Many of the scion I’m going to be grafting are Heirloom and a good number of them are from England originally as well as some incredible Cultivars from France and Quebec, Canada. I’m doing 60 graphs this spring for a small commercial/wholesale orchard and also going on Alan’s word from Cummins Nursery with this G890 as a excellent idea hopefully.
I have a few trees on M7 (oldest trees and doing well). My G30 grafts that I did are booming and gaining steam. I got some g222 rootstock for fun this year. Yee haw!
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During my apple growing years m27. and m9 are my favorites. Also what I find very good is inner stem with m111 at the base and m27 in between. M7 is a full proof rootstock bulshit for taste.
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Bob, your Lowe’s winesap is more likely MM106 or MM 111…but who knows.
I took a bit of scion wood today, and sprayed dormant oil.
Felt like spring! (At least the groundhog is supposed to wake up to snow falling next Friday…and that’s good.)
BB
Could be. But, I’ve heard that those two are called semi-standard RS. No big deal. It has plenty of room around it. It’s big enough now that it should give us a few apples this year.
Yeah, it was a nice day here today, got into the 60s. Was out walking the farm trying to figure out where all the berry plants and the three pluots are going. But, rain’s coming in tomorrow, to make it even more muddier.
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The grafting class and scion fair just got word we will have MM111 & Gen 890 on hand. I hope to get my hands on Gen 890 for the first time and see how it performs out this way.
My experience with Geneva 30 has been good, and will probably try laying a whip of it down to make a long stool for stocks. (Might try the same for Bud118, just because I never seem to have enough of that.) Geneva 30 isn’t as prolific for making more branches/stocks, but its flood tolerance, productivity and size all please me. Since I have no intention of ever grafting Gala to Gen30, that bit of incompatibility is not at issue.
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I’ll be trying G.890 for first time…but on hold until it gets shipped.
Antonovka seems to sucker and would make a stool bed…just full size trees 10 or 15% bigger than B118.
bb
We’ll have to compare notes on Geneva 890. Eastern WA is quite unlike anywhere in Kentucky, I expect: volcanic sandy soil, hot and dry summers, foggy winters with some snow (LATE this time).
I have 25 G.890 and 25 G.210 coming from Cummins this spring. They better perform better than the G.210 did last spring or I’ll be done with Geneva root stocks. I also hope they’re both better rooted than what I received from them last year. That being said, the P.18, B118, G.222, OHxF87/97 and Quince from Cummins all did very well.
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I had planned to order a bunch of G.210 from Cummins this year, but last month I changed my order to G.890, plus a handful of B.118 for the smallest/weakest scions. I’ll be interested to compare notes with everyone as well. There’s not much published yet, but the anecdotal info I hear about it sounds good: free standing, beefy central leader, decent ability to scavenge water/nutrients. Sadly most of the institutional studies have a pretty narrow focus on success with supermarket cultivars.
I really wish Cummins could ship stock any earlier, as spring is well underway here in California, and we’ll have full-on summer heat starting as soon as 6-7 weeks. When I asked them, they said that the final week of March is their first agricultural inspection so they can’t ship any earlier 
They have sent me an email saying 3/18/19 for shipping mine. G890. Also more G202.
Last year I did G30 and they did OK, but I lost 2 or 3 where the graft didn’t take, and the rootstock died after I’d repeatedly rubbed out buds below the graft.
And I’m expecting B9 and B118 from Burnt Ridge tomorrow (em, make that ‘today’).
Yes, Geneva works on roots for commercial applications…but I guess that’s who funds their research. I suspect some of the Budagovsky could be crossed at home with some of the Geneva roots for a superior root…but that would be a boring and probably expensive experiment with little reward most likely, at least financial reward.
Not fair 
I assume your state is more easy going about plant importation than mine 
I’m not complaining that the market fruit growers pay the big bucks for data/research, but they mostly evaluate the stock very narrowly in the context of early yield of gala etc. I wish there were more broad studies of the stock’s performance. As the test orchards get older we’ll get more data…
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Yes, Kentucky is very easy going. No ‘plant police’ following trucks around to see what’s on them and the like. (Just the DOT…and mainly they write up other infractions with bigger money that’s easier to collect).They did try and quarantine the Emerald Ash Borer…but to little avail.
In Kentucky “Farm Tags” on a vehicle means you have no weight limits…if a pickup truck can pull a million pounds down the road, it will seldom be stopped. (And if it does get a ticket…the local judge will usually throw it out in court.) Technically, it applies to self-employment…and those open ended rules don’t apply if the farmer is hauling a load of dirt to sell to a homeowner in town…but again, little enforcement.
Andy: Get your hands on some form of fungal inoculant. I’ve tried Myko Paks from Raintree and have been pleased with the result. (Too bad we only have those gnarly names for anything fungus: “mycorrhizal” is close, but surely mis-spelled.) I’ve laid one beside a root stock with hardly any roots and it survived and later throve (thrived; seem to be on a roll with obscure words here).
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@Heirloom Keith, did you get your G.890 from Cummins? I just got an email they won’t be shipping mine because of an inventory error. My order was placed 12/17/18.
My order of 50 from Cummins arrived 16 days ago…and I got 'em grafted up a week or so ago.
I ordered sometime in December. They beat arrival from Burnt Ridge this year for a change.
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Grandpas Orchard has G 890 in stock, just placed an order for 10 a couple of days ago
I sure did but that was in 2018 this year I went with Willamette Nursery in Oregon. I learned that Cummins Nursery is only a middle man with a price increase from where they order rootstock. They don’t grow their own rootstocks. I’ve had some difficult times trying to reach them and it’s not made my experience the best. I believe customer service is paramount and not returning a phone call can definitely effect my opinion of a business. Sorry to hear about your not getting the G890 you ordered. How are they going to make this rite?
Well, I wasn’t sure I wanted them too, they were offering me G.210 as an alternate and you’re aware of my disaster with that rootstock. So I told them they could double the amount for the same price, otherwise just refund that portion of the order. They agreed to send 50 instead of 25, plus I already had 25 G.210 in that order, so 75 total. I had considered ordering Geneva rootstock from Copenhaven, now I wish I had. What I got from them last year was excellent, but none of it was Geneva.
@Chris_in_GA Thanks for the tip, I may order 10 as well, I really wanted to get some trees on G.890 to see how I liked the rootstock.
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