There must be dozens if not hundreds of web sites with the information that I seek but for some reason I can't find any. Long ago I bought an apple tree with three varieties grafted onto it. Two gave up the ghost and I no longer remember which they were but Cox's Orange Pippen is alive and doing very well. It must hold over 100 apples as I type. Alas, I did not prune/train it properly when it was young and what I now have it a tree whose lowest apples are 9 feet off the ground. And the top of the tree is probably 20 feet off the ground although I chop the top 3 to 5 feet of new growth each year. That is inconveniently tall. (If anyone cares, the trunk starts off about 10" diameter and soon splits into two trunks each about 8" in diameter.) I have never found any advice about reducing the height of a tree as large as this one. I'm tempted to chop it down to a few feet and see what happens, recognizing that even if I don't kill it I'll have go go some years with no fruit. But there must surely be many websites that say exactly what I should or should not do. Failing that, there may even be the old things called "books". Does anyone have any advice?
You probably haven't found any because it destroys the specimen - the too common severely topped veteran apple trees I see around are pretty consistent about having apple anthracnose gnawing out the top halves of their main branches. When the infection dates back far enough these half-limbs look like dugout canoes. After which they eventually break up. It's better to get an orchard ladder and/or one of those fruit collecting baskets on a pole than to try to shrink a standard sized apple tree into a fully dwarfed one. Another option is to remove the tree of unwanted size, start over with one on a dwarfing rootstock.
I have the ladder but the tree has obstacles around it that make it tough to use effectively. I have thought of trying the basket harvester and I guess I'll do so.
Over the years, I've reduced the height of 6 apple, plum, and cherry trees, not very successfully. But the main problem has always been sunscald (or sunburn) of the cambium layer under bark newly exposed to sunshine. I've seen cankers like anthracnose mostly on young tree trunks, and they have always eventually healed themselves. The sunscalded trunks and branches, on the other hand, have never healed. I painted the exposed bark of one cherry tree with white latex paint, and it seemed to help, but after several years the sunscald damaged a large portion of the tree. In the last three years, I've been growing Turkeytail mushrooms on that tree (not deliberately); and I've planted a replacement tree right beside the old one. I suspect that reducing tree height would work if you could prevent the sunscald. Whitewash might work if applied over several years; I only applied it the first year after pruning out the top of the cherry tree. Protecting the exposed area from the summer sun with shade cloth might do the job; it would only need to be applied during the months of late spring and all summer. Of course, any such dreastic pruning should be done gradually, over several years on a large tree. It will induce many watersprouts and reduce fruit production, but this can be alleviated by appropriate girdling of the trunk or main branches (successfully applied to a really old apple tree).
QUESTION - and I am sure someone else knows — if this was one of the multi fruit trees - what is the apple root stock? (The roots and trunk) - which name is most often used as root stock for this type of back yard garden use? so if @soccerdad has inclination to try shortening (yes I read posts) the apparently surviving Cox’s Pippin, then do not cut below the graft - correct? was it @Otto Bjornson out in the valley who had a successful multi apple tree … tho the floods of Nov 2021 might have drowned his garden.
Yes we have a multi fruit apple tree. And it survived the high water in 2021 as we were not really effected to a major extent. In fact this year we have had our most abundant crop ever. Eating the gala and spartan apples now. We canned the transparent apples (apple sauce) earlier in August. Regarding the root stock, I am not sure? It was grown / grafted locally though in the fraser valley
