Apples thrive from zone 3 to zone 8. Although they are one of the most common fruit trees, they aren’t necessarily the easiest to grow. The selections here have been chosen because of their superior disease resistance, or in the case of the seedlings, because of their genetic diversity.

The seedlings Malus siversii are apples from their evolutionary center of origin in Kazakhstan. These trees should produce good quality eating apples and introduce very unique genes and traits into the north American breeding population.

Bud 118 rootstock is an 80-85% standard (nearly full size) very hardy rootstock. No support needed, extreme cold hardiness.

Topography and soil

Apples can be found in low lands, even in wet areas and actual wetlands. Certain wild seedlings and several crab apple species, Malus fusca for example, can live in wetlands. These may make excellent rootstocks for wet meadows or other plantable but wet locations. More commonly, apples are found in well drained soils. Mid-slope is generally ideal for apples so that late frosts can drain off and protect flowers in spring. They perform best on east-facing slopes so that the early morning sun can dry the fuzzy leaves as soon as possible. They photosynthesize more efficiently and therefor will generally be more healthy when planted on east-facing slopes compared to west-facing ones. Apples tolerate neutral and somewhat acidic soils, but they do not tolerate alkaline soils well.

Ecological niche & stratification

Apple trees are commonly thought of as early succession trees because they do not like shade. This is a misconception. They are a late succession tree of ecosystems with adequate mammalian disturbance regimes. They can live 300 or even 500 years, so it should be clear that they do not fit as an early succession species. They phase out as succession continues only when there is inadequate disturbance, which we see in North America and Europe due to the lack of megafauna. In late successional systems, apples are a primary canopy tree that can tolerate only moderate shade above them of 15-20% and maintain good long term production. The shade trees must be pollarded annually after they have put on their initial burst of growth. Apples require a full understory of woody and herbaceous plants with diverse growth cycles below them to maintain health.

Pests & disease

In order to maintain health, apple trees require significant management of the surrounding vegetation. A large number of basidiomycetes are able to produce growth hormones, vitamins, antibiotics and antifungal compounds and give these as functional molecules directly to the apple tree, which can’t produce them itself. In order for this to happen, the plant community around the apple tree must be capable of delivering photosynthate for the entire duration of the growing season to feed the basidiomycetes and keep them active. It is especially critical to have early photosynthesis. For this reason, lily and allium family plants should be planted in great quantity around apples so that the beneficial fungi become active by the time that apple trees need the antibiotics and antifungal compounds.

Management

Apples should be dormant pruned in late winter to the system you choose to use. Common pruning systems are central leader, modified central leader, open center, or espalier. I recommend “ecological fruit production in the north” by Jean Richard or “Fruit trees for every garden” by Orin Martin to begin to learn about fruit tree pruning. Commercial plantings of dwarf apples are pruned using other systems, but these are highly specialized systems with extreme up-front costs.