To get the dirt in the second tire I used a foot wide plank and ran the wheelbarrow up the plank.
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Thanks that’s a good idea!. How often do you water them? I used to grow taters in old tires like that.
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This is a wet year so not at all this year because I only want the strongest apples and pears to live. I don’t spray them etc. because I’m looking for the fastest growing, drought and cold tolerant, insect and fungus resistant apples and pears possible.
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These plants are already telling me what they are. See the one apple with the leaves eaten on by bugs it’s sweet beyond sweet but highly disease resistant. Not a spot on any of the seedlings leaves. See the small pear seedlings they are not sweet at all because their leaves are pristine. See the different heights will correlate to vigor later. If that sweet , vigorous , drought tolerant apple gets through winter its a winner because it has all the other characteristics. Then we will see what size and color the apples are. Most of my wild apples seem to be green or yellow.
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Fast forward a few years and these are some of the results of my seedlings.
Once in awhile I get a low vigor, non disease resistant tree like this one
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Some of my seedlings are far better that I don’t have pictures of at this time. I have a green that did not produce this year at all but it’s apples look like a Granny Smith when ripe only lighter green. The size is the same as Granny Smith with a thicker skin. I’m overall very happy with my project because I have an exceptional apple gene pool with many producing normal sized apples. We got to many apples last year so many of my trees will wait until next year to bear heavy again. I tried not to damage the fruiting wood when I picked last year but I need to get better at that as well. I have a crabapple that bears so heavy it looks like clusters of grapes. Here are a couple pictures from last year
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Awesome! Most of the seedlings I have to come up get the cedar apple rust bad
I grew this seedling last year but a rabbit ate it last winter while their was a big snow on the ground.
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That’s a great looking seedling. Did it come back from the roots? You can paint the bottom with pruning sealer because the rabbits really hate that!
It died after that, It grew better than any seedling I had ever seen. Here is what the rabbit did to it.
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I need to paint all my grafts I have a large can of Morrisons.
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That’s to bad it looks like it was a really good apple tree. Sometimes if you leave them in pots the winter gets to cold for them because the pot makes it a zone or two colder. This one is my favorite for flavor. Its small but delicious!
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Looks good! What variety is their flavor similar to?
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They are better than anything that I’ve eaten. The closest is a really good honey crisp. They are a very late apple that I usually pick while it’s snowing.
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I left all my seedlings (just 6) in pots last winter and the rabbits pruned them the same way. But they grew fine afterwards. I also took scion cuttings and grafted them onto mature trees, so hopefully I can get a taste in a year or two.
I’m not sure if it was due to growing in pots, but I did notice powdery mildew on one of the seedlings. I’ll be watching to see if it is further afflicted by it in a more “normal” growing situation.
Do you keep track of the parentage of your apples? Unless you make controlled crosses (some of mine are) you won’t know both parents, but the mother should be easier to track.
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Bob I do keep track of the mother which is always a wild seedling 2nd generation. The father could be any apple within miles. The wild stock appears highly dominant. The original seeds came from apples in a remote place where only wild apples grow on their own which we selected for size of apple and vigor. The parent wild apples had never been sprayed or pruned. Since the parents were grown without assistance of man many of the seedlings have the same characteristics which is what I’m looking for. I have a dozen or so mature seedling apples.
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You may want to try some Kazakhstan apples. They seem a lot like the wild ones, in terms of disease and insect resistance. I had several varieties this spring which had almost no insect bites, in contrast with the rest of my apples, which had plenty of bites, even with a coat of surround. I’m not sure about the flavor- this will be my first year to sample them (other than the 1 which grew from the graft last spring).
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Bob,
Let us know how they turn out. They sound like a fantastic variety!
Bob, what was your technique for controlling your crosses? I’ve watched a few videos online, but I’d rather hear how you did it than figure out I made a mistake seven years later.
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Those are some darn nice looking apples. Do you ever sell any scion wood?
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That’s awesome Clarkinks, I like the idea of new varieties.
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