Apple (Malus) Christmas Pippin® — Cordon, 12L Container, M9

Christmas Pippin is one of the most exciting new English apples of recent years, and its discovery story is hard to beat. In 2003, Geffrey Rowson found the original tree growing as a chance seedling beside the M5 motorway in Somerset, most likely sprung from a windfall from one of the orchards that once grew in the area. After careful trials it was introduced to gardeners in 2010, and it has quickly won a following for its Cox-style flavour on a more easy-going tree. The medium-sized apples have thin, golden-yellow skin flushed and streaked with red. The crisp, juicy, creamy flesh is naturally very sweet, with a lovely aromatic quality and a gentle, balancing sharpness. Pick the fruit in early October and store it somewhere cool, and true to its name it will keep until Christmas.

As a cordon, Christmas Pippin gives you all that flavour from a very narrow space. This tree has been trained to a single stem with short fruiting side-shoots and grafted onto the dwarfing M9 rootstock. It is usually kept to around 1.8–2m tall and can be planted as close as 75cm apart against a fence, wall or row of support wires, so several varieties fit along a single boundary. Christmas Pippin is a spur-bearer, carrying its fruit on short side-shoots, which makes it naturally suited to cordon training. Summer prune from late July, cutting new side-shoots back to encourage fruiting spurs.

Plant in full sun in any reasonably fertile, well-drained soil. Keep the tree permanently supported, as M9 has a shallow root system, and water well during dry spells, especially while the fruit is swelling. Christmas Pippin flowers and crops generously and has some natural resistance to scab and canker, making it a rewarding choice for gardeners who love the flavour of Cox but want a more reliable tree.

Christmas Pippin is not self-fertile, so plant it near another apple from pollination groups 2, 3 or 4, such as Discovery, James Grieve or Cox Self Fertile. In most built-up areas, neighbouring trees will also help with pollination.

Each tree is hand-selected before dispatch.

Available from Pengelly Garden Centre.