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Mature apple tree planted on concrete plinth
Suburban living
Posts: 2
We recently moved and the garden at our new house goes up in steps. Near the top, in between two greenhouses is a lovely mature Russet apple tree. From what I have dug so far that entire section seems to only have maybe a foot of soil which the apple tree is having to share with 5 8ft high firs. Would the best possible course of action to save the apple tree (which could be up to 50 years old) be a hard prune and additional building up of soil with a retainer? I plan to remove the firs as some are rather wobbly.
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If its survived for 50 years it must have its roots in decent soil somewhere, otherwise it would be dead already!
If you wanted to give it a helping hand you could take out the fir trees. that would give the apple more light and water, then mulch the tree with some decent manure, make its about 3-4 inches deep (put cardboard or wet newspaper underneath it and it'll stop any weeds coming thru) and make it as wide as the branches reach out - but don't pile it around the trunk (they don't like it).
As for pruning it, you can hard prune but only take a max of 1/5 to 1/4 of the branches away, start with anything dead, diseased or rubbing and with a 50 year old tree you might find just taking them out will be the 1/4 of the tree.
Some of the branches snap easily so I shall start with these. Thank you both for your suggestions. I'm hoping giving the tree a little love might encourage it to survive another fifty years