Kitchen Garden Forum

Our allotment allows the planting of dwarf fruit trees, which I always interpret as being either M9 or M27.

Interestingly, one of our plot holders went to Brogdale and asked for a tree to grow in our heavy clay soil and was recommended to plant an MM106-based tree on the basis that an M9 or M27 would "just sit there and do nothing".

Usually, you are asked to only plant M9 or M27 root stock when you have good soil conditions, but I was wondering what that means exactly. Would heavy clay constitute poor quality soil? I wouldn't think so.

I, for example, planted three M9 apple trees last year and they have done really well, while two pear tress on Quince C have also thrived. I did, however, dig down 2.5 feet, remove all roots, add sharp sand and also manure before planting.

Dear Barry,
Apples tend not to like growing in really heavy soils and so the advice from Brogdale is correct for the following reasons.

Apples are a long term crop and whilst the addition of sand and manure will help to establish the tree (which is a good thing) it is the vigour of the rootstock which will keep it producing over the 20-25 year lifespan of the tree.

Furthermore as the tree ages the mm106 rootstock will keep the tree more stable in the soft clay as the root plate will be much larger.

If water sits on your plots in the winter or after heavy rain apples will do less well as they really like drainage. A clay soil is considered to be a good soil for many crops but apples is not one of them.

I hope this clears up the mystery for you.
Regards Sally Wright.