What's up with columnar apples?

I've just recently (in the last year or so) seen columnar apples mentioned several times. I like apples. I grow apples. I'm sure they aren't "columnar" but I didn't really know what that means. So I did some poking.

If I have this right, there are two elements -- genetics and culture that go into this and maybe get mixed up. Either way, the apple tree ends up growing like a narrow column instead of a big, branching overhanging canopy, with fruits growing close to the trunk.

The Wijcik McIntosh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wijcik_McIntosh) appeared in the 1960s with a natural columnar form. Eventually they located the "Co" genetics and have found lots more stuff since. (https://academic.oup.com/treephys/article-abstract/40/9/1205/5825140 & https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9505010/ & https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/13/7/1084 &c.)

Now, people like them for fruit production in tight corners, but it seems like there's less fruit per unit footprint, so better for growing in town than on acreage.

Is that all right? What else is interesting? Do people make columnar trees out of trees without the genetics through pruning?

Here's an outside pop article on them: https://www.bloomingexpert.com/tips/apple-trees/columnar/

And a few quick videos:

Kara Ann wrote:Happy Harvest, Jay!
So many apples, such a wonderful dilemma to have.

After making this rhubarb chutney recipe: https://www.kitchenparade.com/2003/06/rhubarb-chutney.php
I had wondered if a little savory apple butter could be created with the same pattern of cumin / ginger / cinnamon / cloves + onions.

I supposed it could depend alot on the specific apple, but it worked great for my Sentinal columnar apple tree harvest.

Sidebar:

How long have you grown your columnar apple and how's it behaved for you?

Sidebar:

How long have you grown your columnar apple and how's it behaved for you?

Hi Chance -
I love the columnar apple, and would definitely recommend! When I bought it, I was in an apartment, and it was in a pot on the patio.
After 1 year, I rented a house where I could "farm" in the back yard.
It is 7 years old now and has been very healthy (and currently quite unhappy after a necessary but bad-timing-transplant to it's new home on the farm - keeping fingers crossed and giving it plenty of arnica and hoping for the best).

I did not keep it closely pruned into its one column shape once I had more space for it, but even with the limbs growing out, they curve quickly upward and are very strong.
The apples cluster well, (I did thin them to balance the load on the tree). The fruit holds tight to the tree, and for such a small footprint, it produces a LOT of fruit without creating  a LOT of shade on the neighboring plants in a relatively limited space. And the fruit is reachable - so I can harvest easily with feet on the ground.

I have attached a picture of it as a 2 year old tree, then more through the years until we pruned it back earlier this month and dug it up for the move.

Do you have any of the columnar trees?

Hi Kara Ann,

That's the best breakdown of an actual columnar apple in an actual garden I've seen. Thank you.

I've got seven bare root columnar apples pre-ordered for next year:

- Tasty Red Urban Apple
- Tangy Green Urban Apple
- Golden Treat Urban Apple
- Blushing Delight Urban Apple
- Scarlet Sentinel
- Golden Sentinel
- North Pole

Excited to squeeze 'em in some places. I'm also using pruning to keep a bunch of other fruit trees quite small, but it's nice to see that the columnar types don't require as much shaping or upkeep.

Thanks again.

I have also read a little about columnar apples, but I hadn't realized there were genetics involved as opposed to just 'training'.

Humans have been training fruit trees for hundreds of years judging from British gardens. I have an espalier pear tree which was trained commercially. Like so many things in permaculture, there are niche that need filling, and sometimes in some ecosystems, something that takes more maintenance is the better choice, even if it's less productive.

The biggest downside that I see is deer predation. I've allowed most of my fruit trees to grow higher than deer can reach. It's a problem for harvesting, but the alternative for me, would be a dead tree. That poor little espalier pear has had virtually every leaf eaten off it, despite me trying to protect it. This is a bad deer year - they're hungry and they're challenging fencing they left alone other years, and eating leaves they never ate before (Iris leaves as an example.)

If anyone has information on how us permies can do this sort of training ourselves, it would be great to put a how-to thread up.

Chance Lunceford wrote:
I've got seven bare root columnar apples pre-ordered for next year:

- Tasty Red Urban Apple
- Tangy Green Urban Apple
- Golden Treat Urban Apple
- Blushing Delight Urban Apple
- Scarlet Sentinel
- Golden Sentinel
- North Pole

If the places you have ordered have an online presence, would you mind helping a fella out and pass a recommendation?

I have limited space in my yard and the wife said I have to take down a tree if I want to plant another tree. I'll miss some of these Boxelder trees but I'd love to have some more apples that are space conscious!

They're available in a good few nurseries with online shops.

I ordered mine from these two after having good experiences with them this year and last:

Raintree Nursery
One Green World

I know Stark Bros had some on offer, too.

Columnar fruit trees are more common and popular in Europe, from what I've read on some of the forums.

You'll only find just over a dozen columnar fruit trees of any variety sold in US nurseries.

However, the breeder discussing Malini Subito, Lubera out of Deutschland, offers almost that many of their own introductions alone, including a columnar pear.

Other than apples, in the US of A, I've only seen two pears, one plum, and two peaches offered anywhere, and I scrubbed pretty hard this year looking.

Makes sense, given the relative sparseness and recency of urbanization in the US, but I'd love to see a great deal more work put into columnar fruit trees as a mechanism for easy and alluring introductory gardening and for those with only a patio or deck to grow on.

I've spread the love of gardening, and convinced many that they don't have a black thumb, by sharing the salad in a bucket method (put soil in bucket, put salad seeds on top, pat, keep damp, cut and come again), and columnar fruit trees seem another good avenue.

Here's how it could go:

"Here, I grew you these two apple trees. They're small enough that you can keep them on your balcony, and you barely have to prune them. They're three years old, and you're gonna get like 50 apples from each of them in September. Next year you're gonna get like 40 pounds of apples. Enjoy."

The breeder that was responsible for the Urban series of apples, Dr. Jaroslav Tupý, founded the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and they've done a ton of work on producing disease resistant apples for easy organic growers and backyard enthusiasts.

They created the Opal apple, if you're familiar.

Anyway, they've continued to develop the columnar apple genetics, and the Urban apples I've got on order are the products of older breeding work.

There are also a number of columnar apples from the Ballerina series, which were some of the original developments from the McIntosh Wijcik sport, and they're often the parents or grandparents of many of the new columnar offerings.

Recent introductions include more stonefruit, like the cherry Boas for example, which are true columnar trees rather than very narrow cherries which require a lot of pruning to maintain the columnar shape.

A lot of work has been done at the Geisenheim Institute on columnar trees as well.

Anyway, some cool stuff to know, ya know?

Hey Chance - what a great vision you have - I love the way you are "cross pollinating" with others to spread gardening to people who maybe never tried, or maybe did have some 'black thumb' experiences. These trees seem like a great way to do it, and their productivity is out of proportion to their footprint and effort!
Once you get your little spinney of columnar trees on hand, post some pics to let us know where they settled in.  I planted thyme and chamomile around the base of my tree, even when it was in a pot, and continued when it was in ground. Let's see what your imagination brings.

Also Timothy (looking for online options) I am glad to give a shout out and two thumbs up to Raintree Nursery for the quality and variety of what they offer.

AND - golly I love the idea of a columnar pear. I have espaliered ones, but am thinking the columnar is a great consideration also.

Hey Jay - about the deer - yeahhhhh here too - those critters are completely shameless in defoliating all the plants I love. And a small columnar tree would be very vulnerable to them. They don't even walk away when I holler. They just look at me as if to say that I am clearly not any type of threat, until I actively walk over and shoo them away. (Sigh. Well, hunting season is coming...)

I am sure I am very late-to-the-party on this, but just last week I found a bunch of Paul's info on 'Bone Sauce' as a deer deterrent from Sepp Holzer, (see this thread - scroll down: https://permies.com/t/239042/Defending-apples-trees-hares)  and have been reading about it in Sepp's Permaculture book. Since we have a statewide burn ban, I can't create the bone portion of that right now... but in his book, Sepp says that the burned bones ingredient in the formula can be substituted with Beechwood tar  (https://mydrxm.com/products/kerbl-tarpaste-beech-tar-1-kg)  and burnt hair/hide/pig bristles. Nothing that will offend a burn ban. So I am gathering the tar and the animal hair, rancid oil, slaked lime, cow manure and sand to make up a batch, and I am going to give it a determined try.  I will let you know how it goes for the espaliered fruit trees in particular!  It should be a good protection of vulnerable trees like the columnars.