Selecting Your Apple Tree

Dwarf 5-N-1 Jonagold, Liberty, Yellow Delicious, 
Melrose and Gravenstein varieties 

Tree varieties: It's mid-April and the trees are starting to arrive at the garden centres so let's talk about selecting a tree for your yard. You may have noticed that apple trees growing in the wild are usually 40' tall, laden with branches and a huge ladder parked underneath. Thanks to root grafting today's apple tree is more manageable to prune and harvest. You will notice the graft at the bottom just above the ground where a non-apple root is grafted to the apple stock. The dwarf version, technically referred to as M7 and M9 rootstock will keep the tree around 8-10 feet high. The M26 grows 15' tall and is very popular in apple orchards. There are a multitude of rootstocks and over 7,000 apple varieties worldwide. Yikes! Speaking of grafting, one popular tree for us city folks is the M7 5-N-1 dwarf version. Firstly, the tree is grafted onto a rootstock and up to 5 varieties are grafted on the main stem. You harvest 5 different apple varieties growing on the same tree! The tree in the photo produced 20 apples in its first year. Also, because apple trees need another variety close by to pollinate and produce apples, the 5-N-1 meets that criteria! Keep that in mind if you are buying a single variety ie. a MacIntosh tree, you will need to purchase a second tree of a different variety to pollinate each other unless your neighbour has a tree. A nearby crabapple tree will also serve as a pollinator. Author Elizabeth Wright penned a dialect version of the popular apple rhyme in 1913: "Ait a happle avore gwain to bed, An' you'll make the doctor beg his bread; or as the more popular version runs: An apple a day Keeps the doctor away." Grow apples, my friend!