Seeking Some Unusual Apples Varieties....

[FB.]

Some nurseries will sell you scion wood for a modest price. It won't hurt to ask the nursery.

Certainly Blackmoor used to sell scion wood for about £1 and rootstocks for about £1.50-£2.

> Link here <

Sadly, I lost a lot of big trees this year, so I don't have much vigorous scion wood to offer anyone. I'm largely back to "square one".
Most of my losses were rootstock cankers and crown rots, presumably due to the harsh winter. I lost several M25 half-standard's and a handful of MM106 bushes. I also lost a handful of Pyrus rootstock half-standard pears.

[Mell]

Yes I usually manage to swap and be gifted scion wood, also gift loads myself. This is why I started the online scion exchange group and then there is the National Scion exchange each Feb. Useful resources.


If you want any scion of stuff I have let me know. How come you lost so many ? Is your land very exposed ?

Quite interested to see how one suseptable to bitter pit might do, my poultry are great at fertilisation and so far not touched by bianualism. Nice apple the Ashmead's Kernel probably won't graft a tree but put it on one of my bigger family trees
. I always find one (or more) I want to graft when we are displaying at apple days, I really should stop trying different apples lol

[FB.]

How come you lost so many ? Is your land very exposed ?

The soil is shallow and very poor. I live between several sand/gravel quarries; the topsoil varies from six inches to eighteen inches, below which is sand and gravel down to at least 6ft and allegedly the sand/gravel is as deep as 20-30ft in some places. No nutrients and negligible water retention.

Rainfall is very low - about 18 inches per year, mostly non-penetrating drizzle during the growing season.

The land is very flat and consequently windy and very sunny, which can be very drying in the summer.

Therefore, trees are always very stressed here. Without lots of care, not much will grow - even buddleia and blackberries struggle!
I have a 20yr old, 16ft Whitebeam that nearly dies of drought in most summers, yet its roots cover an area of several times the canopy spread due to its desperate attempts to find water during the summer.
Plants in this area aree 2/3 roots, whereas normally they'd be 1/3 roots.

Anyway...apart from the poor growing conditions:

Last winter, we had a very mild autumn, with no frosts until December.
Quite a few of my M25-rootstocked trees were still in full leaf in December and then suddenly got hit by the worst freeze in living memory - presumably rupturing their cells with ice crystals, due to them not being dormant.

Then we had the repeated freeze-thaw cycles as the sun melted snow in the daytime and more snow and frost added during night time.
The ground therefore remained close to saturation for a few weeks, giving the crown rot fungi a chance to attack the already frost-damaged trees.

During the summer, cankers came up the trunks from about six inches below ground, moving to about two inches above ground. The trees were girdled, or mostly girdled to the point of hopelessness. It all happened very quickly and without warning. Some tree collapsed suddenly, while others ceased growth and covered themselves with blossom buds - presumably for a "last gasp" attempt at blossoming in spring 2011 before certain death would strike them.

My conclusions:

M25 and MM106 rootstock is not suitable for soils that suffer periods of saturation.
M25 and MM106 rootstock is not suitable for areas that suffer from early or hard frosts.
They are very prone to crown rot/canker.


I have since planted a number of young MM111 rootstock trees as replacements for the M25's (my existing MM111's were not affected by the winter, so I doubled-up). Fortunately I had several MM111 trees "in reserve" and several ungrafted MM111 rootstocks.

[Mell]

Ouch that must have hurt Are you on the Fens ?

This might be of interest http://www.fspublishers.org/ijab/pas...12_NO_1/30.pdf

Are there any wildling local seedlings around that do well that you could try as rootstocks ?

[FB.]

I'm on the edge of the fens - probably where an ancient shoreline existed before the fens were drained. That might explain all the sand/gravel.

The typical fenland soil is not far away though - there is some great "fenland" farmland within a mile, with good fertile soil.

I have resorted to growing my own seedlings to try to get roots with enough tolerance of the conditions. I lose about 90% of my seedlings to a variety of problems associated with the difficult conditions. Those that survive only grw slowly, so it will be another few years before I have sufficient surviving seedlings of adequate vigour.

I'm working on "own-rooting" some very vigorous varieties. Bramley one of the few apple trees that grows well in this area, so I am working on creating a stoolbed of Bramley apple (and Hessle pear), for use as a rootstock in the future.

Of the cloned rootstocks, MM111 seems to cope best in awful conditions.

[Mell]

If you can get sight of a Geology map, it should show the lines of all the old shorelines, typiucally there are several different ones, as different periods has different drainage provisions.

I was lucky enough to converse a lot with the late Hugh Ermen about his work on own root apples and we are working on getting a lot of Leics cultivars back on their own roots. It might be the answer to the colour loss of Annie E who knows !

The original Bramley was not far from me , and has lasted very well as indeed many famous seedling trees do.

That was why I suggested wildinling seedlings, you could find mature ones which have proved they are hardy. Bardesley might be worth trying on its own roots if the original is a seedling, as it has survived very harsh conditions.

Not sure if you can get non Malling clonal rootstocks in the UK easily, but it might be worth looking at other ones more suited to sand & gravel.

If you have plenty of space the perry types as rootstock for pears might be worth looking at, they seem to last fovever !

[FB.]

I've tried sourcing other rootstocks, but they are not easy to find.

I've tried pears, but they are generally a bit too prone to canker - especially when under stress of poor soil.

There aren't many apple trees in my area, which is not a good sign. There are almost no pear or plum trees for miles around.

The few apple trees in the area are mostly old Bramleys on presumed seedling rootstocks. Despite being 50-100 years old or more, none are bigger than 18ft in height/spread.

I'll have a look for "wild" seedlings growing around the Bramley's.

In the meantime, I'll persevere with MM111 - which includes a Deux Ans and a Milton Wonder (both are apparently vigorous and very long-lived, like Bramley).

I'm also preparing a few more M25's as reserves, but they will be planted very deep - with the graft below ground. Who cares if they root themselves?

[Mell]

I rather thought other rootstocks might be, have you tried via FrankMatthews ?

Pears- one of the reasons I'm after winter banana is to use it as an interstock between apples and pear, it apparentlydoes this quite well, might be a future thought for you.

Good luck with the self rooting, I'll be interested to see how that goes.

I find old byways a good source of seedlings, old railways cuttings, canals, ancient pathways/road no longer used, if you have anything like that about.

Interestinly neareby (to me) Northants has few of its own heritageapples,I'm curious as to why, there seems little reason why not & we have found some interesting wildings there on which holds on to its fruit until at least March.

I wonder if other apple species might give you a better rootstock, assuming graft compatibility can be established. I expect most research has been commercially driven, but if you are looiking for personal satisfaction the criteria can be quite different.

Are micro envirionments something that might be feasible ?