Can anyone share their experiences with me regarding columnar apple
trees, either the colennades sold by stark bros. or the other
varieties, like the north pole?

I have five of the collenade type apples. All have been in the ground
for five years. I am in zone 6B and the trees are planted in a large
walled bed.

First, the bad news:
These apple varieties have been selected for their growth habit, not
their fruit quality. Of course, the varieties sold probably produce the
best fruit of the collenade types but the fruit is inferior to
commercially available varietes.

If you have never grown apples you will probably be pleased at getting
any fruit but I suspect that, like me, you will use the fruit mostly for
cooking and still buy eating apples at the store.

They tend to sucker badly, you must remove suckers every year to keep
the trees from being overwhelmed by their grafting stock.

They are no more disease resistant than other apple varieties.

I doubt that they do well as container plants. The Stark catalog shows
a couple of beautiful plants, full of apples, in fairly small pots but I
have my doubts. They produce large root systems, much larger than could
be accomodated in a small pot. However, I must admit I have not tried
to grow them in containers.

Now the pluses.
They require very little space. I have 5 trees in 16sq.ft., that's five
trees in a four by four foot square.

They require very little pruning. Mostly, you have to remove suckers
that arise from the grafting stock.

If you spray, very little is required and you can literally individually
spray each leaf of the tree without getting spray on any of the fruit.

They are very attractive when the fruit is visible. Mine always attract
attention from visitors to my garden.

They are easy to protect from apple predators such as squirrels and
chipmunks.

My favorite is the collenade crab apple offered by Stark (and others).
It has pink flowers, dark red fruit and orange-red fall foliage color.
I would recommend it as an ornamental for any spot that needs a vertical
accent.

--beeky

nancy wrote:

Can anyone share their experiences with me regarding columnar apple
trees, either the colennades sold by stark bros. or the other
varieties, like the north pole?

nancy wrote:

Can anyone share their experiences with me regarding columnar apple
trees, either the colennades sold by stark bros. or the other
varieties, like the north pole?

They are good when you need a second variety for cross pollination but
space is an issue. I'd agree with beeky on the quality of the
fruit.......I've tasted Northpole, Scarlet Sentinel and Golden Sentinel.
They are nothing to get excited about. I'll take my poor old scab
plagued, powdery mildew prone Gravenstein any day.

pam - gardengal