Rubinette Apple. 10.2.2020

 This was the first really good crop for Rubinette.  It fruited a little for the past three years, but not much and they were ruined.  I think they had San Jose Scale, which I treated last winter with dormant oil spray.  It worked.  I don't see effects of scale, at least not yet.

Rubinette has a reputation as the best tasting, or one of the best tasting, apples around.  I know, each year there seems to be a new "Best Tasting" apple.  This one really was excellent.  I would at least say it is among the best tasting apples in my orchard.  Truly delicious.  Decent crop this year, too.

Grenadine Apple. 10.2.2020

 These were the first of the Grenadine apples.   They have red flesh, as marketed.  They seem fairly scab susceptible, like Airlie Red Flesh.  Also similar to Airlie Red Flesh, the skin is mostly green, although some redness shows through as a muddy color.  The main difference is Grenadine is round and very tart.  Maybe leaving them on the tree longer will sweeten them up, but Wowza, this one was like a lemon drop!

This first photo compares Grenadine to Fuji Beni Shogun.  The Fugi was much sweeter.  I may have noted a little "Red Hawaiian Punch" flavor in the Grenadine.

Chestnuts. 10.2.2020

 These are the first of the chestnuts this year.  The Marivale and Precose Migoule both bore some nuts.  Marivale drops them in the husk.  Precose Migoule seems to drop the nuts before the husk, meaning that browsing deer or squirrels get them.  I knocked off the ones that I could, to let them finish in a bucket in a shed.

I'm keeping the nuts for a while in the fridge to see if there are more ripening that we can roast.

Cross Species Pear Graft Update. 9.29.2020

 Along with the apple grafts, I wanted to try some pear grafts.  Again, this was for making miniature trees.  However, I'm not aware of sources for miniaturizing pear trees. There are some less conventional ways.  Serviceberry, Hawthorn, and Aronia are pear relatives, although different species.  There is some info from the fruit growing hobby community that pear can grow with these as rootstocks.  Also, the apple variety "Winter Banana" will reportedly accept apple scion, so I wanted to try that too.

I grafted European pear onto Winter Banana on a Bud-9 rootstock, and also onto an existing apple tree branch.

I grafted European pear onto two varieties of Serviceberry, and onto a Chinese Hawthorn and onto a Black Hawthorn.

I grafted Asian pear onto Aronia.

Nothing took on the Serviceberry.  

The European pear did very well on Chinese Haw, growing about two feet.  Here is the graft, a little irregular but it looks OK.  That shoot is actually below the graft union, and is Hawthorn.

 The graft on Winter Banana on Bud-9 did not grow.  The graft on Black Hawthorn did not grow.

I lost track of the other two, because of location.  Now, I started Fall cleanup as well as picking apples, and discovered the Asian Pear on Aronia.  It didn't grow much, but then again (a) it took, and grew some and (b) it was buried in snowpeas and volunteer four o'clocks, and (c) it was not watered all summer long.

The European Pear on Winter Banana on an existing apple tree, did take and grew a little.  Again, not a lot.  I'm not sure what to do with this - I don't need a pear on an apple tree.  I might try cutting the graft at the Winter Banana and graft that, with the already healed pear graft, onto Geneva 222 or Bud 9.  Maybe the Pear/Apple graft needed more vigor to heal together, than the Bud-9 can provide but now that it did, it will grow.

Since these were sort of hidden and forgotten, I never got around to removing the graft binder ziplock strips.  That's most likely fine, but I'll do that today.

Apple Grafting Update. 9.29.2020

 During late winter, I did a grafting project to create the mini-trees for what will be my mini-orchard.  This is part of my plan to be able to continue gardening and growing fruit, with lower maintenance and no ladders.  From ground level, I can prune, spray, pick, inspect, putter.  I can also grow multiple varieties in the safety of the deer fence.  But first, I need the mini-dwarf trees.  To create those, I used scion from my existing apple trees and highly dwarfing rootstocks bought via mail order.

I did the grafting March 16th.  Most were whip-and-tongue, done as shown in this vintage woodcut print, noted as by Dr. John A Warter in 1867:

 

 

I grafted most onto the highly dwarfing but sturdy rootstock, Bud-9 (short for Budagovsky-9). After grafting them, I wrapped tightly with 1/2 inch wide strips cut from zipper lock freezer bags, potted them in the usual potting medium and they looked like this.

One of the grafts was Co-op 32, generic name for the early bearing, disease resistant hybrid apple "Pristine™".  I liked this one a lot, but the mature branch had fallen off of it's multigraft stock about 4 years ago, held on by a tiny bit of cambium and bark.  By the time I removed the branch, there were tiny growths of stem that year.  I kept one, and grafted it onto another multigraft the following year.  It didn't do well but survived and added a few inches.  This time, I removed that and grafted it onto some Geneva 222 rootstock - still very dwarfing but maybe a bit more vigor than the highly dwarfing Bud-9.  There wasn't enough to graft as a whip-and-tongue, so I did a cleft graft, matching up one side's cambium layer and hoping that was enough.

I also did some weird, cross-species grafts that will be described in the next post.

Here is how the mini-trees look now.  All are whips about 2 to 3 to 4 feet tall.  I did keep them in a spot where the pots would be shaded but the tops were in full sun; watered almost every day; gave some Miracle Grow a couple of times.

The graft unions healed nicely.  In a few years, this area won't be visible except with looking very closely.

That Co-op 32 apple cleft graft, which I was prepared to write off, did quite well too.  As well as any other.  That tree is also about a 3 foot whip now.  I'm very happy to have rescued that variety.  So I still have the original scion, in a way.  It's just on its own roots now.

 By the way, this is the lineage for Pristine™ (Co-op 32) apple, developed in 1975 by the PRI consortium and labeled Co-op 32 in 1993.

Next, these will need to be planted in the apple garden.  That can happen as fall and winter proceed.  Two raised beds will need to be removed, which might be after a frost.

I'm not certain yet about spacing.  I have a Liberty apple on M27 highly dwarfing rootstock, which at 20 years old occupies a space about 5 to 6 feet wide.  With closer pruning, it might be ok with the 5 feet spacing.  The wider the spacing, of course, the fewer I can grow and the more room they take, but I want them to have the space they need.

Doing this is inspired by the late Gene Yale from Skokie, Illinois, who had a very nice miniature tree orchard that he created over the years.  This was him in his back yard in 1997.  He used various distances between his trees, and pruned some smaller than others.