Hello fellow enthusiasts!
First a bit of background:
I live in Chicago and grow as large a garden as space allows every year. A large Rose of Sharon died over the winter leaving an open plot for a plant of similar size. The plot is about 42" by 42" and is approximately 5'-6' from the foundation of my house. I could feasibly plant another tree within a few feet of this one. Apples are my favorite fruit and I would absolutely love to grow them, but I am having a great deal of trouble picking a variety suitable to my situation, dwarf as well as long storage and zone 5 hardy, but most importantly, self fertile as I don't believe I have the space for two trees.
Now for the questions:
With my space constraints, can I grow from m-26 semi-dwarf rootstock or do I need to grow from m-27 mini-dwarf?
Can I grow two trees, or is that asking too much?
If I cannot grow two trees, what would be the best variety for long storage, a sweet eating apple, that can be grafted to dwarf root stock and grows in zone 5, PLUS being self-fertile, if such a miracle tree exists?
If I can grow two trees, which two would be recommended with the same constraints minus self-fertile?
Thank you for your time!
Are you isolated?
In order to serve as a pollinizer the other apple tree could be hundreds of feet away.
I live in a suburban neighborhood and I didn't realize that one of my close neighbors has an apple tree in her back yard until a few years after I started growing apples.
I'd recommend Honeycrisp to meet all of your criteria except the self-fertile part. I have 1 each on M26 and M27. They grow very differently. The M26 grows many times the volume of the M27. If you go M26 you'll need to prune it quite a bit to control its growth. With M27 you'll be coaxing it to grow faster and you'll have to thin the heck out of the fruit because its much more precocious.
I think you could fit 2 M27 trees in more easily than one M26. When they talk about tree size, they talk about height usually, but the tree grows in all three dimensions. So a tree that is twice as tall is roughly 8 times the volume for example.
I live in Chicago, so it is quite feasible that there would be another apple tree nearby. What do you mean by coaxing an M27 to grow? How would I need to do that?
Thanks for your answer! Honeycrisp was one of the first trees I considered.
Now I am considering planting two M27's, a Spartan and a Honeycrisp. I read that if you angle them and prune the inner branches you can plant them 18" apart. Does this sound possible?
Thanks again.
I'm sure they'd be fine 18" apart on M27. By coaxing I mean wishing it would grow faster I guess. Perhaps make sure it has enough nitrogen and don't let it fruit the first couple leaves because they are apparently more prone to runting out if they are allowed to begin bearing real early (which they want to do).
I don't know anything about Spartan.
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