By Hanwelp01
West Yorkshire,
United Kingdom 
I have a really old bramley apple tree on the boundary of my small city garden. Many of the branches appear dead but others have produced fruit again. It has ivy growing up the trunk. We are having an extension built and I am wondering whether it would be advisable to cut down the large old tree and plant a dwarf version instead. Are the apples on these small trees as good as on an older tree? OR should I grow a tree from a pip from the original tree?
31 Aug, 2010
Previous question
« what are the green tomato looking growths on potato plants
Seems a shame to destroy any tree to me. Sounds like this one could do with a little TLC more than anything else. Unless you really have to remove it, then remove the ivy, remove the dead branches and prune the new growth on the live branches back to 2 or 3 leaves from the point of origin, in a few weeks time.
New treees take a few years to settle down to produce a decent amount of fruit, but since there is only one Bramley planted in thousands of gardens all over the place, the fruit from one is exactly the same as fruit from another.
You cannot grow any apple from a pip and get the same as the tree from whence it came. They are so incredibly hybridised over 1,000s of years that almost every pip in an apple could produce a totally different result.
31 Aug, 2010