sleeping beauty

[Normans Mum]

Quick question.... I've recently planted a bramley apple tree, bare rooted. How do they (the suppliers) get them to stay in their 'dormant state' until they are planted? Mine came with a good root supply and what seemed like plenty of soil around it and the tree seems to have lots of buds (or promise of buds ) Just don't get how the magic can be suspended, really....

[Alison]

It's quite late to plant a bare rooted as they're naturally programmed to be coming into life by now. That said, the suppliers basically fool them into thinking it's the middle of winter by fridging them so they're sometimes a bit confused the first year although probably no more than the ones in the ground that thought it was mid summer a couple of weeks ago and then back to freezing conditions at the start of last week.

[FB.]

Maybe it was grown in a cold part of the UK where spring hasn't yet begun.

But the usual trick is to dig them up, then put them in cold storage; the same as supermarkets use cold stores for meat and veg.

The apple trees (or most fruit trees) will not come out of dormancy until they have had a certain number of hours below a certain temperature (winter) and then a certain number of hours above a certain temperature (spring).
It might be possible for them to remain dormant, in a cold store (just a couple of degrees above freezing), for a year or more.

On the other hand, hot parts of the world have a problem in that apple trees don't get the required cold to encourage dormancy, after which they can flower. Without dormancy, apples will not flower.

[Normans Mum]

Ah, of course. I didn't think about cold storage. : ) You learn something new every time. Thanks guys !