With mum being so poorly last year the garden got scant attention. My triple apple has been a problem as one variety is much more vigorous than the other two, After a hefty crop it leans down on that side - any suggestions for the safest / best way to correct it? LOL i don't think I would buy another triple variety, but it is vey productive and we get fine apples, I did thin out the fruitlets, but maybe not enough, all other fruit trees are one variety and doing fine !

Hammer a rigid stake into the ground 6 to 10 feet from the tree in the direction AWAY from the lean. Assemble a pulley system using thick strong rope and thread this through a bit of garden hose where it is to bear on the trunk then slowly (little by little) over weeks rather than days, just ease the tree back into the verticle position. Cheers, Tony.

I wouldn't attempt the wrestle the tree into a position. It will not stay there of its own accord, it will have to be permanently staked to keep it there, which is seldom satisfactory. Apple trees grow and fruit perfectly well with a lean to them, ugly though this can be. With any multiple-grafted fruit tree, one of the varieties will be dominant over the others since no two varieties have identical vigour. This should not be too troublesome if they at least have similar vigour, but varieties tend to be selected for usefulness and popularity rather than compatibility of vigour. So if, for instance, you have a Bramley in the mix, this is such an outrageously vigorous cultivar that it will quickly outgrow the others. I suspect that this is what's happened to your tree: one variety is so robust that it's causing the whole tree to overbalance.

I had one of these 'family' apple trees and I found the dominant one took over to such an extent it was impossible to control it. In the end it had to come out. Another one of those good ideas at the time but not very practical even on the allotment.

Beryl.

And what often happens to make the situation a whole lot worse is, the vigourous variety gets hacked back, (sorry i mean pruned hard), leading to even more vigourous growth.

Not suggesting you have done such a thing, Nature's Babe.

Never fancied one of these because of these problems. If the vigorous variety is any good can the situation be redeemed by grafting it twice on the other side and letting the weak varieties fade away?

It is a counter-intuitive thing though, to prune the weak growth harder than the vigorous growth.

It does work, I left the big half of an unbalanced shrub untouched and cut the smaller half back hard, three years later they matched.

My cousin whose partner worked at west malling pruned it, and the cox variety which was strongest went mad, will try pruning the other two later this year and a bit of leverage, if that fails grafting might be useful
thank you for all your help. Things are really early here, my grape has fruitlets on it, and we are enjoying some aparagus, radish, and salad stuff from the garden, the land cress is seeding already.

This has worked for us, as it encourages the weak side to grow more.

Thank you Trachy, yes I will try just pruning the weaker ones.

Dear NB,
do you know what the rootstock was underneath your apple? It might be one of the very dwarfing types such as M26, if it is then these trees often need a permenant stake.
Regards Sally Wright.

Hi Sally, I can't remember the rootstock, but I don't think it can be the very dwarfing one because the tree isn't small now.

I'm confident that this does work, for any tree or shrub where growth is potentially equally vigorous. But for a multiple-grafted fruit tree this is not the case: one variety is dominant. The unpalatable truth is that multiple-grafted trees do not work in the long term.

Hi NB,
I would like to know what size of tree you are dealing with and what rootstock it is growing on.
I noticed some miniature triple apple trees for sale some time back and thought that they would be a disaster.
I have some very old perry pear trees that carry three varieties and they are nearly 35ft tall. These produce the three varieties said to make the right combination for the best perry. These trees could be as old as two hundred years so triple trees are nothing really new. Perry pears are all about the same size irrespective of variety so nothing out grows the rest and the trees are very balanced.
I suspect the smaller the tree the larger the problem.
My thoughts are that if you like the dominant one on your tree is to cut the other two out and convert to a single variety no matter what shape it will turn out to be and plant some more single varieties of your choice.
Alternatively cut the dominant one out and keep the other two. There is also a problem with that because again one will be dominant.
I rather think that although good in intention triple varieties do not work in practice.
JB.