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...

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...

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...

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...

apple hand pollination step one, at balloon stage bag with organza

next few days will be some pollinating. trying for september ruby x black...

planting apple and pear bench grafts today

around 120 in the first bed, a couple more to go. plums and apricots are still in...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

b118 rootstocks from our stoolbed

finished apple grafting today, final count around 300 for next year. This is our second winter taking fruit tree...

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...

bench grafted apples are waking up and ready to plant

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...

a few apple root grafts from this morning

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...

grafting season started today, the snow finally thawed from our heeled in rootstocks

first graft shown. #grafting...

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...

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...

apple bench grafts all tucked away

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Siberian crabapple seedlings at 8 weeks indoors

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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...