This collection focuses on apples and crabapples we grow, graft, and trial for cold hardiness in our zone 3 climate. Posts are grouped by season, and the captions explain the observations and decisions behind each photo.
Questions and comments always welcome to doug@oaksummitnursery.ca.
Apples And Crabapples
114 postsArticle build 2026-02-01 12:02
Spring
45 posts
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
Summer
37 posts
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 rabbits. a fun result I think.
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 pollinators should be in good supply. Will need to cage or tube each tree, tomorrow's job.
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. what a tasty summer apple.
Prairie magic apple grafted onto saskatoon.
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 and eat all of the small growth. so I use these or tree tubes.
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 growing well grafted onto a saskatoon tree, this one in particular has outgrown our other experimental intergeneric trial apple grafts.
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 volunteer and get to climb an apple tree. I finally ordered a proper apple picking apron for the next one.
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.. well september, a small apple thad I enjoy, crossed with black strawberry, a red fleshed apple with strawberry flavour. the name's right there it's going to be september strawberry if it works. just need what about 5-7 years to find out? ;)
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 can still put on 12-18" in a year which is in the healthy range.
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 planned to cage the small trees, cut grass and mulch.
Checking apple grafts on saskatoon. some were done late spring, fun to see them decide to flower. two year old grafts have some fruit, first time.
Helping to pick a large goodland tree with local volunteers, we pick a dozen five gallon pails of apples for the food bank.
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 apple, better if I knew the cultivar
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. norkent?
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 growing on a saskatoon tree.
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. for new grafts I start at shoulder height to be above the browse line.
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 and mulch and caging, this is a work in progress. I stopped at 25 trees because of the soil, not sure how siberian crabapple rootstocks will like it. Green ash, boxelder, sandbar willow, silver buffaloberry all around the site are fine with the wet clay.
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. #grafting #applegrafting
Checking apple grafts top worked onto saskatoon this spring. #grafting
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 best early growth. #grafting
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 it, no need to add any other support
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 then usually wait for spring to grow. #budgrafting #tbudgrafting #grafting
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 breaking down. Wondering how it will affect rooting. #stoolbed #appletrees #propagation
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 summer. Fall red seems to have the strongest growth, but more trials and seasons of observation will tell. For now at minimum I know how to save left over scion wood if needed. What's promising just like our prunus trials is that we don't need every cultivar to do well on saskatoon, we just need one and if can serve as an interstem. Our property happens to have established saskatoon underbrush almost everywhere mixed with the choke cherry and hazel, and I'm excited to find out what can be grafted onto it and exactly how long lived these grafts can be. The trees live for maybe 40 years and will certainly be more dwarfing that a full sized apple rootstock. #applegrafting #serviceberry
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 with red flesh. the white one has small late hanging apples. Both of these trees are planted in 2004 and have never had a single branch injured from the cold. Both will be harvested for seed again this fall for our rootstocks. #crabapple
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 cultivars. could this be just an excellent cold hardy dwarfing rootstock? Last winter we had a dozen nights colder than -35C, and the saskatoons are bullet proof to the cold. #applegrafting
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 over the next few years we'll be making some selections for our bench grafts, the healthiest and fastest growing, most scab resistant and cold hardy should be selected. #appletree #rootstock #propagation #siberiancrab #siberiancrabappletree #treenursery
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 wait for the summer solstice to flower.
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 grow but would get larger we we had them spaced.
First apple blossoms #appleblossom
Malus baccata for rootstocks
Apple grafted to Saskatoon #grafting
Fall
18 posts
September ruby apple crosses. this apple is zone 2 hardy, ripens around now and it's good, I enjoy these small deep red skinned apples. made a few crosses with black strawberry, vanilla pink, black and red. the dark skin should come through, and the extra cold hardiness might help more seedlings over the zone 3 threshold. one rookie move, I picked the apples before they all had completely brown seeds, should have waited. but the upside is many of them had 10 seeds. anyone know if half brown seeds have a chance to grow, or why just this apple seems to produce double the seed count? #applebreeding
Apple breeding. excited about norland x black strawberry, an early apple with streaks of red, super cold hardy -40, crossed with black strawberry which has dark skin, red flesh and strawberry flavour. a full description link in the comments, if you haven't gone down the apple rabbit hole then you might find it's more exciting than expected. my goal here is to get an apple with a mix of the traits, surely black strawberry is awesome but like most california apples it just won't grow on the canadian prairies in zone 3, but some of these seedlings should.. hope to get strawberry + red flesh + cold hardy + early .. will see, the first round of selection here will be to grow them for a couple of years and see what survives above the snow. it's a back burner project, check in with me around 2032 to find out hah
Siberian crabapple, with some random percentage of hybridization, fruit will be different sizes. the larger fruiting tree is just about completely scab resistant, collected more of those. this stand of 4 trees were planted in 2004, and I use the seed for rootstocks.
Rosybrook applecrab. tasty small apples, ripe this week
Got to tour a local orchard and try a few apples, no even sure what this one was but liked the color
Tree tubes are cool, they create a micro climate while protecting from deer rabbits mice. these are all siberian crabapple, to be grafted above the browse line, in an area with frequent deer and rabbits. If I didn't tube or cage them, the trees would be heavily browsed, apple twigs and bark are like candy for wildlife
Collet apple, happy to get a box and can't stop snacking on them
Hall's pink apple, ripens in october which is late for us but it's been fully cold hardy here. grafted in 2022 onto the frame of a crabapple, it's the first year the branch fruited.
Roots like carrots on these 2 yr old siberian crabapples. I had make 6-8 different beds this fall, 1-2 yrs old some raised some in ground, some local seed. lots of material for grafting in the spring, probably much more than I need but I really enjoy grafting. #rootstocks
Apple trees bench grafted this spring. high density maybe 6" centers in 3 x 20 ft bed. Most are around 2 ft and they were transplanted in may after the ground thawed, we had snow until mid april, short season here. I keep these under hoops with netting to keep our curious deer who would see it as a salad bar, also rabbits. one hoop covers 2 rows so it's easy to duck under and use the path to work between them.
Siberian crabapples collected from various trees at a few sites. these tiny ones on the right are a new phenotype to me, I initially thought they were prunus. wild or ornamental malus baccata is the best description of them, interesting that the fruit more closely resembles other rosacea, the overripe fruits are sticky not mealy, the seeds have no discernible husk, there's 8-10 or more seeds, and they're the size of pin cherries. is it possible there's some hybridization with another malus, or does this apple have some other name?
Siberian crabapple with deep red flesh, I like to use the seedlings from this tree for rootstocks. Maybe there's some breeding potential, it's zone 2-3 hardy and has the uber red flesh, the other parent would just need to contribute.. well size and taste.
Here's our larger Siberian crab apple rootstocks for spring grafting. these were direct seeded last year. #rootstock
Apple rootstocks tucked in for next spring. these ones are about medium sized first year seedlings, anything smaller goes back in a bed for another year. Our two year old rootstocks hit about waist high, about as large as you want for bench grafting. Working on switching to stool beds this fall, then we should be able to grow larger more uniform rootstocks in one year. #rootstock #siberiancrabapple
A couple of norkent apple grafted onto saskatoon / service berry this spring. We had the same take with apple as we did pear, about 90% of the spring grafts on A. alnifolia are alive although the pear grew more, some of the pear grafts grew 3' and the average apple grew 1-2'. #appletree #grafting #serviceberry
Some apples in our pears, easy to sort out when the colors change
Siberian crab apple, these are from a 20 yr old tree that we harvest for seeds. #malusbaccata #redfleshedapple
Malus baccata seed .. #malus #appleseed
Winter
14 posts
Almost done taking stock, this is my office today, inside the root cellar counting bins of apple trees.
Siberian crabapple seeds collected from various sources showing the diversity. apples are generally a mixed bag of several species, malus baccata often have some percentage of hybridization, the trees will be very similar as rootstock and for zone 2/3 hardiness, but the fruit will range from tiny and red to 1" and red or yellow. #appleseed
We've had a couple ft of snow this month, here's the drifts in one of our apple trees along the laneway. this is a wild crab that I've been shaping for a few years and has about ten varieties grafted
Morden russet. one of the few russet apples you can grow in zone 3, developed at the morden research station and was rescued before the tree was removed years ago. I have a few left in stock. #russetapples
Root grafted apples. an old school technique that used to be the most common way to propagate them. I found the trees take an extra year to grow, these were grafted spring 2023. Inspired to research this in old gardening and nursery books after reading an article by @elizapples #grafting #rootgraft #applegrafting
Bench grafting apples last spring, the conventional and a few root grafts. I so look forward to doing it again this year, I didn't count but there were at least a few hundred and I'll do more this year. So far I've preferred parafilm and then a rubber on top. maybe I don't need both, but parafilm quickly holds a whip and tongue together and keeps it clean and dry inside, and the rubber feel like it holds everything tight.
6 Different sources of siberian crabapple. there's so much generic variation and with likely hybridization the apples range in size and color.
Started the winter garden. apple seeds direct into 2.5" pots to start Siberian crabapple rootstocks. with this head start they'll be up to size for grafting by the end of the season #indoorgarden
Apple rootstocks in the fall, seedling Siberian crabapple. this time of year I'm collecting scion wood and planning to start bench grafting as soon as the ground thaws. #grafting #rootstock
New apple seeds on plates to dry overnight in the dehydrator. First is Siberian crab, second is an unknown variety, both fully cold hardy in zone 3. After the seeds are clean I dry them on low heat at around 90-100F for 1-2 days to get the moisture content down close to 10% and store in a fridge. #seedsaving #appleseed
Collected these crab apples today for seeds. it's a 30 yr old tree in a family yard, late hanging 1" apples always loaded, hardy to the tip in zone 3. Thinking of planting some and also offering the seeds. #seedsaving #crabapple
Malus baccata (Siberian crabapple, the worlds most cold hardy apple) seeds at 40 days cold stratification about 2 days out of the fridge are starting to germinate. These little seeds are getting planted out into 200 cell trays under led light until may when they will go into our greenhouse, then into nursery beds in June. Last year we timed it differently and had some transplant shock so we learned a lot and we try again. Hoping for 80% survival to planting out so about 1000 seedlings with a head start on the year. Here in Manitoba we get about 3 months of growing frost free from June - Sep. All of these little tree are planned for rootstocks, if they're large enough we might even bud some this fall, they pull it off in warmer climates maybe it's possible here. #backyardorchard #backyardnursery #appleseed
Siberian crabapple with purple genetics. One of the trees we harvested seed from in the fall had stunning purple leaves, and about 50% of the seedlings carried that trait. #appletrees #appletreenursery #siberiancrabapple #applerootstock #appletree #crabapples #treenursery
Siberian crabapple (Malus Baccata) rootstocks from our winter garden getting potted up. #appleseedling #rootstocks