My dad wants a Gravenstein because he is jealous of the neighbors. Mind you, the neighbors tree is at least 50 years old, so I have no idea what kind of root stock it is on.

I was thinking about getting him something that will get to about 10-12 ft (he is 6'2" with a good reach + nicer to use a smaller ladder). Problem is, it is an island that he lives on in the middle of the Columbia River. Even in the summer, you can dig a hole 2 feet down and hit water. During the winter storms, the ground does get saturated.

Can anyone recommend a rootstock that can handle being wet?

Thanks,
Heather

PS - this would be apple tree #7 for them, so I'm not worried about a pollinator or how graventstein doesn't potentate.

I have been reading about backyard orchard culture. It is about high density fruit tree planting above the ground in raised beds. They put 4 trees in a 4foot by 4foot by 1 foot high raised bed. They only allow them to get 6-8 feet tall. The raised bed drains based on the soil mix you put in it. They also claim the roots will eventually dig their way into the native soil. I am planning on trying it this year. Time ill tell...

A couple of suggestions:

Raised beds can make sense. I have an area of our yard that has poor drainage, and very clayey soil. During the winter, the water often pools on the surface. In that area, I've tried two things, so far:

* I planted an apple tree on malus fusca rootstock. This is the native swamp crab apple. There is another thread here in the forums you can look for which discusses that. The basic idea is to use the crab apple as the rootstock, since it tolerates a lot of water. Then graft on a "Winter Banana", and then graft on top of THAT whatever variety you want.

Keep in mind Gravenstein is a vigorous variety, if I remember correctly.

If you belong to the Home Orchard Society, there was a summary of apple rootstocks in the last newsletter.

You might also look into the thread here on "interstems". If you're willing to delay things about a year, you can use a "larger" rootsystem on a smaller tree. My guess is that would help.

* A few days ago, I planted a hardy banana in a small raised bed, made by putting together four logs that were too long to fit in the fireplace. I covered the mossy grass with cardboard, laid down the four logs in a square, put the banana in the middle, and then added soil and mulch.

Malling 7 is one of the best semi-dwarf stocks for wet, clay Willamette Valley soils. I've used it a lot. However, Gravenstein is so vigorous you should use an interstem of M9 or one of the other dwarfs or the tree will be as big as other varieties are on standard rootstocks.

My soil is soo grass-seed-farmed-out that I have M7's that are 7 years old that are 6 feet tall! I am shifting over to Antonovka and seedling rootstocks for the increased vigor.

There are seedling apples on my place that are likely 40 years old that only get 12-20 feet tall. The fruit size is okay, just that the trees are not vigorus.

The ground that I speak of also drains several hundred acres above, so is in a constant state of being washed out by too much water. Oh well, use rootstock with more vigor!

I forgot to mention that other parts of my land are not low-lying drainage areas, and grows apples nice and big.

But what else are you going to plant on low ground?

I have used Malus Fusca as rootstock. Mounted the cultivar right on it, no interstem seems to be needed. My Whitney Crab has born fruit just fine and you can scarcely see the graft union. Looks like the Hudson Golden Gem on fusca will be fruiting this year, similarly good-looking graft union.

Got 3 or 4 others on fusca, that have grown like gangbusters and might fruit this year too. These are already established older fusca trees that I found when logging, and requested that they be left intact for my experiments. Otherwise the loggers would have scraped my ground clean, into a burn pile.

I grafted right to the fusca. I'd like to know if these are going to fail due to lack of Winter Banana. Can you point me to any articles that recommend it?

Try top-working a photinia over to apple sometime! My randomly chosen cultivar has been on probably 5 years, no interstem. Might fruit one of these years!

Plumfan: I am not sure if the winter banana is necessary. I believe it acts as a dwarfing interstem. I don't know if it is also necessary for compatibility reasons.