Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Columnar apple tree update

My babiesAs you may recall, I recently purchased two columnar apple trees back in March. I bought one Northpole and one Scarlet Sentinel and they are doing just fabulous.

I haven't gotten around to planting them yet and, even though they are still in pots, they are healthy and looking beautiful on my deck. They are pretty much done flowering and are both covered with tiny fruit as you can see in the picture on the upper left. I might just end up planting them in larger pots and keeping them in containers so I can move them wherever I like.

Columnar applesFor those of you unfamiliar with columnar apples, the apples on these trees grow along the main branch and they pretty much grow straight up, although you can get them to spread a bit. Mature columnar apple trees average eight to ten feet tall and only about two feet wide. The fruit on them is normal size, but the tree itself takes up much less space.

So, if you have a tiny space and didn't think you could have fruit trees, even on a patio, you might want to give these columnar trees a try. If you don't like apples and have a hankering for peaches, you can get those as well. Too cool!

9 comments:

Robj98168 said...

I planted thre columnars, and they are doing fine as well. I am thinking of calling my columnar arae "Stick tree orchard". That columnar peach is interesting

hmd said...

Ahh! My dad bought me the exact same trees. I have a total of four. We have them in the back yard in 20 inch diameter pots (we call it the orchard). Apples tend to not do well here so we have our fingers crossed.

Cheap Like Me said...

Wow! We have 4 dwarf apple trees that Mr. Cheap is planning to espalier (I leave the fancy French gardening up to him). Ours are taller, but yours have the advantage of *fruit* growing!

Farmer's Daughter said...

Neat. We have a deer problem in our new little orchard, so had to do some crafty projects the other day to protect them. I actually just took pictures of them and plan to post soon.

Anonymous said...

I love these. What type of peach can grow like this?

cindy24 said...

Do you know how much fruit they produce when full grown? They look perfect for small spaces.

Crunchy Domestic Goddess said...

so cool! glad they are doing well. :) do you remember how much these trees cost?

Cave-Woman said...

Have you seen the "Fruit Cocktail Tree" that is sold by Honeycreek Nurseries?

I've been intrigued by this one....apparently they use a basic fruit stock and have grafted onto this stock six different fruits. They bill it as the "amazing one tree orchard".

I have very little space to grow fruit trees, but this one may be the way to go.

Does anyone you know have experience with this one?

Unknown said...

So after 5 years with the columnar apple trees how are they?? Do they taste good, are the good apples? I have heard varying reports on really how good of an apple the produce??