Columnar apple trees are perfect for any garden or yard

January 22, 3:20 PMSF Gardening ExaminerChris McLaughlin

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Homegrown apples

Do you love fresh, crisp apples, but think you can’t have apple trees in your small suburban backyard? Columnar apple trees are the answer.

These guys are even smaller than the semi-dwarf apples trees, with some wonderful benefits over their full size cousins. They have a bottle brush shape, short branches, and grow straight up. This allows plenty of opportunity to try every variety.

Because they only grow 8-10 feet tall, and 2 feet wide, they can be grown in the smallest of yards. You can practically stack these dudes! Apartment and condo dwellers will be happy to know they make perfect potted trees, as well. These mini trees will produce fruit for about twenty years.

Columnar apples are early producers and have the ability to grow fruit the first year. If that isn’t enough, they bear normal sized apples. God bless the experimenters. These lovely fruit-bearers give a stately look against an otherwise boring good-neighbor fence. These micro-fruit trees also work well as part of an edible landscape.

Columnar apple varieties:

• ‘Northpole’ will remind you of a McIntosh apple.
• ‘Golden Sentinel’ is similar to Golden delicious in flavor.
• ‘Scarlet Sentinel’ produces green-yellow apples with a red blush. 

Columnar apple tree requirements:

• Plant in full sun
• Plant trees 2 feet apart or line them up planted in whiskey barrels.
• Don’t forget to plant at least two, for cross-pollination
• Regular watering during fruit development 

Three things you need to know about these trees. First, there may need to be a little thinning of apples to help the tree support the weight of the maturing fruit. Second, you’re going to need two. Fruit will only be produced if cross-pollinated by two varieties of apple. Third, the price tag is a little heavier than for a normal apple tree. That said, like all trees, if you order them bare-root this winter, instead of in containers this spring or summer, you’ll save some dollars.

At this time, only apples are available as columnar trees. Fruit growers are hard at work to produce other columnar trees such as like pears and peaches.