Dwarf fruit trees

[clairebear]

Evening all,
I've just come across dwarf fruit trees and am really liking the idea of a cherry, apple or peach. Can anyone give me any info on these as I'm a complete novice when it comes to fruit tress. I wanted to grow them in pots and really didn't want anything that spreads too far or gets too large either. My other half is very reluctant (I think he think's the span of the tree is going to take over the limited space we have!) so please give me something I can use to persuade him otherwise
Also any varieties to look out for would be brill

[FB.]

The very act of growing in a pot is dwarfing as the roots are restricted in their ability to spread to gather nutrients.
Good pruning technique can also keep things surprisingly small.


Cherries and plums aren't ideal for pots as they don't really like being pruned (so can be difficult to keep within their allocated space) - and as the first fruits to ripen, they usually get eaten by birds eager for the first fresh fruits of the season.

Peaches often suffer badly from peach leaf curl - and need hand-pollination. Wasps can make short work of the soft juicy sweet fruit too.

I would suggest apples or pears.
Apples on rootstock M26 or M9
Pears on rootstock Quince A or Quince C

If you must have cherry, the dwarf rootstock is Gisela.
For stone fruits (plums, peaches, almonds) the dwarf rootstock is Pixy.


A guide to rootstocks is here:
> link <

Note that although M27 is considered to reach 4-6ft, it needs good soil, regular watering and no other plants nearby to steal the nutrients.
If you have M27 and don't care for it, it will be very small and unfruitful. I prefer M9 or M26 as they're tougher and better able to recover from a missed watering or broken branch.

I suggest avoiding the well-known varieties (the shop-bought types) as they tend to need spraying with chemicals to keep them healthy. Some prefer hotter climates than the UK.

Besides - Bramley, Cox, Gala, Golden Delicious, Braeburn, Williams, Conference are always available in the shops. Grow something which isn't easy to find in the shops. There are many lesser-known types of fruits which are easier to grow and much higher quality than shop-bought rubbish.
I would also avoid any triploids or tip-bearers as they can be difficult to manage in a pot.

As for varieties; well that'll depend on what you have available to you. You'll need to see what you can find on a suitable rootstock and then see whether that variety is worth growing.

[Llamas]

Not nearly as useful advice as from FB, but you can very easily get excellent varities on very dwarfing stock. Here is a photo of my mirabelle plum (the tree in the middle) which I bought from a nursery last summer. It'll never get overly large and I can fan-train it against a wall to save even more space. Fan-training sounds complicated but what I've done is very very easy, literally just gently bending branches and securing them to a trellis put in behind the tree. I've removed our trellis after a year and will use wires as they're less obvious. Easy picking, easy netting if I need to and I think wall grown trees look lovely, espcially when they're flowering!



Also! The little plants growing up strings in the bottom left-hand corner are HOPs, not another well known plant