallow, infertile soil.
They tend to have very big root systems adapted to gather what little water there is, from far and wide.

Too much of this rain and it'll be like Jack and the beanstalk.

Interestingly, though, I noticed that lots of local people who had fruit trees in their gardens which hadn't grown or fruited in the several years since planting ("runted-out") due to shallow, dry soil, have suddenly burst into life.
(The "trees" are te usual garden-centre rootstocks MM106, Quince A and St.Julien A - none of which cope well with soil which dries in summer and therefore will just sit there for years, doing nothing).

I live in south east london and seriously I hope it starts raining next week. I don't have the time to water my garden.

[FB.]

I live in south east london and seriously I hope it starts raining next week. I don't have the time to water my garden.

Is your garden not holding moisture?

A couple of millimetres sprinkling of well-rotted compost in early autumn and early spring, if done yearly, will gradually build up the water-retention and soil nutrients.
Plants will show excellent health and profuse flowering. Just go easy on high-nitrogen fertilisers unless you want things to grow rapidly.
Compost tends to have only a moderate amount of nitrogen (for shoot growth) but lots of potassiun (for flowers, fruit and disease resistance), lots of phosphorus (for root growth) and lots of useful "trace elements" which aren't present in synthetic fertilisers.

Also use compost or bark chippings as a mulch.

Consider planting drought-resistant and low-care plants suitable for difficult soils.

[FB.]

I should add that I'm not expecting to need to water anything much in my garden or veg plot this year.

The currant/berry beds have been seeing compost added for years, so the soil there is excellent; full of nutrients and holds just the right amount of water, yet doesn't waterlog.

The garden and my strong-rooted fruit trees are well-adapted to very low rainfall without needing any help from me.

As I said earlier: severe summer droughts are the norm here; we're the driest part of the country, so we "get used to it" and adapt to it, rather than try to fight it.
In most years, we're lucky to see more than a handful of days of penetrating rain from February until October. This time of year, most years, the topsoil and subsoil are usually bone dry down to 2ft at least.

[Marcher]

On another note on apple trees, do you need to have two trees for fruit? Someone mentioned this to me in passing and I wasn't sure if it was true or not. I was looking at some cheap apple trees in Wilkos and am quite tempted!

Yes, but in most towns there are usually enough apple trees around to do that without having to buy two.
One of my neighbours has two apple trees and a pear tree to pollinate my apple tree and pear tree (although the pear is partially self fertile - better to play safe). The neighbour on the other side has an apple tree too and a crab apple and some old plum trees - again I have a partially self fertile plum tree but they set more fruit with pollination partners.

Crab apple trees are often used in orchards because they fertilise cultivated apple trees but any pips will be barren and shouldn't grow into trees. I think crab apples are used because they seem to withstand poor weather whilst blossoming a bit better than cultivated apples.


Very few apple trees are partially self fertile, they're really just niche varieties - none of the common ones.
Some places offer "family trees" with two varieties grafted onto one rootstock and they should pollinate each other.

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you though. Look around your area and there'll probably be plenty of apple and crab apple trees. If they're young trees or if the blossom gets badly damaged in spring then they may not bear much or any fruit anyway, so don't presume anything is necessarily wrong.

Just keep them in good sized pots, decent compost and fertilise each spring and they should be fine. A good book is "fruit expert" by Dr Hessayon (I think that's his name), although it is a bit like a catalogue of varieties at times.

[orangepippin]

Ideally try the following a) to have apples which will be ripe at different times b) will pollinate each other.

I am not expert and have had only one apple yet (I do have trees planted but less than a year ago).

They say you will get better results from native apples eg cox, fiesta etc than foreign ones eg Granny Smith, Golden delicious.

I completely agree with the first line - and you can usually assume if you plant 3-4 apple trees they will probably sort out the pollination between themselves. Choosing different varieties with different ripening periods gives you more interest and choice over the cropping season.

I think your second statement is only partly true. It's certainly good to plant native varieties of course, but the provenance of an apple variety is not necessarily a reliable guide to how it will perform in other climates. Bramley is a case in point, such a very English apple that you would think it would not survive outside our shores, but it actually does very well in hot climates like southern California ... Cox's Orange Pippin on the other hand is quite difficult to grow outside of the sort of climate found in south-east England (fairly dry, but cool summers).

Granny Smith is difficult to grow in the UK, but Golden Delicious is a good choice for any sunny spot in the south or east of the UK, and doesn't deserve its poor supermarket reputation - when home grown it is a delightful apple.

[Marcher]

I wish Jazz apples were available to buy as trees, they're a proprietary commercial variety if I remember right and are sold as premium apples. They have a nice flavour, kind of like a very good cox's (not these poor ones we seem to be getting today).

That's why I got Elstar because it tastes a bit like a good Cox's to me but with softer flesh and I supposed to be easier to grow. I'm starting to wish I'd have picked a more disease resistant variety though, Katja sounds good (too English varieties crossed in Sweden to make a hardy one - I forget which exactly). I've never tasted Katja apples though so don't know what they're like.
If disease takes the Elstar out then I've found somewhere that sells good, fairly mature potted varieties very cheaply. These ones actually have fruit on them but are only around £13 (compared to £4 for bare root which will take a few years to produce or £30 for the same age tree at a major garden centre!).

I went the other day and almost bought a quince but didn't because they're only good for cooking. I don't know what the attraction of quinces over a "cooking" pear is actually apart from the smell in spring.

[Marcher]

I live in south east london and seriously I hope it starts raining next week. I don't have the time to water my garden.

I want it to be good weather for the Olympics. I wouldn't like it if we lived up to our rainy stereotype - the rest of the world already bullies us enough about that.
Up here it's done nothing but rain, but it's quite warm and humid too so the plants don't seem to mind much. My trees are too young to fruit (the cherry might next year with a bit of look though).

[DuncanM]

My 3 ballerinas (not "official" ones like FB mentions) are doing well. The two I've hard for 1 year are approx 1.2metres high in large pots with about 20-30 very good sized apples on them each. The other one I got from suttons 'lucky dip' a lubera branded one ive only had for a hand full of months but has a nice 6 inches or so of leaves at the top, something imsurprised at given it wasplanted well outside of spring. However it doesn't look to be as true a ballerina as the other two. Whereas they literally have nothing but leaf and flower forming buds on them, the one from lubera looks to have jad one or two small twiggy branches pruned off it prior to being shipped to me. I guess I'll have to see what the growth is like next year when it's had a full growing season.

[orangepippin]

I wish Jazz apples were available to buy as trees, they're a proprietary commercial variety if I remember right and are sold as premium apples. They have a nice flavour, kind of like a very good cox's (not these poor ones we seem to be getting today).

Yes, Jazz is a protected variety and not available for growing at home. I've never found a satisfactory alternative. That distinctive flowery pear-drop flavour is not really present in any of its close relatives, although you can sometimes sense it in a distant ancestor Kidd's Orange Red.

That's why I got Elstar because it tastes a bit like a good Cox's to me but with softer flesh and I supposed to be easier to grow. I'm starting to wish I'd have picked a more disease resistant variety though, Katja sounds good (too English varieties crossed in Sweden to make a hardy one - I forget which exactly). I've never tasted Katja apples though so don't know what they're like.

Katya, or Katy, is Worcester Pearmain crossed with James Grieve. Lord Lambourne has the same parentage. Katy is very easy to grow, the apples are pretty and have a nice sweet-sharp flavour if you catch them on the right day, but not in the same league as Elstar. Very good for juicing too (as are most varieties related to James Grieve).

I went the other day and almost bought a quince but didn't because they're only good for cooking. I don't know what the attraction of quinces over a "cooking" pear is actually apart from the smell in spring.

Quince trees have prominent spring blossom, attractive leaves and wood when the tree is older, and the fruits look and smell amazing, and is important in middle eastern and eastern cuisine. Not perhaps the best choice as your first garden fruit tree, but an interesting addition to any fruit tree collection.

[Faughan]

Info on Elstar, Jonagold, Abate Fetel, Morello trees

My allotments are closing down and need to move all my stuff asap. I bought several bare rooted fruit trees approx 2 years ago that I would love to keep. I have been searching information on much tall they will grow, if they are self pollinators (at the allotments there are lots of fruit trees so it wasn't a problem), etc. and got mixed information.

Does any one grow... Elstar apple, Jonagold apple, Abate Fetel pear and Morello cherry trees? How tall they are? Do they self-pollinate?

Thanks in advance!

[bearded bloke]

Could those with answers to Faughan's question please post in the dedicated thread here >>> http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ees_91272.html .. replies to the same query in several threads causes confusion, with this in Edit mind I'm temporarily closing this thread




EDIT : Open again