Apple Pollinator

[aes]

Evenin' all!

Just been going a bit wild at my local garden centre (following getting my first house which also has a garden!) I have spoken to the very nice staff at the GC who bamboozled me with pollination group facts etc. I still left none the wiser, apart from the fact I, that (I think she said) one group can pollinate the neighbouring group. For example a group 4 can pollinate a group 5 etc. Oh I am also £60 out of pocket and two apple trees in the trailer.

I bought a 2yr/bush M26 Newton Wonder and a 2yr/bush M26 St Edmund's Pippin, which I intend to fan out against my fence. Are these two tree's ok or was I duped or what should I do?! Also do crab apple trees pollinate 'normal' apple trees?!

This is something I have no knowledge of so your help is appreciated.

[Bayleaf]

Pollination Guide for Apple Trees from Buckingham Nurseries

[aes]

Thanks for that! I will check it out - hopefuly I will make sense of it all. I think the confusion comes from the fact that some apple varieties, depending on which website/GC you visit, are in different pollination groups.

[FB.]

You may find a past topic of mine to be of interest - before you take the plunge and commit yourself to buying some apple trees.
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ons_32270.html

My main advice would be:
Don't fall for the marketing hype of modern varieties. They get great reviews because the breeding stations need to sell them to earn a living. Modern varieties tend to be bred with commercial growers and supermarkets in mind - flavour and disease resistance are not important, since the trees will be heavily sprayed to keep the pests off.

Pollination.....

An apple tree needs another apple tree of a different variety to pollinate it's flowers. Apple trees that reach peak flowering at about the same time will be much better pollinators of each other than trees which flower at different times.
A problem nowadays is that most of the new apple varieties being released are bred from either Cox's, Golden Delicious, Worcester Pearmain or Blenheim Orange - meaning that there are an awful lot of brother-sister pollination potentials in the modern varieties. Brother-sister pollination partners tends to not produce such good fruit. Some can't pollinate each other at all. There are a few varieties (including Bramley) that have sterile pollen. They are not able to pollinate other trees. Therefore, a pollination partner for a Bramley will need yet another variety to pollinate it - or you'll need a self-fertile pollinator.

I would especialy recommend self-fertile varieties. They are much more reliable at producing heavy, regular crops. Commercial orchards bring in bee hives for their pollination. You will have to trust to luck that there will be enough bees passing through your area and transferring pollen to your apple trees. This year, pollination has been terrible. Only my self-fertile varieties have a normal crop. Some of my trees had thousands of flowers and did not get pollinated.

Talking about related apple varieties....

I have a Golden Delicious. I also have several varieties that are descended from Golden Delicious - Meridian, Pinova, Scrumptious. They would all be poor pollinators of each other.

I don't have a Cox's, but I have several varieties that are offspring of Cox's; Fiesta, Bountiful, James Grieve, Ellison's Orange, Winston, Laxton Superb, Tydeman's Late Orange. Again, they are all poor pollinators of each other.

I also have Worcester Pearmain -and several of it's offspring or great-grandchildren; Discovery, Winston, Red Devil, Scrumptious.

I also have a Blenheim Orange - and several of it's offspring/relatives:
Howgate Wonder, Annie Elizabeth, Edward VII, Bramley. Yet again, they would be poor pollinators of each other.

To take it one step futher.....
Apple trees use two pollination genes - one form their mother and one from their father.
If pollen carrying their mothers or fathers genes is deposited onto the flower, the flower will destroy it - to prevent in-breeding. That also means potential for some brother-sister incompatibility, due to recognising and destroying related pollen.

It all sounds complicated. In reality, there are often crab apples or apple trees in nearby gardens that can act as pollinators. Some varieties are self-fertile.


edit:

Newton Wonder and St Edmunds Pippin are both partially self-fertile. There should also be some overlap of flowering times, with Edmund starting a few days earlier.
Pollination should not be a problem.

You don't mention your location, which can have a huge impact on how successful the varieties will be.
In my area, Newton Wonder is crippled by powdery mildew (which is why I don't grow it).
Newton has a strong biennial tendency and is capable of growing into enormous trees in good soils. Personally, I regard Newton Wonder as being too vigorous for any kind of "trained" form. Even semi-dwarfing rootstocks will not fully control such a mighty tree. I have an offspring from Newton Wonder (Howgate Wonder) on a medium rootstock (MM106) and it easily outgrows an average variety on "full size" M25 rootstock. If you want to keep your Newton Wonder under control, you will need to make sure that it is correctly pruned.
The strong vigour and it's tendency to fight back after being pruned can exacerbate it's tendency towards bitter pit in the fruit - especially in young trees.

[aes]

FB - thank you for that input, is great to have acess to the mind of experts at the click of a button! I am in north east Scotland, well Laurencekirk to be precise, where the soil is heavy clay - well mostly, but my local whole sale has a 2 for 1 on 100ltr bags of compost - so I bought 20 to dig in! Hopefuly that should help along with some sharp sand.

[FB.]

Hmmm......North East Scotland is likely to be a very different environment to where I live!
The varieties that you have been sold are hardly "mainstream" varieties.. I view that as a good thing, since your local nursery must have given some thought regarding the merits of those varieties in your area.
Generally speaking, whenever I see a nursery with varieties that are obscure, it's because the nursery tries to stock varieties that are known to do well in that particular area.
St. Edmund's Pippin is a fairly rare variety that originates only about 20 miles form me. For it to have found it's way to N.E. Scotland, it must have a good performance.

There's a nursery near to me that includes (among other unusual varieties) "Ellison's Orange" and "Peasgood's Nonsuch" in their selection.
Odd varieties, you might think. I certainly wondered why, when I first visited the nursery some years ago.
But further research suggested that those varieties thrive in my area - so the nursery obviously knew what they were doing.

[aes]

FB - I was quite intrigued by the selection of fruit trees available, so so so many - yet not enough garden space! I am hoping that the trees do well, as at the moment the only thing that seems to grow well is the couch grass and thistles!! Now I'm off to read up on the rather bewildering affair that is pruning!

[Bayleaf]

Interesting stuff - having never planted, merely inherited apple trees when moving house, I have never known what varieties trees have been, or given any consideration to varieties/pollination.
One question though -
My garden contains 2 large apple trees - both cookers, almost certainly the same variety. They had been neglected when I moved in and set hundreds upon hundreds of very small, basically unusable, fruits. Over several years I have cut well over 50% of the wood out and they fruit well. (Although the soil is acid here, so they suffer from bitter pit to some degreee and do not store, and spraying with calcium nitrate is low priority).
The garden is about 0.4 acres and is completely surrounded by dense cypress hedges of similar level or worse neglect than the apples. There are no other apple trees, or crabs, in the garden and none within any reasonable distance on other properties.
They look and cook like Bramley's, though perhaps the taste is slightly different to commercially-grown Bramley's.

Variety? Pollinator? If it is any help, blossom is white with a pink flush to the petal bases as they age.

[FB.]

The apples could be any of a number of varieties, but Bramley is probably the most common cooker.
If they're getting well pollinated in most seasons, without a pollinator nearby, I'd be suspicious that they're Bramley.
I think that your best bet would be to snip off a 1ft length of branch with leaves and fruits, when your local botanic garden/orchards have an "apple day".
I could think of dozens of varieties that it could be, but the only way to answer would be to see it in real life.
Bramley, Newton Wonder, Grenadier would seem most likely.