Dwarfism.

You may have bought a “semi dwarf” apple tree, expected it to grow into a small tree only to have it grow near as big as an apple tree on its own roots would grow.

There is a secret. Buy your tree—I suggest from Heritage Fruit Trees—and when you get your near 1m long whip of a tree—plant it, get out your secateurs and cut it 45cm above ground level. Whoa! Really? Yes, really!

Your sapling will have buds below the 45cm cut and these will sprout and these will become the scaffold branches from which everything else grows. This is the first step to keeping your tree small enough that you can spray, prune, pick etc from the top of your tree—with both feet firmly on the ground.

The trees will grow quite a bit sideways, allow 2m all around the tree. To control size—prune in summer. If you prune in winter the tree will put on huge new growth next spring and summer. Prune in winter for shape, in summer to keep the tree small.

Some apples will store well, some won’t. Mostly the late harvest types will preserve well, the very early apples won’t. You can preserve the fruit in various ways, apple juice/sauce/butter or, what the heck, as hard cider.

Don’t think you have room? Apple (and pear trees and grape vines) espalier well, grow them along wires against a fence, etc.



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Some apples have more Vitamin C than oranges! Go, get buying and planting!

Oh—one last thing, when you dig your hole to put the tree into make it square and above all DO NOT AMEND THE SOIL! If you put richly fertilised soil back into the hole why would the roots try to burrow into the native soil when they have this lovely rich soil in the hole? Your tree will be pot bound—in the bloody ground! Spread and lightly dig in compost and sheep manure all around the tree for a metre radius or more. Do NOT break up the soil in the bottom of the hole, leave it solid.

Roots will find the corners of the square planting hole help the roots expand out.

An apple tree will outlast you, your kids and your grandkids—what a heritage to hand on!

An orchard is a great place to hide bodies. No, not people you murdered! The remains of rabbits, fish etc. Dig a nice deep hole, deposit the evidence errrr the remains, fur, bones, offal etc. In cemeteries where apple trees grow near coffins have been found, empty except for tree roots!

Calculating chill hours is something that can be complex, or quite simple yet serviceable.

Simple, go to Elders weather website and plug in your township or suburb, e.g:

https://www.eldersweather.com.au/climate-history/tas/george-town

If you start with just Elders weather enter your location, hit enter then on the page of current weather that open scroll down until on the right you see “Full Climatology” and click on that. Scroll down until you see “[Location] Long-Term Averages” and look for the coldest month—generally July—and add up the mean maximum and minimum temperature and divide by two.

For George Town, Tasmania we get 12.8 + 6.9 = 19.7 / 2 = 9.9.

By referring to the table we see George Town gets a bit over 800 chill hours and nearly any apple tree will set fruit there.

Pears are much like apples. Be worth buying a French or Belgian pear (plus another to pollinate) like Beurre Hardy, Doyenne du Comice etc Different than Williams and Packham’s Triumph (an Australian pear.) These French pears tend to be meltingly soft and juicy.

Need a bit less in the way of chill hours, can be espaliered like apples.

You will need to plant two pear trees that can pollinate each other. Use the Orange Pippin site: https://www.orangepippintrees.com/pollinationchecker.aspx?a=0&v=1069

Beure Bosc is a great pear—needs to be grown against a north facing wall tho to get the buttery soft texture. Beurre bosc is added to the crush of a perry (pear cider) to give pear character to the finished perry.

Two other pome fruits: quince and nashi. Quince do not need much in the way of chill hours so they are possible in warmer areas. Quince have to be cooked. Buy two varieties, plant in the same hole.

With all these trees, apple, pear, cherry the terms semi dwarf and dwarf mean less than you think so use the 45cm header cut, close planting, summer pruning and training/espalier to keep trees to a reasonable size. You want enough fruit to eat, maybe preserve some etc, not truckloads you can’t eat.

Net fruit trees, birds spoil more fruit than they actually eat!

Full size and semi dwarf trees need to be staked in their first year—tie the tree to the stake low down, the trunk bending with the wind makes the trunk thick and stronger. Dwarf trees need to be staked their whole life.

Here is a nice journey through various websites.

I have bought three Antoinette cider apples. These come from Normandy and they seem to make such a nice cider that I am tempted to buy 3-4 more for making a really nice, complex straight cider, not to be distilled into Calvados. Anyway, irrelevant.

Working out a planting plan, what tree to go where, so I look up the pollination group (period the trees are in blossom) and find it is PG 2. Bloody great, my Granny Smith would pollinate it almost certainly—it is PG 3! Ideally they blossom together for optimum pollination and fruit set. Damn!

So go check, look in “Pomiferous” (great compendium of apple/pear info on the web at https://pomiferous.com/applebyname/antoinette-id-6850) and it reckons Antoinette is in PG1—no way could Granny or my crab apple trees pollinate any tree on PG1 (PG2–PG3 will see some pollination, blooms do overlap the periods for each group, so late Antoinette/early Granny blooms will pollinate. Not PG1 – PG3 tho!

So look though Heritage Fruit, no info, Woodbridge, no info. Search on combinations of “Pollination Antoinette” no luck. Antoinette is a French apple, translate my search term into French and plug it in. Hits, all evasive on just what I want to know. Sh, now what?

Ah, I remember a site jolly useful to me in the past: DPI NSW. They grow a lot of apples around Orange etc. So I trundle over to https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/horticulture/pomes/apples/additional-cide... and graph 2 gives me my answer: De Boutteville completely overlaps the blossom period of Antoinette!

Now—are the regions compatible? Back to Elders weather, plug in /nsw/orange and the chill hours are close enough so De Boutteville I will need to get—very few apples blossom that early, I cannot count on a compatible tree in/around the village.

Back to Heritage Fruit Trees I go—https://www.heritagefruittrees.com.au/de-boutteville-apple-tall/

and in 10,000 words they tell me little is known about it. Some French tree brought to the colonies and forgotten about in France. They say PG is 3 but I have field evidence that it blooms from the start of PG1 to the end of PG3, longer than the blossom period for Antoinette. So will get one of them, problem solved (I hope!)

(I see two other French cider apples, nicely overlap my Brown Snout blossom period so one of those I will also get. Plenty of room on my block!)

“Cider tree orders closed” so next year it will be.

Worked out how many rows of espaliered trees i need, 8 rows will do it, leaving a space 10m x 25m for a backyard—vege and herb patch, cherry and peach trees, butterfly attracting plants, decorative trees—maples and silver birch etc. Might add a couple rows of pinot noir grapes, eh? (see how they go with frost when breaking dormancy.)

Planning the rows. The block runs, very roughly, NS. Some trees break bud really late (Brown Snout and Dabinett cider appled for example.) Where should these trees go?

Later blossomers should be on the northern side of the orchard, early blossomers can go on the south—the sun will get through to them through the bare branches of the trees to the north. A late blossomer planted in the southern part of the orchard could have a lot of sun blocked by leaves on early blossomers.

Similarly, smaller trees will go in the eastern part of the row, older, bigger trees to the west. Morning light is good for plants.

6 Brown Snout—will plant two Dabinett, 4 Brown Snout in Row 1, 2 Brown Snout and 4 Dabinett in Row 2. Bees travel along rows not across them. Both these varieties are pretty self fertile but having a pollinator nearby will improve fruit set. Brown Snout and Dabinett can pollinate each other.

In Row 3 where the rest of the Dabinett will go I might plant the Pine Golden Pippin, also in pollination group 5, will pollinate the Dabinetts.

Brown Snout is a very distinctive apple with a brown russet ring around the blossom end of the apple, won’t mistake them for Dabinetts! The Pine Golden will likely largely be crushed with the Brown Snout and Dabinett to provide some nice acidity.

Yes, I am likely overthinking this massively!

There are things to be done to protect early blossomers from late spring frosts. Remove all much, spray weeds along the tree line, hoe to have bare earth along the tree lines. The soil will absorb and reradiate warmth.

Dunno, don’t like bare soil exposed to winter rain. Big rocks around the trees will likely do the job and the soil can be mulched. Fairly wet where the block is.