Remains of an apple tree

When we first moved into our house we had a smallish (8ft high) apple tree in the middle of the lawn which was clearly not in the first flush of youth. It produced a lot of apples over the last few years, but had grown so wide and low that it was more decorative than anything else.

Over this last winter, it's lean got worse and worse until, predictably, it fell over in a storm and we had to remove it.

When it was removed I didn't do anything with the patch of earth that it had been growing in as we were undecided if we wanted to just cover it over and make it part of the lawn or to replant a new tree to take its place.

During this spring, we have seen 4 or 5 shoots gradually grow up out of the ground and they now stand 3ft or so high each with buds along their entire length.

Assuming these are from the root of the old apple tree (they look like apple in my limited knowledge!) how should I deal with them if I want to encourage a new apple tree to grow from the old root?

Should I cut out all but 1 of the shoots? Do I need to do anything to the 1 that will remain - or is it all just random growth unlikely to form any sort of tree in years to come?

Any advice gratefully received.

Mike

 

Most apple trees are actually grafts of a cultivar grafted onto a rootstock of a different one. The rootstock is very often something close to wild crab apples, so the new shoots will probably grow into a crab apple tree. Great for wildlife, and good if you make cider and apple chutney etc, but not much good for eating really. They do produce the most amazing flowers in spring though.

 

Thanks - That sounds reasonable. I'm not too worried about it being a crab apple tree TBH, as we never did anything with the apples that did grow on it and they just made mowing the lawn a bit of a pain. Today I cut away all but 1 of the growths and trimmed off the side shoots from the remaining one so it now looks tree-ish.....

I should stake it I think.