Thanks very much for the pix, the tree and fruit look very nice. I love the color of the apples. I hope my tree will look like that in a few years. About how much did you harvest, lb wise? You’re right about it not really have a central leader, but it looks fine to me.
How do the fruit taste, and what are they best for? Fresh eating, sauce, pies?
I grafted a Macoun a few years ago onto a standard rootstock. My tree finally bore 2 fruits last year but none this year due to a heavy frost in May. My tree is very upright and a bit difficult to get to decent shape. I have been doing some limb spreading as it seems to want to be very upright in nature.
A local orchard grows Macoun. They are somewhat purple in color when ripe and for my area ( SE WI) not ripen until early October. They are great for fresh eating but I was not so impressed when using them for pie. Perhaps like Spartan (another McIntosh cross that I dearly love) it is best used for fresh eating only. Lots of better apples for cooking in my opinion (Regent, Greening, Cortland, Empire, McIntosh, Jonathan, 20 ounce ect).
Thanks for the reply. Seems like they can be an unruly variety, but can produce some very nice fruit. I read that they are mostly are for fresh eating, and that they don’t keep for long, maybe a month at the most. But, that’s OK, there are other fine long keepers out there.
Speaking of other Mac crosses, we also have Liberty and Cortland, planted last year.
They’re an all-purpose apple. Currently, they are my favorite baking apple. They soften at just the right bake time and retain their shape. More importantly, they have an near perfect sugar-acid balance that melds well with cinnamon and spices. I find most classic baking apples to be a little too tart for my liking. With these apples, I’ve actually been able to cut back a little on added sugar. Of course, ideal sugar-acid balance is subjective. I get good responses at dinner gatherings, which is plus.
There is one important characteristic about Macoun that makes a difference on eating experience. They usually drop apples that are still too green to eat. If you cut one open it will still have green tinge to the flesh. They need to be stored for 1-2 weeks before using. I keep my mine in a cool cellar way for up to 3 months. I’ve kept them longer, but they were only usable in an applesauce mix.
I have a Granny Smith that is very upright. I’ve been fighting it for long time. All the new shoots grow straight up. I had to use Alan’s cut-n-bend method to get a good spread on the tree. Of course, all the laterals from new horizontal scaffolds grew straight up… the headache never ends.
There is another Cornell apple called Fortune that seems similar to the the other mac hybrids (Emprire, Cortland, Macoun) but has a spicey undertone when eaten fresh. It seems like a good baking apple, and might be better than the others I just mentioned. I got some off a neighbor down the road a couple years ago. I liked it enough to planted one last year.
This is quite an accomplishment given I’ve never eaten a snappy Macoun more than a month or so out of harvest, even from growers with excellent storage facilities. Maybe further up they hold better or maybe I’m jumping to conclusions- but it is primarily sold as a farm stand apple close to harvest season around here. Macintosh and Cortlandt share the same problem.
Fortune is huge and extremely problematic when grown on free standing root stock for me. It is very tasty but probably needs regular calcium sprays to prevent the rot it tends to get before being completely ripe- big round rotten spots and early dropping of infected fruit. This is based on its performance at 3 sites- with all the rain, this is the worst year for it ever.
I should mention that once Macoun has been trained to a spreading habit you keep it productive by getting most of your fruit on 2nd year upward shoots- the less vigorous ones on the tree. Keep cycling them in and out and you can get fairly reliable annual production and good sized, high quality fruit.
I don’t eat a lot of fresh apples outside of apple season, so I can’t comment on fresh eating qualities out that far. Obviously, they gradually decline over time. They were definitely softer at around 10 weeks but still good for baking and cooking. I recall reading that growing conditions affect storage quality, so there could be some variation.
That is interesting. That might explain why it isn’t popular. My neighbor’s tree is a dwarf, but I don’t recall if he told me what type of rootstock. He never mentioned any growing issues and the apples he gave me were flawless. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Average growing conditions here are different than lower Hudson Valley.
It is highly possible that a dwarfing rootstock would be helpful because it restricts a trees access to water and everything else in the soil. Come to think of it, I manage it at one site where the fruit doesn’t become as big and the rot isn’t a problem. It’s in a relatively shady spot.
You are the first I know to recommend Macoun as a baking apple and if that’s how you use it, I can see how it stores fine for your purposes. Baking is not real conducive to apple crunch anyway, but it is that special Macintosh derived crunch that is one of Macouns main appeals as an eating apple.
Reviving this thread, as my Macoun put on a lot of growth over the summer, compared to the pics I posted last spring. Some rather thick scaffolds formed, with most of them bending upwards. Hope I can some of them pulled down.
When is the best time do do this, now while they’re dormant, or wait until warmer temps so they’ll be a bit more pliable?
I’ll post some new pics soon, but right now it’s raining/sleeting and 38°, so that’ll have to wait. We really needed this rain today 
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Also wanted hear how folks’ Macoun’s did last season.
I think it may be best to wait until about bloom as that is when scoring is supposed to be the most successful as well. That seems to be the timing that encourages flower bud formation. That said, I keep tape with me as I prune all winter and pull branches down whenever useful. I go through 2 rolls a week just during normal pruning rounds. It all works out.
When larger branches are too stiff to bend I cut a hinge but smaller ones that break when I’m trying to bend them are just a small part of doing business with these trees. You can experiment and see when is the best time to bend them as far as breakage- all these years and I haven’t a clue.
Thanks Alan. You mention tape, how do you use it? What are you taping the scaffolds to? These branches have nothing below them to tape.
About the cutting hinges, does that mean cutting a notch on the underside where it meets the main trunk? How deep should be the cut? After pulling the branch down, I assume the cut parts will “graft” together and be just as strong later?
I re-read your earlier responses and you keep mentioning “rotating them in and out”, what does that mean?
Thanks again.
On varieties that don’t give me enough lateral secondary branches I keep extra temporary scaffolds to tie upright shoots to- there isn’t an easy way to do it if you have no place to anchor them to. You can let the upright secondaries grow an extra season and maybe tie them to secondaries on separate permanent scaffolds it that’s the only way to do it. Too time consuming to anchor individual secondaries by running string to the ground- at least for me. But we do what we must and can.
When a central leader tree is established and fruitful, the upper tier branches have better access to light and therefore sap as well, which means, over time, they outgrow lower branches and cutting them back to maintain the christmas tree shape often becomes unproductive when their increasing diameter provides them access to too much sap (N and H2O, which encourages vegetative growth at the expense of fruit), so once they become more than half the diameter as the trunk at point of attachment you sometimes need to remove and replace. I remove upper tier branches frequently and grow replacements- starting a season before, usually, leaving a shoot to be its replacement the following year.
It is possible that frequent summer pruning allows you to keep upper scaffolds in place of a very long time- because varieties have so much variability, I’m not sure how much summer pruning can work in sustaining productivity of upper scaffolds without shading lower for very vigorous varieties like Fuji. In truth, by the time the trees are about 18 years old, it often seems easier just to maintain them as open center trees.
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OK, here are some pics taken today of our Macoun. You can see lots of good growth, but a lot in an upwards direction.
Also, I noticed these growths on the rootstock (M7). Are these burr knots?
Looks like burr knots to me. I have a few.
What do you do with them, just trim them off? Could they become a problem if left unattended?
Do you happen to have a Macoun?
I don’t have a Macoun. Also my knots don’t have the root structure yours appears to have. I just make sure I spray the area well.
I see them more on my Stark Bro trees.
The rootstock is 111, which is a reliable rootstock but gets those burr knots that can be attractive to woolly apple aphids but have never been a problem for me (but I’m in the northeast). One reason it is a useful rootstock is because the root primordia sprouts all over it even if you let it grow into a tree (lots of actual apple varieties do that, like Gala, Red Delicious, Spitz and N. Spy which all can grow into trees from cuttings).
The way you are leaving such large diametered branches on your tree will lead to trouble if you want a central leader tree. . The fruit will also likely take much longer to bear, even as an open center tree. Scaffolds function best when they are not more than half the diameter of the trunk at point of attachment- unless you want a really big tree and are in no hurry to get fruit or if the tree is a natural young bearer (precocious) , which Macoun is not. .
The rootstock on this tree is M7, at least that’s what the folks at Wallace Woodstock told me when I ordered it and the Cortland a couple years ago.
Looking at this tree, do you think it’d be better off as open center as opposed to central leader? If these inner upward branches are too thick, should they be cut off then? What about the lower thick branches? If not cut off, then cut back?
Looking at these pics, and then the earlier pics from last spring, I’m surprised it grew such long thick branches so fast. Almost none of my other apples of similar age (2 years) grew like this. But, this tree is in pretty rich soil, old pasture land by the barn.
Last spring (April)
Now
I have not seen M7 with that, so my hunch is they are mistaken, based on a ton of experience with both rootstocks. If I’m wrong, it won’t be the first time, but I would be more surprised than usual by my mistake. At any rate, for all practical purposes, it makes no difference- it is still root primordia and its presence is one reason 111 is often planted only very slightly above the graft union. Push some soil against the lowest one and see what happens- in spring fresh young white roots will form.
Do not remove it- the wounds would not be an improvement, IMO, and I’ve never heard of that being recommended. I’m also not suggesting that you bury it deeper now, that would be stressful to the tree forcing it to generate a lot more new roots than it would otherwise need. That requires a lot of energy. If the burr knots become and actual problem, you can do that gradually by adding a couple inches of soil a year.
And if you are keeping those thick branches, tie them to just above horizontal if you want to see fruit soon. It will help compensate to their excessive access to sap.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I was going to remove the burrknots, but will let them go for now.
Considering the rootstock, I have a couple other M7 trees, from Cummins, and they seem to be skinnier trees at the base than this one. This one and those two were both 9/16" caliper when I planted them two years ago. My Winesap, from Lowe’s, had “semi-dwarf” on the label, but nothing else. So, I don’t know what RS it is. It has had some long root suckers on it, so maybe it’s a M7?
It may be difficult to pull down those thick branches to horizontal, so I probably will have to notch them. Will keeping the thick branches cause a structural problem with the main trunk, that is, too much stress, or is it mostly a fruiting issue?
Thanks again for all the responses.
You can manage the over sized branches if you late spring and summer prune them so they fall behind in growth and the trunk will expand faster than they will- especially if you develop other branches. I forget sometimes that home growers can put a lot of attention on a single tree. My tendency is to just cut oversized branches off. Hinges work well- just cut a third way through on the side you are bending towards, but don’t put any where the branch might be weak (a healed pruning cut on the up-side sometimes causes the branch to snap).
