Apple progress note. 4.9.15

Prairie Fire Crabapple.  4.9.15

 Most of the apples are blooming.  The Prairie Fire Crabapple that I bought as a pollen source for other apples, is in full bloom.  Using the paintbrush to remove pollen from flowers, there is generous pale yellow pollen, plenty for all of the other trees.

Of the little columnar trees, Golden Sentinel has 2 flower clusters and Red Sentinel has about 6.  Not a lot of apples.  I should prevent them from fruiting so they get more growth, but I like getting a taste.  Karmijn is in full bloom.  The Jonagold, grafted last year onto M27 is 3 feet tall and covered with flowers.  I may want to keep that as a single cordon, looks nice.  Honeycrisp on M27 is blooming.  Honeycrisp is too slow growing for such a non-vigorous, mini-dwarfing rootstock.    I have a more vigorous rootstock start for next grafting year.

Of others, the 3-graft on M106 is blooming nicely.  Pristine is first, and most.  Rubinette is 2nd, then Queen Cox.   With the more vigorous rootstock, these have potential for a lot more fruit in later years.

In the Vancouver yard, North Pole has only 3 flower clusters.  Either due to overbearing last year, or over-pruning of spurs on my part, or both.  Liberty is in full bloom.  Liberty is in lavish full bloom, as is Jonagold.  Both are on M27.  Jonagold is about 8 foot tall, Liberty maxed out at 5 foot tall.


Jonagold 1 year after graft, M27.  4.9.15

 I played the honeybee and transferred pollen from Liberty to Jonagold and North Pole.  I used the meager 3 flowers on North Pole as suppliers of pollen for Liberty.  There may be neighborhood apple trees that I don't know about, to provide more.


Golden Sentinel Bloom.  4.9.15

 Of the apple grafts, in early March I top-grafted from a yellow columnar apple, onto the grafts I made last year from North Pole.  Both have started growing.   One in a container, which had only a tiny tuft of roots, is growing nicely.  The plan for these is a columnar tree with red apples on the lower couple of feet, yellow on the next couple of feet, then another type of red.  The trees would be self pollinating and colorful.


Karmijn on M27.  4.9.15

 The graft from Fedco, of Redfield, onto a home grown M27 rootstock, is starting to grow.  I kept these grafts inside for the past few days to see if I could speed them up.

The neighbor apple graft hasn't started to grow yet.  It is at Battleground.  I moved it into the sunroom.

Jonared at one year old does not have flowers yet.  This is described as dwarf, but the rootstock is not listed.  Given the number of grafts I added from Fedco, I expect at most a bowl or two of apples of each type, in a few years.  That's if the grafts take.  Currently they look unchanged, no sprouting but not dried out.

Liberty on M27.  4.9.15

Yellow Columnar Apple graft on red columnar.  4.9.15

Time to thin genetic dwarf peaches. 4.9.15

Peaches after thinning.  4.9.15  El Dorado genetic dwarf.

Today I used a kitchen scissors to thin the peaches on the containerized El Dorado genetic dwarf peach tree.  I removed about 90% of new peaches.  Looking at the photo I probably should remove just a couple more.  They are growing fast.  This is awesome - my first genetic dwarf peaches with no leaf curl. 

The genetic dwarf peaches have very short internodes, so can be left closer together compared to normal-length internode peaches.  It's not the distance, so much as how many leaves are needed to support each leaf. 

This article states that 30 to 45 leaves are needed per peach for the best production.  That is not on genetic dwarf peaches, which tend to have smaller fruit.  I don't know when it needs to be 30 to 45 leaves - early or near harvest.    I need to find some more articles - that # of leaves seems like much more than I recall.

Peaches have set. 4.2.15

Genetic Dwarf Peach Set.  El Dorado  4.2.15

Peaches have set on the containerized El Dorado peach tree.  It looks like there could be a big bowl of peaches from this tree.  That's all I need.

I kept it out of the rain all winter, under the eaves, north of the house.  Looks like it worked  - I don't see any leaf curl at all.

Seed starting. 4.2.15

Seed Starting.  4.2.15

Much as I wanted to use recycled or recyclable containers, such as little paper cups, I didn't have the energy.  This setup with very thin walled plastic 6-packs, for 72 seedlings, was inexpensive.  I've planted tomato seeds from last winter's order, and peppers, some basil, and some marigolds.  More to follow.

I also placed okra seeds and four o'clock seeds in cups of water to soak for a day.  I can plant the seeds tomorrow night.

It's still too early for a lot of types of seeds. 

Puttering. 3.28.15

Main orchard.  3.28.15

Jonagold with multigrafts from Fedco.  3.28.15

 Most plants are out of dormancy or nearly so.

Plums are basically finished blooming.  Unable to see if and how much fruit set has happened.  All Asian plums are done.  Toka finished just after Asian plums.  Euro plums, Green gage is almost done, and Stanley is still blooming.  Stanley is the last to bloom.

Sweet cherries are in about full bloom.

Tart cherries barely beginning to bloom.  They really are later than sweet cherries, which is good for late frost avoidance.

Too early to say anything about the apple and plum grafts.  I look at them every day.

Pawpaw flower buds are swelling, Sunflower and NC-1.  I check those every day too.

Persimmons are growing, even Yates that I planted this January.  I often read that they may take until mid or late summer to grow, their first year.  Mine are budding out at the same time as mulberries.  Nikita's Gift and Saijo both have swelling buds, almost open.

The Mishirasu Asian pear graft, that I grafted last year and was eaten off twice by deer, is growing nicely.  The tree is fenced with a deer cage now.  Other grafts on that tree - 3 are have their first flower clusters.  It's been raining during bloom.  Too early to know if there is fruit set.  I should get the first Shinseiki on the Battleground tree this year - 2 year old cleft graft - and the first Hosui, the tree that I planted in 2012 and grafted others onto it since then.

Plum whip and tongue graft.  Ember.  3.28.15

NC-1 Pawpaw flower buds, swelling.  3.28.15

 Grapes are budding out and starting to grow.

Apples nearly blooming.

Prairie fire crab apple, almost blooming.  There are a couple of flowers, so this is among the first of apples to bloom.

Mishirasu growing despite deer browsing.  3.28.15

Yates Persimmon buds swelling.  3.28.15