I got around to grafting about 450/1000 trees. I planted the extra rootstocks in my nursery for next year.
Summer 1:
The first few had close to 100% success but the ones grafted later in the season did not do as well. My guess is that they broke dormancy too quickly. Unfortunately, my assumption was that my success rate would increase as I got better, so I started with varieties I didn’t care as much about. I grafted all the varieties that I only wanted a few of last. In reality the weather seemed to be a lot bigger factor than my technique so I was left with not as much diversity as I would have hoped and with a ton of a few varieties. Nobody needs 12 wolf river apple trees.
Winter 1:
The first winter some mice got into the nursery and girdled about 400 trees. Interestingly they targeted the Geneva rootstocks and left most of the EMLA 106 and other older rootstocks alone. Since the Geneva rootstocks were most expensive, I had grafted them later so most of my successful grafts were fine. My theory is that this is the type of thing that the heirloom rootstocks have been accidentally selected for but the modern ones haven’t. I wonder what else might fall into that category. Still waiting to see the results of the Geneva trees that did survive.
Spring 2:
I transplanted 120 trees from the nursery to the main orchard. I put blue tubes on some to protect them from deer. I didn’t graft much this year.
Summer 2:
The ones in the tubs seemed to have less disease and be doing better so I put tubes on all of them.
Winter 2:
I left the tubes on and cleaned out the leaves in the fall to prevent rodent nesting. Only one tree was chewed when spring came.
Spring 3:
I transplanted 100 rootstocks into the orchard rows. I sprayed all the trees with dormant oil right as they started to grow leaf tips (hopefully not too late). The trees are mostly all whips. I’m going to remove a lot of the buds to try to encourage the structure I want.
Plan with rootstocks in orchard:
I’m using these to trial pruning techniques / sprays / other stuff. Ones that do poorly will be culled. Ones that don’t grow into a nice shape will be grafted at the base to something else next year. If any form a really nice frame I might just graft over the main limbs and make a frankentree.
If you don’t have a really good post, I wouldn’t use the tubes. I have the tubes zip-tied to T-posts and that works great but without that they are basically just tree killers. You can often times get used T-posts for $1-2 each if you keep an eye out on craigslist. Depending on how many trees you have, there might be a cheaper/more expensive option that makes sense.
I’m planning to take the tubes off some of my trees this year or next since I’m starting to have horizontal branches and the trees are getting more established.
I gave up on Apples after about 10 years but my son bought the farm and plans to re-work my failure with new trees on a more robust trellis. A stump bucket on the tractor dug out the old trees easily. Dropped them into the goat pen and they are still eating on them…
Started with 100 each Granny Smith, Fuji and Pink Lady on G41. About 25 trees to a row so 4 rows of each for a total of 12 new rows. Hope to remove and replace another 300 next year.
The way the nursery packaged the trees made them easy to handle.
Edit. Interesting that the new trees from cold storage were just starting to wake up but most existing trees in the orchard already have small apples.
I failed to mention that we did a substantial amount of research on Apples before my first attempt. We visited and spoke with the managers at several commercial orchards in VA and NC. We were also fortunate to have the Apple PHD and Apple pathologist visit our planting and make suggestions. Century Farm helped with suggestions for heritage apples that were likely to do well in my area. Our problems started with a major Fireblight outbreak around year 3. Turned out that Bud9 produce much smaller trees than expected in my area which limited my yield. We also had a lot of early apple varieties that nobody wanted. About 10 years of trail and error experiences that my son plans to correct errors with his new plantings. Fortunately wholesale tree prices are not up much but the price of wire and posts is up about 2X.
Having myself come up through many endeavors with a good measure of youthful disregard, I wouldn’t attempt to dissuade you or throw too many unwelcome “pearls of wisdom” your way. You did ask for some advice though, so here goes:
First and foremost, you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s “you” in the general sense, as in “a person”. None of us do either. It’s an impossibility.
Most things worth knowing have to be learned through experience. Are you’re plans likely to proceed exactly as you imagine them now? Unless you’re the rare exception, then decidedly no. One thing that will help you in this process is to be strive to be nimble and observant. I honestly have no idea what the realities of your circumstances are, but I don’t believe Scale is going to help you in either regard. Someone once said something wise about that. Something about seeing the forest for the trees.
There’s nothing wrong with ambition or optimism. You’ll make mistakes like we all did (and do) and if you’re persistent, you’ll succeed. But you’re success likely won’t look quite like you imagined it at the start. If you strive first and foremost to take excellent care of your trees, you’re optimal scale will follow from that. The matter of biting off more than you can chew is that you can wind up with nothing in the end, after a lot of work. Don’t ask me how I know. If this weren’t nearly a universal phenomenon, we wouldn’t have fables like the goose that laid the golden egg, or the dog and his reflection.
Also, the starting point for my train of thought was the idea of free labor. That whole idea is predicated on the idea that all parties work diligently and skillfully without direction, like a super-organism. You can get a lot of work done with a team of oxen or a tractor, but YOU have to drive them. And they don’t always go the direction that you try and point them. Sometimes, especially at first, you don’t really know how to drive them at all. Almost everything is a lot harder than it seems like it would be.
One practical suggestion I’d make, apart from anything else, is to yes grow you’re rootstock out in nursery beds. But then plant it out at orchard spacing or perhaps double density, and topwork trees in place. You didn’t say what Malling rootstock you’re planning to use. For a situation like you describe, there’s a strong case to be made for standard rootstock. Antanovka is very rugged and will endure where almost any other rootstock would fail. Dwarf and even semi-dwarf are not going to abide the rigors of grazing sheep under them, and will require much more intensive management at every turn.
You are definitely right that many things will go wrong and scale won’t help. I do hope the scale gives me more to experiment with though.
Yep
Mostly EMLA 106 in the orchard. I have the dwarf trees near the house and the G 890 are on one edge of the orchard.
We have black welsh mountain sheep which are quite small. A friend runs a commercial orchard near here and grazes them under his trees. He is mostly using M7 which is slightly smaller than our M106 but his soil is better so I’m guessing we will end up with similar sized trees.
Right you are. With autocorrect turned on, things 1/2 type themselves, for better or worse
@aiden - reading a bit more of your thread than I had, it sounds like you’re knee deep already. Best of luck with your endeavors. And keep us abreast of your progress on these ambitious undertakings
