Cold Hardy Apples and Crabapples: Spring Field Notes

checking to see if these apples which are late breaking dormancy are in good health, a quick check that's useful is to make a small scratch just through the bark into the cambium, the actively growing part of the tree between the wood (xylem) and the bark. If it's bright vivid green, that's a good sign. Some tree species are slow to wake up, our walnuts for example are all fully dormant, and a percentage of our apples. The way we store our stock in a root cellar, and then covered up through the spring to keep it cool can extend dormancy, in the ground well watered and in full sun with warming temperatures will make up trees and perennials faster. Other ways /reasons a tree can be late to break dormancy, damage to the roots or other stress like drying out and set them back, usually not lethal but it can give them a delayed start on the season. If you have plants you received by mail order from us, or any other mail order nursery - just note, when you go to the garden center and the trees are a full month of growth ahead it's because they've been shipped in from warmer regions are they were in a greenhouse.

pollinating more apples, just about all of them are open. so excited to see this work, you only need 10-20 grains of microscopic pollen to make an apple. crosses include: (september ruby, norland, rosybrook, prairie magic) x (black strawberry, vanilla pink, black and red, cherry cox)

trying something out. 2x4 beds fit neatly under 3 bulb crates. why? because the shade reduced stress for transplants, they're happy to be in 50% shade for a week, keeps up humidity and helps prevent them from wilting over in the sun. the uncovered bed has 3 drills of siberian crabapple, they won't get up to grafting size this year but it gets them growing, and I'll plant them out with more space next year.

apple breeding on saskatoon trees. fruity California pollen in controlled crosses with cold hardy apples like rosybrook, prairie magic, norland and september ruby. ok some of my grafts are on crabapple roots, but the coolest thing about the saskatoon grafts in that some are flowering heavily in the second year, so precocious.

apples grafted to saskatoon.

apple hand pollination step one, at balloon stage bag with organza. next few days will be some pollinating. trying for september ruby x black strawberry with this one

planting apple and pear bench grafts today. around 120 in the first bed, a couple more to go. plums and apricots are still in the greenhouse callousing.

grafting season starts, all of our apples and pears are bench grafted in march. a couple of weeks inside to callous then back to the root cellar until around the start of may. we're a small nursery and I do all the grafting so the limits are mostly what rootstock we grew and time, but maybe five hundred between apple, pear and plum this spring. I just do them in the evenings so on track for about fifty each day, it's fun and I look forward to it every year. field grafting is done later, that's when the real fun starts around end of april through mid may and I have about as many planned for working over old crabapple, pear and wild rootstocks to grow out new varieties and continuing compatibility trials

site of our new orchard, an old hayfield I’ve been re-wilding for ten years. starting with fifty apples this spring, and I’ll go from there. the limitation is mostly caging them for deer and rabbits, voles. rich heavy clay soil next to a wetland.

high density apples

apples and pears ready to plant. the root cellar has been warming up so everybody is awake and taking off. I think there’s maybe 500 trees here, didn’t really count them. 6x6 spacing in a 3 ft x 20 ft bed is about 250 in a bed, so 2 beds. #grafting #propagation #applegrafting

apple grafts onto saskatoon two years old. I did these as an experiment with left over scion wood in july. surprisingly they’re growing ok, but they’re low and vulnerable to deer and rabbits so i’ve lost some. amelanchier alnifolia, or seevice berry, known as saskatoon grows wild here and has some reputation as a pear rootstock, and now I’m discovering a dwarfing apple rootstock. if it survives for 3 or 5 years and fruits that would be a success for me, at minimum it’s a way to grow out scion wood. #grafting

an attractive result, red leafed siberian crabapple on saskatoon. one year old graft leafing out. It’s not well known that amelanchier alnifolia has some graft compatibility with apples, I’m trialing it as wild dwarfing apple rootstock. Resistant to apple diseases, grow well in sand, cold hardy to zone 2, dwarfing. precocious? long lived? maybe just for some selection that could serve as an interstem? hey it’s a rootstock that grows delicious purple berries.. #grafting #redfleshedapple

apples starting to grow. this bed is around 3x20 ft with an apple every 6x6 .. high density, room for each root system like it’s in a gallon pot, but better. full of old manure (thanks horses) and composted wood chips.

ussurian pears, siberian crabapples an interesting wild small fruited one, wax currants (ribes cereum)

a little canopy reduction on this siberian crab I planted twenty years ago. I topped a few larger trees ahead of grafting them over this spring.

b118 rootstocks from our stoolbed. finished apple grafting today, final count around 300 for next year. This is our second winter taking fruit tree orders so still finding out how many to grow.

royalty crabapple (red) next to our rootstocks

sometimes you forget to plant a hundred apple trees. ask anyone and you should not transplant a tree that’s flush with new growth and on a hot day.. so that’s that I did this morning. Bare root and zip tied in bundles, heeled in to some pots they were dormant 2-3 weeks ago. I expect some wilt and shock and maybe they’ll stop growing for a month, but hopefully they won’t defoliate. Like most of my transplanted trees this year, when you have hundreds they’re ok with high density and I plant them in small groups in each hole, like a buddy system. some rain and clouds in the forecast. these need to size up a bit for next year’s rootstocks. I have a weird problem where last year several beds of Siberian crabapple barely grew, and now they’re taking off and I have way more than I need. these are ideal full sized rootstocks for zone 3/2 apples. #plantingtrees

bench grafted apples are waking up and ready to plant. #grafting

apple bench grafts for this spring. I didn’t count them, should be lots. There’s a fun selection of cultivars and style of grafting in here. Our greenhouse is still cool during the day so they’re going to callus in here for the next week or so and then go into cold storage until mid May. #grafting #applegrafting

a few apple root grafts from this morning. #grafting

malus baccata or Siberian crabapple seedlings getting potted up. sometimes is convenient to grow them in a community pot for a week or two and move them as they germinate. these will be some of next spring’s rootstocks #seedlings #appleseeds

grafting season started today, the snow finally thawed from our heeled in rootstocks. first graft shown. #grafting #applegrafting

rabbits eat tree bark over the winter, and they enjoy apple more than the native trees. this damage isn’t so bad, the lower limbs should probably go anyway, and I can just bridge graft the rest. next winter the tree guards will be higher, happy that I put them on in the fall.

malus bacatta seeds germinating, showing a careful method if you’re monitoring germination rates. Usually I’ll stratify and plant them into a community pot then prick out the germinating seeds. But I have a few seed lots of these and I want to check the germination rate, so planting them as they germinate. Note these went 38 days in cold strat, and germination started 1 day after warming up, each day I’m getting 10-20 from the bag start. Sometimes longer stratification will make all of the seeds germinate at the same time. Sometimes I wait a few weeks and determine I didn’t strat them long enough and the seeds go back in the fridge for another cycle. Sometimes I soak the ungerminated seeds with a ga-3 spray and see if it helps. by far the easiest way is to plant outside in the fall, but this gives me something to do over the winter and some trees do well with a head start. #seedstarting #appleseed

apple bench grafts all tucked away. #grafting #appletrees

trying a few of these, apple root grafts using a 4”length of root onto a 6” scion, the union buried and with this method it’s consider beneficial if the scion also roots. Piece root grafting like used to be very common a hundred years ago when everyone was working with seedling rootstocks. I’m interested in these old techniques and their advantages in a cold climate where full sized rootstocks are preferred over dwarfing clonal options. #grafting

planted our first season’s apple bench grafts today. 12 zone 3 hardy varieties on full size Siberian crab apple rootstocks. I’ve had them in cold storage for about three weeks and the weather has been nice enough they should be ok. A few more nights of light frost likely, but things are leafing out. The apples in our orchard are just starting to show signs of waking up. #grafting #treenursery #permaculture

frameworked an old apple tree. it’s a parkland I planted in 2004 but never got around to pruning, so it was 25’ tall with all the apples up high. Now it’s a #frankentree .. #grafting

Siberian crabapple at 12 weeks ready to plant out. Most of these went into nursery beds to grow on for next year’s rootstocks, and some were planted out around our orchard #appletree #appletrees #treeplanting

thinking about tree guards we can use over the winter to keep the voles away from our tastey apple bark. This style looks interesting, durable with slots to breathe

red wonder is one of the varieties I grafted this weekend, haven’t tried the apples yet but they’re hardy to zone 3 and super red so we included them. Might be fun to try breeding with down the road. #graftingtrees #applegrafting

handful of bench grafted apples on seedling rootstocks. these are parafilm with a grafting rubber, I found this worked well. in the field I would usually tie the graft first, but with handling the wet roots and some smaller diameter material parafilm first seemed better to keep out water and dirt from the union. could have dipped the tops in wax but a small amount of parafilm on the tip was easy enough. By end of the day I had these down to about 90s ea, 30 in an hour includes all the prep #grafting #applegrafting

Siberian crabapple seedlings at 8 weeks indoors. #malus #appleseedling

generic variation, same batch of apple seeds - a few just want to be red #appleseed #appleseedling

at one month these crab apple seedlings are ready to pot up. gown under led light in 200 cell trays the moved up to a large 50 cell for the next 8 weeks. most of these I just started direct in seedbeds but I like to have something growing inside, and if transplant shock can be avoided these rootstocks could maybe be large enough to bud this fall. #rootstock #crabapple #wintergarden

Siberian crabapples at 4 weeks under led lights #appletree #malusbaccata #rootstock

two weeks after germination Malus baccata var mandsuria #appletree #seedling

malus baccata mandsuria (North Dakota source) at 6 days 40 days stratification. We have a few trays of these along with another seed source of the more generic Siberian crabapple, happy to see these are waking up quickly and nearly 100% germination after only a week. In the past we’ve had anywhere from 20-45 days in stratification for this same species before germination starts in the fridge, just seems to depend on the seeds, maybe age or just genetic variation.

fall red apple in blossom #fruittreenursery #backyardorchard #appleblossom #applenursery #blossom

apple flowers are fine, made it through the spring frost no problem.

honey crisp apple blossoms are multi colored #honeycrisp #blossom #blossoms

first apple bud from May 1 grafts appeared. Trees are funny, there’s still a few hold outs around the orchard that are dormant , others had green tips two weeks ago. #fruittreenursery #grafting #graftingplants #applegrafting

Malus Baccata #rootstock planted out under shade cloth in a raised bed of #compost, garden soil, #biochar. These guys are all experimental batches grown in different conditions in our winter garden. The range from 6 months to 5 weeks old. . #fruittreenursery #fruittrees #backyardnursery

Malus Baccata rootstocks at 18 weeks indoors. Our winter garden proved a success this year with various seed sources to kick off the outdoor nursery with some larger seedlings. #appletrees #rootstock #malus