Gisela 5 or Gisela 6: which rootstock to choose for cherry

When a buyer picks cherry saplings for a new orchard, the choice almost always comes down to two rootstocks — Gisela 5 and Gisela 6. Both moved cherry out of the "big tree you cannot climb" category into the format of an intensive orchard: a low canopy, an early crop, easy harvest. But there is a fundamental difference between them, and a mistake at this stage is locked into the orchard for 12–15 years ahead. Let us go through how Gisela 5 and Gisela 6 differ and which rootstock to choose for your conditions.

What the Gisela rootstocks are

Gisela is a series of clonal cherry and sour-cherry rootstocks developed at the University of Giessen in Germany. "Clonal" means the rootstock is propagated vegetatively rather than from a stone: every plant is genetically identical, so the orchard grows evenly and predictably. This is the key difference from the old seedling rootstock (wild cherry) and the vigorous Colt rootstock, on which the tree grew to 5–7 metres and only began to fruit properly by its 6th–7th year.

The key thing the Gisela series delivered is early and heavy fruiting on a compact tree. A cherry grafted on Gisela sets flower buds already in the nursery and reaches a marketable crop in the 3rd–4th year. That is exactly why cherry on Gisela has become the standard of intensive orchards across Europe and southern Russia. In this logic, Gisela is to cherry roughly what the M9 rootstock became to apple.

Gisela 5: the maximum dwarf

Gisela 5 (Gi 5) is the more dwarfing of the two rootstocks: vigour is around 45–50% of a seedling. The tree comes out compact (3–3.5 m), enters fruiting very early and gives the highest early crop. This is the rootstock for those building a truly intensive orchard with high planting density.

The price for this is high demand. Gisela 5 only performs on fertile soils, with drip irrigation and a mandatory trellis: the weak root system does not hold the tree under the crop. A separate point is crop-load management. Gisela 5 tends to over-crop itself with set fruit: if you do not ration the crop by pruning and manage the load, the tree stalls and the fruit goes small. So Gisela 5 is best on strong, well-managed sites and with vigorous cultivars that compensate for the dwarfing of the rootstock.

Gisela 6: a semi-dwarf and all-rounder

Gisela 6 (Gi 6) is a semi-dwarfing rootstock, more vigorous: around 60–70% of a seedling. The tree is slightly larger than on Gisela 5 but still compact and convenient for an intensive-type orchard. The main advantage of Gisela 6 is that it is far more tolerant of less-than-ideal conditions.

Gisela 6 copes better with heavier and more variable soils, reacts more calmly to interruptions in agronomy and works well with weaker cultivars for which the vigour of Gisela 5 is no longer enough. It holds fruit calibre more easily and is less prone to over-cropping, so it forgives less strict crop-load management. On balance it is a more general-purpose and forgiving choice — especially when the site or the level of care is not guaranteed to be perfect.

Gisela 5 and Gisela 6: a comparison

If we condense the differences between the two rootstocks into one table, it looks like this:

It is important to understand that "weaker" and "stronger" here are not about the quality of the rootstock but about vigour and demand. Both rootstocks give an excellent intensive orchard — the only question is how well your site and agronomy match the requests of Gisela 5. If they match, it repays you with an early and heavy crop. If not, Gisela 6 will be more reliable.

How to choose between Gisela 5 and Gisela 6

Take Gisela 5 if you have fertile soil, drip irrigation and a trellis, you are ready to ration the crop and you are planting a dense intensive orchard with vigorous cultivars. In these conditions Gisela 5 gives the maximum return per hectare earliest of all.

Take Gisela 6 if the soils are heavy or variable, care is not guaranteed at its maximum, the cultivar mix includes weak cultivars, or you want a more forgiving orchard without strict crop-load management. Gisela 6 is the sensible default when there is no certainty the site will meet the requirements of Gisela 5.

In practice many farms combine the two: vigorous cultivars on Gisela 5, weak and problem blocks on Gisela 6. The cherry sapling catalogue helps you pick the cultivar and rootstock for your scenario, and we covered how the cultivars themselves differ in the article on cherry cultivars.

At our nursery cherry is available on Gisela 5 and Gisela 6 rootstocks in seven cultivars — Kordia, Regina, Lapins, Summit, Ferrovia, Samba and Sweetheart — from 480 RUB per unit for a lot from 6,000 units. For each cultivar we will advise the optimal rootstock based on your conditions.