How to Choose and Plant an Apple Tree in the UK

Plant your apple tree between November and March, buy it bare-root, and choose it now. The RHS says bare-root trees are sold from late autumn to early spring, while they are dormant. The tree that suits a normal garden is an apple on an M26 or MM106 rootstock, bought alongside a pollination partner, and planted with its graft union above the soil.

That is the whole plan. The rest of this post is the detail behind each part, so you make the thirty-minute decisions properly before the forty-year tree arrives.

Why now

Apple Day falls on 21 October. Common Ground launched it in 1990 to celebrate the diversity of apple varieties, and it is still the best excuse of the year to taste a dozen apples you will never find in a supermarket. Events are held around the date, and the Common Ground website is the place to look for one near you. Check each event's details before you travel.

The practical value is in the tasting. A variety that sounds right on a nursery website may taste of very little to you. Eat a few at an Apple Day stall, write down the two you liked best, and you have a shopping list.

Then comes the timing. Bare-root trees are lifted from the nursery field when they are dormant, so there is no pot and no soil around the roots. They are cheaper than container-grown trees, they establish faster, and nurseries offer a wider range of varieties in bare-root form. Choosing in October gives you time to compare nurseries and varieties before the planting window opens.

Choosing the rootstock

Every named fruit tree is two plants joined together. The variety gives you the fruit. The rootstock, the roots and lower trunk of a different plant, controls how big the tree gets and how soon it fruits. Get this wrong and you end up with a tree twice the size you wanted, or one too small to bother with.

The RHS says the dwarfing rootstocks M9 and M26 suit small gardens, pots, cordons and small espaliers, and that semi-dwarfing MM106 gives a tree up to 4m (13ft) tall. The fruit-trees course adds M27 for the tiniest spaces and M25 for a full-sized standard tree, and recommends M26 or MM106 for most home gardens.

In practice:

• A small garden or a pot: M9 or M26. M9 trees need a stake for their whole life, because the roots are too shallow to anchor them alone.
• A normal garden, one bush tree: M26 or MM106. These are forgiving and need staking only for the first few years.
• A long fence or wall: a cordon on M9, or an espalier on MM106. A cordon lets you fit five or six varieties into the space one bush tree takes.

Ask the nursery which rootstock each tree is on. A reputable one will tell you without being asked. If a seller cannot say, buy elsewhere.

Pollination, without the headache

Most apples crop better with a second variety flowering nearby at the same time. The RHS says you need either another variety that flowers at the same time close by, or a self-fertile variety, and gives Laxton's Fortune as an example of one that is partly self-fertile.

Nurseries label varieties with a flowering group number. Choose a partner from the same group or an adjacent one and the blossom will overlap. Triploid varieties, Bramley among them, have sterile pollen, so they cannot pollinate anything and need two other non-triploid varieties nearby to be pollinated themselves. If you want a Bramley, plan on three trees, or check whether a neighbour already has the right ones.

You do not always need to buy two. A suitable tree already growing nearby, in a neighbour's garden for instance, can serve as the partner. Tell a specialist nursery what you have within reach and ask which varieties would pair with it. Brogdale, Orange Pippin, Keepers Nursery and Frank P Matthews are the ones the course names.

Picking the spot

Apple trees want full sun and a warm, sheltered position that is not prone to late frosts, according to the RHS. The course puts a number on it: six to eight hours of direct sun in summer. Avoid the bottom of a slope, where cold air pools and a late frost can kill the blossom and lose you a year's crop.

The soil should be fertile and free-draining, never waterlogged. The RHS says soil preparation is generally unnecessary, and that if your soil is poor you can dig in a bucketful of organic matter. Home-made compost is ideal for this. If yours is not ready, the composting course covers how to get it there.

Planting day

The planting itself takes about half an hour. The course sets out the method.

1. Soak the roots. The RHS suggests standing a bare-root tree in a bucket of water for half an hour before planting.
2. Dig the hole. Make it square, at least twice as wide as the root system and no deeper than the roots naturally sit.
3. Mind the graft union. This is the swollen join between rootstock and variety, usually 15–30cm above the roots. It must stay above soil level. Bury it and the variety grows its own roots, which bypasses the rootstock and defeats the size control.
4. Stake first. Drive the stake in before the tree goes into the hole, because hammering through roots afterwards damages them. The RHS says free-standing trees should be staked at planting time.
5. Spread the roots outwards, backfill with the soil you removed, and firm it in gently with your foot.
6. Tie the trunk loosely. A rubber tree tie with a spacer, leaving a finger's width of movement, stops the bark chafing on the stake.
7. Water thoroughly.

If you are planting in a lawn, the RHS says to remove a circle or square of turf at least 1m (3ft) across first. Grass roots compete hard with a young tree.

The first two years

For the first couple of years, water newly planted trees regularly in dry spells, early in the morning or late in the evening, close to the base. The RHS notes that established in-ground trees should not need watering, so this is a short commitment. If you are clearing beds this autumn anyway, the no-dig bed method is a good use of the same compost.

Pruning comes in the first winter. The course says to cut the central leader of a bush tree back by a third to a half, to a healthy outward-facing bud, which encourages the three to five main branches that become its permanent structure. The pruning course covers the cuts in more detail, and the fruit-trees course takes you through the whole sequence from choosing to long-term management.

Apples and pears are pruned in winter, when the tree is fully dormant, which the course gives as November to February. Plums and damsons are the exception: never prune them in autumn or winter, because of the risk of silver leaf disease.

What this costs

Prices vary by nursery, rootstock and form, and I have not quoted any because they change each season. A bare-root bush tree costs less than a container-grown one, and the course advises a specialist nursery over a supermarket or garden centre, where the choice of rootstock and variety is narrow and little information comes with the tree. Beyond the tree, you need a stake and a tie. The course lists the stake at £5–12.

The short version

• Apple Day is on 21 October. Use it to taste varieties before you choose one.
• Choose and order bare-root trees now. Plant them between November and March while the tree is dormant, when the ground is not frozen or waterlogged.
• For most gardens, choose an apple on M26 or MM106. Use M9 or M26 for pots and small spaces.
• Check pollination: pick a partner from the same flowering group or an adjacent one. Triploids such as Bramley need two other varieties.
• Plant in full sun, out of frost pockets, with the graft union above soil level.
• Stake at planting, soak bare roots first, clear grass for 1m around the tree, and water in dry spells for the first couple of years.
• Cut the central leader back by a third to a half in the first winter.