Forum home Fruit & veg
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Poorly dwarf apple tree

I uncovered a dwarf apple tree, last year growing amongst brambles on the allotment. It's about 3ft tall, variety unknown. Sorry, I don't have pics. It was given a good mulch of muck in the spring and left to fruit/grow. It only produced one apple which has black spots, as do the leaves. I planted new fruit tree's near by, these are healthy. Q is...what's wrong with the apple tree...can it be treated or would it be better to replace it? What I don't want to happen is if I keep it, the healthy fruit tree's will develop the same problem and I'll loose them all.

Posts

  • fidgetbonesfidgetbones Posts: 17,617

    Is it a seedling or is there a graft point?

  • Zoomer44Zoomer44 Posts: 3,267
    Can you give me the name of a good fungicide.



    I don't think it's grafted.
  • Steve 309Steve 309 Posts: 2,753

    All cultivated apple trees are grafted, Zoomer, and the fact that it's a dwarf indicates that it's on one on the dwarfing rootstocks.  How big is it?  What shape?  (A photo would really help!)

    As, suming it's a cultivated treeVerdun and Pansy have good advice there: keep it open, prune out any branches in the centre (it should be shaped like a wine glass) along with any dead, diseased or damaged wood, clear away all the undergrowth and ground cover.  Then in the spring give it a couple of handfuls of bonemeal or blood/fish/bone and a couple of shovelfuls of well-rotted manure or garden compost.

    Should be no need for poisons, if the tree can be made vigorous and healthy.

    Just a thought - could it be a self-sown seedling?

  • might not be a dwarf, it might just be young.

    What size it the main trunk at ground level? if its less than an a inch across it might be someone's old apple core that's grown.

  • Zoomer44Zoomer44 Posts: 3,267

    Hi, sorry for not getting back sooner. I went to the plot to check out the tree again.

    It's not grafted on to a different root stock and about 4ft high. I've cleared away the ground cover. I'd planted nasturgums in the area to keep down the weeds so there was very little weeds in the area.The trunk is about an inch thick. The main branch has been pruned so it's grown this year from the side branches and put on about 1ft's worth of growth on the higher branches which look to be healthy. One or two of the lower branches look dead and they are only about 6 or 7 inches long. 

    It';s not far from the neighbouring plot holders tree about 8 to 10ft but his tree is three times the height and the apples don't look to be the same variety.

    On closer inspection not all the leaves have spots on them but it's difficult to tell now as they are dying off. The spots on the apple had pieced the skin.

    Will check out the link pansyfaceimage     

Sign In or Register to comment.