Cold Hardy Apples and Crabapples: Winter Field Notes

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

6 different sources of siberian crabapple

there’s so much generic variation and with likely hybridization the apples...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Siberian crabapple (Malus Baccata) rootstocks from our winter garden getting potted up