Dwarf Apple Trees

With ever decreasing space in gardens, dwarf apple trees are a great alternative to a full sized tree. You can still grow your own apples, only on a smaller, and easier to care for dwarf apple tree variety.

These are grown on what is known as a dwarfing rootstock, so they are normal apple tree varieties that are grafted onto a different rootstock. An M26 rootstock is probably the shortest type of tree to around 2m and you can grow these around 3m apart, MM106 will yield a tree around 3m (semi dwarf) as is M7a, grow these around 5m apart.

It is important to know what type of rootstock your dwarf ‘apple tree is grown on, many are just called ‘dwarf’ and in fact may be semi dwarf’.

Dwarf root stock is also widely used to create Stepover Apple Trees.

Dwarf Apple Tree Rootstocks

So what about rootstocks called EM and EMLA, we will try to explain. These are the original names given by the East Malling Apple research facility in the UK, we seem to have decided to drop the M so EM26 becomes M26.

Why grow Dwarf Apple Trees

And why dwarf apple trees anyway, this is not simply a matter of smaller trees for home gardens, the original research was to find smaller growing, but heavy bearing trees that would be easier to pick the fruit from, easier to net (bird protection), less pruning, easier to, spray (disease prevention) and so forth. The home grower has been able to reap the benefit of commercial research.

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