…Is in a banana log, of course. It has these pulpy cells that are the perfect size, and it keeps it surprisingly fresh for the journey from Kampala to Fort Portal, Uganda.
It was time to harvest M111 rootstocks out of the layer beds of sawdust
And graft benchgrafts for planting in the fertile soil
Where else can you pick a banana on the property while you’re planting apple benchgrafts
The area is absolutely stunning
I see Fort Portal is at 5000 ft elevation…cool enough for apples yet warm enough for bananas. How low are the winter temperatures?
Is this one of those areas where they are trying apples in zero-chill tropical areas?
Fort Portal’s temperatures are 80 degrees for the high, 56 degrees for the low year-round. It never gets below 50 degrees.
Nice 
That looks like a very happy man. With all those apples you can see why!
what do they plan to do with the apples after they are established? do they just eat them raw? what is the goal of all this @applenut
My understanding is not only do they grow low/no-chill apples, but they have to manually defoliate them to force them into dormancy, and then when they leaf back out, they bloom as well.
For this batch the owner’s brother owns a school and they buy the entire crop for the kid’s lunches. Their parents are quite proud that the kids have apples in their lunch, quite a status symbol in Uganda.
If they ever did anything else with them it would probably be dehydrating, but at this point they’re eaten as soon as they’re picked.
They grow both low-chill and high-chill, the second photo of the two above is King David, this one’s in Congo. You are correct about manual defoliation, which causes blossoming some 6 weeks later.
Applenut,
Have you had any thought of introducing jujube to Uganda?
Tony
The big demand is for temperate fruits; Fuyu persimmon, Warren pear, Sierra plum, Florida Prince peach, and Panamint nectarine are what we’re targeting.
Wow, that looks like pure composf!
