Addiction comes in many forms

I already have about 25 apple trees planted on my small back yard and what do I do. Just bought five more, Hackworth, Golden Pippin, Carter Blue, Washington Gravenstein, and Smoky Mountain Limbertwig. These were bought on a whim and I don’t know anything about them. Hope some of these are worth keeping. Any opinions good or bad are welcome. Bill

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Hi, Bill!

This is kinda how Nick Botner got started, you know …

Good luck,

Mark

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It’s impossible to stop, I was talking to my dad today and hinting about places we could plant trees on his land. He is not that interested in fruit trees but he has always encouraged my whims.

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Sometimes you just gotta have the ones with neat names. Smokey Mtn Limbertwig- how can anyone pass that up? I say well done!

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Yep. I have more trees on order than places to plant them.

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That’s what pots are for!

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I’m not sure if I can find enough room to plant these. My plans are to graft them onto existing trees for the time being. My long range plans are to weed out some of the undesirables later on.

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Auburn, I also have to control myself. Now that I graft, I’m holding myself to 5 or so varieties per tree. I think after this year I will not acquire more, except as replacements. That’s after I plant the 6 trees I already ordered, and graft about 10 varieties of scion, apples, pears, and plums, to existing trees. I don’t really need 5 varieties of pawpaw, 4 of persimmon, 5 of Asian Pear, maybe 10 of plum, maybe 12 of fig, etc. But it is very nice to have fresh fruit for many months of the year, and far better than can be bought at the store.

Good luck with all of your apples! I would love to hear how they taste! You have interesting sounding varieties!

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Bear! And then next year. . . ?

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Gravenstein is an AWESOME apple, and Washington Red is supposed to be one of the better strains. I have requested scions from Geneva. If you can get it to fruit in your climate, you’ll love the taste, which is tops. It ripenes in a staggered fashion over the course of 3 weeks in August here. Once picked, put the apples in the fridge. Best eaten chilled. They do not keep, but the taste is sublime.

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More of my notes on Gravenstein, summarized from various sources:

Gravenstein of Denmark. ARS has scions (cv. Washington Red). Bud onto B.9 (ideally would like an elevated & amended (loamy) soil, heavily mulched. Does not like droughty soil, but does not want wet feet either. Successive ripening. Spot pick when they’re red. Best eaten chilled. One of the very best - “like eating apple juice” - but only for a two-week window: usually Aug 14- 27. Mushy & nasty afterwards. Still worth growing. Great for pies & sweet cider too. Vigorous but slow to bear. Can tend toward biennialism if not thinned. Susceptible to rosy aphids, scab, mildew & especially fireblight. BUD backup branch onto G.41. *Triploid. Early bloomer. Pollinated by Lodi & Williams Pride and others. 2015 Burkittsville pickings began on Aug 4. Ate Aug 7, 2015- good juicy apples.

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Always better to plant fruit than not. I only wished I planted 10 times more. For me the addiction is something I gave into many years ago.

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Look on a bright side, it is a healthy addiction. I lost count on my berries, fruit trees, and multi-grafted varieties. It was 100+ a couple years ago. I plan to bark graft another 15 varieties of fruit tree this coming Spring.

Tony

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Mrs. G, since I had 3 trees die this summer, and 2 have been nonperformers for 6 or 7 years and will be removed, I figure 5 of those dont count. Do they? :grinning:

Tony you are right, it’s healthy. I dont drink, smoke, or gamble. It’s good to have something good to focus on. I’m out almost every day looking at the buds and pondering which ones look like potential flower buds, and counting potential pawpaws and asian pears.

I also figure there will be some future culls and deaths to whatever cause, so furure numbers may be less.

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Earlier tonight my mother asked me how many varieties I’m growing (she wanted to include it in the Christmas card) and I came up with the following.

Approximately 140 trees in ground, with 21 more on order (more than 80% of the new ones are jujubes or Euro plums, my newest obsessions)

Existing: 55 apples, 8 Apricots, 7, cherries, 13 pear, 14 jujube, 5 mulberry, 16 peach/nectarine, 5 persimmon, 20 plums

100+ berry bushes (including 12 kinds of Gooseberry, 20+ blueberries, and 16+ currants, including red, white, black, and pink)

~50 kinds of Vine (including 10+ raspberries, 14 blackberries, 12 grapes, and 10 kiwi)

The total number of varieties is around 370, when you include the ~120 I’ve grafted on.

And this is after just only 6 years. It’s already getting hard to track, between potted trees that later get planted (I tried to only count in-ground plantings), removing stuff I’ve given away, removing casualties, etc. I remember Scott mentioning one time that he’d grown something like 300+ kinds of just apples. It’s got to be near impossible to keep good records of everything when the totals (as his overall count probably has) reach the thousands.

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It is a fine disease! 47 and counting.

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I am definitely ill with this disease.

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It hurts so good and tasty

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I feel a little better now, I’m nowhere near you guys, which means I don’t have to feel guilty about the 10 fig trees i added in the last 2 weeks!

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Only 10?

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