Cold Hardy Apples and Crabapples: Summer Field Notes

tree tubes are like a mini greenhouse that protects the tree from deer and rabbits, but also forces the growth upward

this siberian crabapple is on its third summer and just finally cleared the five if tube. I'll replace it this fall with hardware cloth, we still need to protect the tree from everything from voles to deer at our place...

well that rootstock doesn't look right

I had a few mountain ash in the bed, so you might ask does apple grow on mountain ash? probably not very well but absolutely this got potted up to see what it does. rationale: I have saskatoon top grafted to both apple...

my office this morning, potting up apple trees

bench grafts done in march are holding well in these bins just with some old straw around the roots. they lived in the basement for about a month, and once sprouty moved to the root cellar another month, and then in a...

trailman crab, first time trying it, small and tasty

super dwarf apples, september ruby grafted onto saskatoon

I did these three years ago and finally got a cage around them last summer, otherwise...

started some orchard rows of plums and a block of apples

42 plum, 24 apples so far, half are just seedlings I'll graft over. in this space there's full sun, light soil that will need some mulch, and lots of deer. it's right beside the beehives our neighbour keeps, so...

norland apple, showing some pink inside, seeds just about all brown and ripe

I made some hand pollinations on this tree so carefully checking for ripeness...

prairie magic apple grafted onto saskatoon in August, this is just a fun accomplishment

planting apple trees, the hardware cloth keeps out deer, rabbits and voles

I've planted without it and rolled the dice, but eventuality wildlife is just drawn to them like candy. same with wild plum, in a forest of chokecherry a deer will find the one plum tree...

prairie magic, an excellent cold hardy apple

basically ripe now late august, seeds are half brown. this is one we did some controlled crosses with black strawberry and cherry cox, so there's a few apples on the tree carefully labelled and in organza bags. and it's...

picking some apples with fruit share, a local volunteer group who collects fruit that would otherwise go unpicked,

I think maybe the tree is a Norland, it's early the seeds were white but the fruit was barely holding on, one windy day away from it being on the ground. 12 pails of summer apples for the local food bank, happy to help...

apple controlled crosses, we have fruit so hand pollinations were a success

these are a fun combination of black strawberry, cherry cox, and a few other warmer zone apples with cool flavours x our bullet proof cold hardy prairie apples. september ruby for example, hardy to zone 2, ripens in...

apple grafts on saskatoon

growing better than you would expect, I have at least a dozen from 2022 growing healthy and some of those are fruiting. no indications of incompatibility really, growth is slower but grafts...

work in progress some apple orchard rows in a field

the trees are alive just trimmed by deer and competing with grass. following photos are siberian crabapple nearby planted in 2004. Project...

checking apple grafts on saskatoon

some were done late spring, fun to see them decide to flower. two year old grafts...

helping to pick a large goodland tree with local volunteers, we pick a dozen five gallon pails of apples for the food

30 year old crab in a family backyard, bot entirely sure what cultivar but they turn dark purple by fall

made many batches of crab apple wine from them. thinking about collecting seeds, cold hardy crab...

more pink flesh than I expected, this is the apple I lost the tag for but suspect it’s Norland

a few apples ok this multi-grafted tree, starting to get some color

apples I grafted onto a wild crab in our yard a few years ago, lost the tag and forget the variety

first fruit, this is apple on saskatoon

It’s a small graft in the shade from two years ago, but hey it’s an apple...

experimental apple grafts from 2022, finally caged

a year ago they were a rabbit’s lunch and now have recovered, maybe 12” of growth this summer. these are on saskatoon which I expect to dwarf them, no one seems to know if it’s compatible as an apple rootstock...

crab apple roots, sending up many new shoots

checking on field planted apples, this area had saturated soil this spring

so I made a hole near each one to keep an eye on it and provide some local drainage. still saturated 12” down. if it stays water logged through summer the plan is to dig more to create a mound and transplant into it. Ok...

graft union for this one year old red leafed malus baccata on our native amelanchier alnifolia, an unusual combination

that seems to be healthy and somewhat graft compatible...

checking apple grafts top worked onto saskatoon this spring

apple tree tube from hardware cloth, helping to promote vertical growth after a rabbit took off the top last winter

red siberian crabapple selection grafted to saskatoon / serviceberry one month ago

Out of all the apple grafts I’ve trialed onto A. alnifolia this one has had the...

working on covering this wall with vines and espalier apples

Metal siding is easy for vines I just back out some of the sheet metal screws and wrap some copper wire around...

some late summer t budding, apple on saskatoon

the bark is still slipping on some trees. on smaller stocks or if the bark or if the bark doesn’t want to cooperate then a chip bud works. These can be done late in the season because they just need take and...

hilled our stool bed of b118 with cedar sawdust today

Seems about the right time of year. Why cedar? My woodworking shop makes a tone of it, there’s a mix of other hardwoods but the whole pile just smells like the cedar. This pile is aged a couple years and shows no sign of...

Fall Red apple on wild saskatoon in its second season

At the end of grafting season last year I tried a few malus on amelanchier intergeneric grafts. It was july before they took so little growth last year, but I happy to see most of the grafts survived and and growing this...

malus baccata, Siberian crab apple

These trees wake up and flower weeks before domestic apples. The pink and white flowers are the same species and show the genetic variations, the pink tree has more reddish stems and leaves and the apples are a deep red...

apples grafted on saskatoon / service berry last month

September ruby, chestnut crab, Goodland, norkent. So far they’re healthy and growing as fast as anything I grafted on an apple tree this year. There’s at least early indication of good compatibility with these cold hardy...

malus baccata propagated from softwood cuttings under mist last summer

This is a way you could grow apple cultivars on their own roots into larger and longer lives trees. We had a low take rate but adjusting variables would increase it. Going forward it’s more efficient to stool layer, so...

goodland apples are flowing this week

This tree and a few scions I’ve grafted out are all flowering at once. Takes a late spring for an apple tree to...

Siberian crabapple rootstock in one of our raised beds

We had a batch of seed that was sown late like July last year, so they’re just taking off now. This bed has a high density, they’ll...