Dwarf Modern Apples vs Traditional Apples in Modern Orchards

[FB.]

Mind you, it prolly depends on the rootstock: I believe very vigorous ones take longer than dwarfing or semi-dwarfing ones to crop, as far as apples are concerned at any rate.

Contrary to what "the books" say: M25 is very precocious. It's a superb rootstock as long as healthy stock is purchased and as long as it is not put at risk of crown rot, to which it is somewhat susceptible. Its strong vigour makes it capable of outgrowing mild attacks of crown rot.

In fact, M25 is so precocious that it will fruit along the sides of one-year-old wood as well as on the tips and on spurs on two-year-old wood. It's actually quite difficult to stop M25 coming into early heavy cropping. Not only that, but M25 also seems to induce very high flower fertility where the M25-rootstock trees seem to be able to produce more fruit from the same number of blossoms than most other rootstocks.

I've sometimes said that in my area, I'd be delighted to have a competition against a "professional" orchardist, where I have trees on M25 and they have trees on their favourite "dwarf" or "semi-dwarf" - the "loser" donates money to start a local community orchard group.
I reckon I can get a M25 tree to crop earlier in life and produce more fruit of a better quality than any other rootstock.

[orangepippin]

I've sometimes said that in my area, I'd be delighted to have a competition against a "professional" orchardist, where I have trees on M25 and they have trees on their favourite "dwarf" or "semi-dwarf" - the "loser" donates money to start a local community orchard group.
I reckon I can get a M25 tree to crop earlier in life and produce more fruit of a better quality than any other rootstock.

In fairness to the professional dwarf orchardist, I think he/she would be the first to admit that in your soil and climate conditions, a dwarf orchard would struggle. However, given the right conditions, they would out-produce yours many times over. Now, back to my bed-time reading - Intensive Orchard Management by Barritt :-)

[FB.]

In fairness to the professional dwarf orchardist, I think he/she would be the first to admit that in your soil and climate conditions, a dwarf orchard would struggle. However, given the right conditions, they would out-produce yours many times over. Now, back to my bed-time reading - Intensive Orchard Management by Barritt :-)

Where the soil is perfect, dwarfs are somewhat more productive but trials have shown that their extra productivity is not as great as most people have been led to believe.
A few trials were once done at East Malling in Kent by the research stations in less-than-perfect (below average soil) and the best croppers tended to be the more vigorous rootstocks: M25 outcropped M9 by 25% per acre and MM111 outcropped M9 by 20% per acre. Even in the best "professional orchardist" soils, M9 was only about 15% more crop per acre than the vigorous rootstocks.

I think most of the "intensive" is just a desire to keep trees as small as possible with minimal pruning and liquid-feeding through the irrigation system. On the other hand, more vigorous trees don't need the feeding/intensive management and also don't need as many sprays to keep the tree healthy. It's standard procedure in commercial orchards to use calcium sprays nowadays because the dwarf rootstocks don't uptake enough which puts the fruit at risk of bitter pit.
More vigorous rootstocks - if not over-fed nitrogen (i.e. if not planted on the deep, fertile, moisture-retentive soils) - are much better at taking up all the plants nutrient needs; I rarely see any bitter pit on M25 but with MM106 and M9 bitter pit is a serious problem which regularly spoils a large amount of the fruit.

[FB.]

Some snippets of the trial data:

Productivity of trees in good conditions over a period of about a dozen years - cumulative weight of crop per square metre:

Best croppers:
M9: 26kg/sq.m
M25: 26kg/sq.m
Most others: 22kg/sq.m


Productivity of trees in below average (slightly dry, below average quality soil) conditions over a period of about a dozen years - cumulative weight of crop per square metre:

Best croppers:
M25: 26kg/sq.m
MM106: 24kg/sq.m (I find this rootstock can't cope with the very dry soils in East Anglia)
MM111: 24kg/sq.m
Most others: 20kg/sq.m (this includes M9)

[FB.]

So as you can see:

1. M25 crops as heavily per square metre as M9.
2. M25's cropping doesn't decline in less-than-ideal conditions.
3. M25 will crop as early and as heavily as a dwarf.
4. It is free-standing when established - its anchorage has been proven to be no worse than other vigorous apple rootstocks despite claims of tree leaning (a result of early heavy cropping of unstaked semi-mature trees with large high-up canopies causing excess topweight before the tree has re-grown the roots lost when transplanted).
5. It is vigorous enough to survive neglect, poor soil, droughts and storm damage - likely to outlive its owner.
6. It provides more nutrients to the canopy than dwarf rootstocks - giving some resistance to bitter pit and giving the scion an extra degree of disease and pest resistance, on account of better nutrient uptake.
7. It is more resistant to woolly aphid than M9 (but not as resistant as the similar-vigour MM111) and combined with higher vigour it allows young M25 trees to evade the worst of the crippling, de-vigorating damage (or death) caused to young trees on dwarfing rootstocks.

[orangepippin]

Your figures for dwarf orchards look very low to me.

So why are there no commercial orchards using M25?

[FB.]

Your figures for dwarf orchards look very low to me.

So why are there no commercial orchards using M25?

The figures are for bush-trees which were managed fairly minimally, to determine the difference in performance without the impact of intensive training/feeding/watering/spraying routines.

Commercial varieties are usually disease-prone and smaller trees are easier to spray, so a 1.5-2m M9 tree would be a lot easier to cover with spray than a 3-4m M25 tree.
But for most home growers with little inclination to feed/water/spray, I'd put my money on M25 to be superior - as long as it's not grafted with a sickly commercial variety.

[FB.]

Your figures for dwarf orchards look very low to me.

So why are there no commercial orchards using M25?

When you get your trial orchard up and running, humour me by trying a few M25's alongside M9's where tree management is fairly basic bordering on neglect, as would be the case for most home growers.
If you choose some precocious varieties on M25 and don't prune them (or if you must prune them, use thinning cuts rather than heading cuts) you'll be amazed at how quickly and heavily they will come into cropping.

I have a young (they were maiden whips at the start of last year) M25 Beauty of Bath and a young M25 Worcester Pearmain growing as 3-4ft cordons with lots of blossom - I'll take a picture later, and maybe further pictures during 2013 if they are successfully pollinated and produce a crop.

[FB.]

Picture taken only a matter of minutes ago, of my two M25-rootstock apple cordons. Each rootstock from a different source, just in case one was mislabelled.

Both tip-bearers because it is said that tip-bearers are difficult to grow as cordons, and that vigorous rootstocks are not for cordons either.

They were maiden whips at the start of 2012, so now in their third leaf.

Left is Worcester Pearmain M25 (with a slightly bent main stem due to aphid attack). Right is Beauty of Bath M25.

Spaced about 1ft apart. Both about 4ft tall. Lowest side shoots/spurs about 2ft from the ground because strawberries and rhubarb are growing underneath. The Beauty of Bath has a sucker just visible - the sucker being from just below the graft, rather than from below ground; I may let the sucker grow for a couple of years to form some burrknots and then cut it off to use for creating a new tree.

-

[orangepippin]

I compared your figures with some data for dwarf orchards in Ontario, which is towards the northern edge of the region for commercial apple growing. An average commercial orchard in Ontario would expect a yield in 9 years of 28kg per sq m, which your figures for an M25 orchard can only approach in 12 years. And that is just an *average* dwarf orchard, a modern one using the latest techniques would be aiming for almost double that. And then, if you move the whole lot into a more favourable climate area, such as the Loire valley in France ...

You would also need to compare your input costs. We could assume that M25 trees need less support (although they have a reputation for poor anchorage if allowed to crop too early) and less irrigation. On the other hand pruning and picking costs, i.e. labour, could be substantially higher. It is also possible that the ratio of class 1 fruit would be lower than the dwarf orchard because of more shading with the more vigourous trees.

There must be a reason that commercial orchards do not use M25 trees - and I suspect it is a combination of much lower overall yields, lower rate of return (i.e. years to reach full production) and higher management costs. I would certainly be interested to see a proper comparison done though.

[FB.]

I compared your figures with some data for dwarf orchards in Ontario, which is towards the northern edge of the region for commercial apple growing. An average commercial orchard in Ontario would expect a yield in 9 years of 28kg per sq m, which your figures for an M25 orchard can only approach in 12 years.

But the trial trees were only minimally pruned/trained to become bushes (therefore less efficient shape) and the trees were not given the intensive "force-feeding" and spraying.

It's not entirely fair to compared intensively managed trees - pruned, fed, irrigated and sprayed - against more normal "backyard gardener" style of minimal pruning, non-irrigated (rainfall only except in severe drought) and minimal spraying.

I'd be willing to bet that the nutrient content per kg of fruit from "minimally-managed" M25 trees is superior to "professionally managed" M9 trees because the professional management is aimed at fruit weight (puffed up with water) and the trees are on weak roots fed with synthetic fertilisers which do not supply the full range of micro-nutrients.
Hence if we look at modern food nutrient tables, we wonder how we can manage to eat enough nutrients. But the problem is that nowadays we grow for weight of crop, rather than for quality and nutritional value.
When was the last time you saw a grower choose their crop because of the high nutritional value rather than the weight of crop?

[orangepippin]

Commercial growers would not want to produce apples that are "puffed up with water", because that would make them unsuitable for long-term storage, which is a key requirement. Also they are not "force fed" (in the foie gras) sense, neither are they likely to be excessively sprayed (which costs time and money). They will however be planted in very carefully controlled layouts to maximise light interception and airflow into all parts of the tree - far more so than is likely to be possible with your minimally managed M25 trees - but surely that is a good thing, because sunlight is one of the key factors for achieving better fruit quality (as the dreadful grey summer of 2012 demonstrated).

It's possible that the orchard industry is wrong and your low-intensity M25 orchard concept may well have some benefits, which it would be fun to experiment with ... but I'm not convinced!

[FB.]

Well, I've yet to encounter a commercially-grown apple that is anything close to the quality and flavour of home-grown varieties - even when it's the same variety, such as shop-bought v home-grown Discovery apples or Conference pears.
Almost all the commercially grown apples I've eaten are hard, sharp, watery and lacking flavour - no wonder we don't eat our "five a day".
By picking fruit early and under-ripe they avoid many of the storage or pest problems, but severely lose out on the quality.

[SarzWix]

I've moved your discussion to its own thread, as it had little to do with the original happiness at the appearance of blossom on a pear tree. If you think the thread title doesn't quite cover what you're discussing, give me a shout and I'll change it

[orangepippin]

Although commercial apples have the potential to be better than home-grown (because they are properly fed and watered) I agree they rarely are, probably because they are picked underripe and then stored.

However I've just been trying some supermarket Jazz apples, new season from South Africa, slightly chilled, and then sliced with an apple slicer. They are stunningly good - crisp, very juicy, bursting with peardrop flavour. Certainly on a par with any of my home-grown varieties, and a real pleasure to eat.