looking for G5 rootstock

[digon]

What about the Weiroot 720 rootstock which is supposed to only grow to 2m high. gb-online have them in stock. Would that suit your soil?

[Kier]

decided to order colt in the end worried about how fertile my ground is , from GB online just waiting for delivery

[Hereford fruit grower]

I'm continuing this old thread rather than start a new one on the same topic ... maybe I should have begun a new one but I don't know.

G5 rootstock has problems which weren't made clear to me when I bought my dwarf sweet cherry trees. From a well-known large retail fruit tree nursery. Naturally, they were full retail price, not bargains.

After extremely poor growth, and some deaths, I found a US state government website that says don't use G5 unless your soil is extremely free-draining. They didn't define this but I suppose they mean a sandy loam. A silt loam - despite being used commercially for apples - clearly isn't free-draining enough, even though it's much better than heavy clay.

My neighbour 2 km away on the same soil grows cherries commercially and they'll be on G5. However, like all new cherry orchards in Herefordshire, they're in tunnels. He hardly needs to bother about his rootstocks having wet feet.

I plan to replace my cherries by apples, pears or shrubs. Or maybe one or two more apricots.

I think the moral is to only use Gisela 5 if you grow your cherries under cover, or you have a really sharply-draining soil. On this soil, Colt would probably grow 5 m high, so you can't win.