Cold Hardy Apples and Crabapples: Fall Field Notes

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

apple stoolbed b118 harvest, 3rd year. made about 50 rootstocks 1/2" caliper and decent rooting #stoolbed

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