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...

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...

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...

rosybrook applecrab

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...

apple stoolbed b118 harvest, 3rd year

made about 50 rootstocks 1/2" caliper and decent...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

here’s our larger Siberian crab apple rootstocks for spring grafting

these were direct seeded last...

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...

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...

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