Cold Hardy Apples and Crabapples

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, but the tube is just for this initial period then it can be reused. once there are branches, we wouldn't be able to just lift it off.

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 and mountain ash, and the grafts are 2-3 years old and looking good. so a fun accidental experiment, if I get a dwarf tree that fruits then cool, if the apple fails I have a mountain ash tree.

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 shelf for a couple of weeks. should you plant your bench grafts sooner? well I always thought so, but there are some real advantages to waiting like this at least for apple, I can easily sort out the graft fails and skip them, I'm working in nice weather and was able to do this when I had time. about the pots - well it's a first, than last 4 years i've planted them all into beds. this year I have an excess of used pots, and some good compost mix from a friend so I'm trying this out. the soil in my beds isn't perfect, and i wonder if growing in the pots will work better - I may be able to push more growth and have them harden off sooner, in pots you have more control over soil moisture and fertilizer. I'll be able to fall ship them. and for the winter - I'll probably store most of the bare root, just shake out the pots and blend in fresh compost or reuse the mix next year.

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.