The site details that the hight of the tree is 10 feet, which suggests
that the rootstock is either Pixy or one of the Grizela series. These
dwarfing rootstocks for peaches and plums are relatively short lived.
The come into fruit quickly after 2 years compared with 4 years plus on
St Julian or Brompton.
Whilst with apples it is easy to produce cordon trees, for the stone
fruit such a tight pruning is not possible, so need the space to fan
the tree out against the wall.
Many of the main mail order people are based in the South of England
and produce to the local gowing conditions. The dwarfting apple root
stocks (M9 and to a lesser extent M27) do not fare well in northern
England, they don't like the colder wet weather. I am currently
reading a book by Michael Phillips entitled The Apple Grower - a guide
for the Organic Orchardist. He is a commercial fruit grower in New
Hampshire, USA. In the book he describes commercial growers eperience
the same problem over there. So to achieve the advantages of a
commercial orachd at 6ft tall they use a M7 rootstock, which is similar
in growth characteristics to the M111, then use an interstock of M9 to
obtain the reduced hight.
I am putting together a little plan to see how it fares over here.
Clifford
Bawtry, Doncaster, South Yorkshire