Renovating an Apple Tree

In March 2014 the Food Garden Group visited Annie's garden at Kettering.  Annie had taken possession of the property only a year or so earlier and wanted to know what to do about a totally unproductive apple tree that for many years had been left to its own devices by previous owners.

The totally unproductive apple tree in March 2014

Some people might be tempted to remove the tree completely and put a young tree in the same spot.  Our fruit tree expert Max K examined the tree and concluded that it had a good root system and was basically healthy.  He suggested that it would be better to use its established root system and trunk, but prune it back and apply grafts.

The same tree after pruning and grafting in October 2014

Annie was a bit surprised when in September (a good time for applying grafts to apple trees is early spring) Max K pruned the tree 'to within an inch of it life'. At the end of the pruning exercise there were six stumps off the main trunk left.  He then grafted six apple varieties to the six stumps, 2 sticks ('scions') of the same variety to each of the six branches. This type of grafting is called top-work grafting or bark-grafting.  For more information about grafting see a separate post on this blog here.

The same tree in early April 2015

All the scions took and in April 2015 the tree began to bush up again (see above).

Max K then undertook the second step of this renovation project.  He removed the weakest scion of the two on each branch, so now the tree is still host to six apple varieties, but with one very healthy graft per branch that now does not compete with another one on the same stump.  He also performed some pruning to improve the tree's shape.

The same tree mid April 2015 after renovation stage 2

The photo above shows the result.  The renovation process is now basically complete.

From here on all the tree needs is for grass covering its root zone to be kept short or removed, compost added each winter and occasional pruning, so its size remains manageable.  When next season little apples appear after blossoming, Annie will have to thin them out and leave just one or two of each variety to ripen, but that is easy now because the tree is low.

It will be very exciting to get six varieties of apples from a tree that previously produced nothing!

Annie will let me know how the tree performs from here, so you can expect more photos and info added to this post as time progresses.

Thank you, Annie, for your photos, and many thanks to Max K for being so generous with his time and fruit-tree expertise.