Home Made Apple Tree Hybrid, So Far. Columnar X Red Flesh. 11.25.22

 In Spring, 2020, I manually pollinated some Redlove Calypso flowers with pollen from columnar Golden Sentinel.  Some fruits resulted.  Then I saved the seeds, stratified, and planted.  Three seedlings did well.  One had darker red leaves, one was more greenish red, one was green with red petioles.

That fall (2021), I planted the two red leaf saplings in the mini orchard.  This is the taller of those now.

The tall one is that sapling.  It's about 7 feet tall now.  The shorter one was a little less vigorous, and something chewed the tip, but it's still OK at about 4 or 5 feet tall now.

I don't know if this will bloom next Spring,  The side nubs look a bit like flower spurs but the buds don't look that much like flower buds, so far.

There is also one longer spur.

A few years ago, I read that the first blooms can come when an apple sapling has about 90 leaf nodes, and the first fruits at about 120 nodes.  This tree is at about that 120 node stage now.  It would be fun if it produces.  I can't say for certain, but it seems to be in a columnar shape.  Its sibling also produced only a vertical shoot, instead of multiple spreading branches, when topped. It's still only a guess how these will turn out.

The third sapling is in a differed area and I don't know yet if it survived.

Here are the original seedling of this cross.

Edit.  Wow, I can't believe I found the reference.  Here.  I think their data is based on saplings in containers, which might affect the blooming.  Trees seem to bloom at smaller size, in containers.  And here.  Transition from juvenile to adult vegetative phase is at about 77 internodes, and transition from adult vegetative to adult reproductive phase is at about 122 internodes.  Slightly different from what I remembered, but not too far off.    Re-reading that web page, maybe I can use the Bud-9 rootstocks, obtained by pulling off offshoots, as rootstock and graft the tips onto them. Just thinking.  Bud-9 is known to be precocious.

First Schlumbergera Flowers. 11.25.22

 These were cuttings I made a few years ago.  The mother plants were becoming too large for me to handle.  I had these on a bench, under a tree, all summer.  Minimal care.   I brought them indoors a few weeks ago and started watering them.   I gave them a little bloom food.

Cleaning Up Mini Orchard. 11.25.22

 I've been pulling weeds and putting down tree leaf mulch in the mini orchard.  A few mini trees needed moving to make room for a planned pepper planter.

So far, I removed weeds from the North, East, and West fences / tree rows.  Some of the middle is done as well.  After removing weeds, I lay a thick layer of tree leaf mulch.  The areas that are not cleaned up yet, in the center rows, will have a weed barrier topped with wood chip mulch, for pathways, and thatvplanned pepper planter.

This is one of the minitrees that I moved, SummerRed apple on Bud-9 rootstock.  It had two big shoots emerging from underground, below the graft.

I removed those shoots.  Their connection to the node is brittle.  They just break off.  They will give some rootstock to play with.  They don't have much root, but it doesn't take much. Some of the originals that I bought didn't have much root either.

I planted those temporarily in a raised bed.  

I moved two of the columnar apples on Bud-9, to the duck yard. They didn't have enough room now in the mini orchard, and one was replaced by the SummerRed.  

I had said in a previous comment that most of the columnar on Bud-9 were about three feet tall.  Now that I'm working with them, I have to correct that.  Only one is only about three feet tall.  The others are about 4 1/2 to 7 feet tall.  I think that's about perfect for me at this stage.  Columnar trees on vigorous rootstock grow way to big for my mini-orchard, and it's too challenging to keep them pruned down to seven or eight feet tall.  These will stay shorter.  Some had a few apples this year.  One of these was made from a Golden Sentinel apple tree, the other from a North Pole apple tree.  They are both tasty apple varieties.

The Bud-9 roots are not extensive at all.  I had to prune some due to bad shape or placement, but not as much as bare root trees this size are sold as.

Holiday Bulbs. 11.20.22

 I planted these last week.  A red amaryllis and some paperwhite narcissus.  

Fun to watch them grow.  The potting medium is "coir peat", which I assume is coir processed to be like peat, but could be a mixture of coir and peat.  Since there is no nutrition in that, I watered with dilute bloom food.

Overwintering Hot Pepper Plants. Update. 11.20.22

 This "Early Jalapeño" plant didn't grow large in the garden, so I had left the leaves on it when I dug it up to overwinter.  Even though I had washed the roots pretty thoroughly, I noticed now it had aphids.

After spraying with the Dr Earth herbal spray, I reconsidered and cut off all of the leaves.  There are no peppers on this plant to ripen, so I probably should let it go dormant.

After trimming.

Before trimming.

Meanwhile, the plants I left leaves and peppers on, to ripen, still look pretty good.  No aphids, gnats, or whitefly that I can see.  The two larger plants are Thai Dragon and the smaller on is Tabasco.

It's still early, many months to go.  It's an interesting experiment.  It would be nice to get a jump start on peppers next year.  And also, potentially, more productivity from the overwintered plants.