That’s good to know. I ordered a peach from Trees of Antiquity this spring and also was very impressed. It was the healthiest looking bare root tree I have ever received. Really it looked as though I had just dug it up and rinsed the roots clean myself.
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I’m also in Montana, and have been growing Antonovka for rootstocks and for their apples. I think mine came from Burnt Ridge and they are growing great. I’m keeping the best shaped for strudel apples (husband is from Eastern Europe), and have started grafting onto the others. I also planted several Dolgo for rootstocks.
The Antonovka are great here–they survive in our alkaline soil, windy winters, and summer drought–I’m not sure how all the grafts will survive–but will be sure to keep Hewe’s on my short list of candidates based on your comments.
Where I am, I usually don’t bother complaining to or about a nursery if a tree didn’t survive the winter–even if within zone (and I do some zone pushing). I’ve had excellent luck with Stark Bros replacing trees, which I usually only write to them about if the tree struggled after planting and then did not leaf out the following spring. If the tree grew fine during the summer and didn’t make it through the winter, I would never blame the nursery. My Raintree trees are doing as well as any other vendor.
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Antonovka from the former Lawyer Nursery in Plains, MT, and also form Burnt Ridge. I’m going to grow out at least one Antonovka if nothing else to collect seeds for planting seedlings upon which to graft. But, I may like the apples too, from what I read.
(One of mine has red leaves…so I assume it crossed with a Budagovsky, but who knows)…
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Glad to hear your experience with Antonovka tree in Montana. I grafted scions onto eleven Antonovka this year and they were doing fine, but then I sprayed them with [too much] Bonide Citrus, Fruit and Nut Orchard spray and they all stopped growing. Three look like, even though they are stunted, they will survive. The other eight aren’t dead yet, but there leaves are drooping and curled and look pretty sickly. My best three Antonovka rootstock growth are Winn Russet, 15 inches, Esopus Spitzenburg, 17, inches, and Ashmead’s Kernel, 12 inches. The other sickly ones only have a couple inches on each.
My twenty B-118 rootstocks with grafted scions look much better. Yarlington Mill grew 24", Black Oxford, 23", Reines de Reinette, 22", Red Boskoop, 21", Harrison, 20", Winn Russet, 18", Esopus Spitzenburg, 17" (same as on Antonovka), Pumpkin Sweet, 14", Pomme Gris, 13", Roxbury Russet, 12", Bullock (NY Golden Russet), 11", and the rest between 3" and 8".
The Reines de Reinettes I have grafted onto some larger trees grew quite well, 24" on average.
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If I sold nursery trees, there is no way I would ever warranty them beyond three months. If they made it through three months with no problems the nursery has done their job. It’s the grower’s job to keep them healthy after that. Most trees that winter kill do so because the grower planted trees not suited for his/her climate zone, or because there was a freak cold spell before a tree hardened off. Neither issue is the nursery’s responsibility. If a nursery misrepresents cold hardiness, as many do, and if that was a factor, then the nursery should give a refund. In the OP the hardiness of the tree is not explained and the temperatures that killed the tree are not explained either. Those are critical facts. Why are they missing?
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USDA Zone: 4-9 , this is the tree’s listed hardiness copied and pasted from their website. I suppose I could have included that in the OP. My zone is 5b. So it’s not like I was zone pushing in any way.
" The trees were not given any fertilizer during the growing season and all 3 were hardened-off and went into dormancy normally." from my OP, no freak cold spells. All in all it was a very mild fall-winter. I don’t recall even going below zero.
And yet you thought it was winter-killed during your very mild fall-winter. That seems unlikely. I don’t see any evidence for winter kill. The scion appears to have had delayed graft union failure. There may be no specific identifiable cause, in which case it is not the nursery’s problem. But it may also have been caused by apple union necrosis and decline (AUND) . If it was, you might be able to argue it was the nursery’s responsibility. You might want to check that out. I don’t know if AUND is a west coast problem yet, but it’s definitely an east coast problem - Apple Union Necrosis and Decline – Apples
Hmm, interesting. First of all, at this point I don’t have plans to pursue Raintree further. I pretty much will avoid giving them business unless they have something I really want and I absolutely cannot find elsewhere(which is highly unlikely).
Before doing much research I believed my tree just straight-up winter killed, but after I learned of multiple people in my area having the variety and it does great I felt I was most likely sent a tree which was not true to type. The link you sent is possible. There is some TmSRV around, though at this location I haven’t noticed it nearly as much as one of the gardens at a house we used to live in. I have 7 grafted apple trees and one grafted pear of varying size all 3-4 yrs old and none of them have had this happen, all on Geneva rootstock. Two have had some main trunk dieback over the winter (2 separate winters) but not near the graft, more like half-way down. But I attribute that partially to the rough life those trees in particular have experienced not like the cherry tree(s) which had/have it good in comparison.
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One more inch lower and I would have had a good union cross section picture.
Just looking fro the outside I didn’t notice any problems with the union though.
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It was mild, but there were some wild temperature swings in this part of the world (including warming up way too early and getting the sap flowing, and then getting a hard deep freeze) that killed even some of my established supposedly cold hardy trees. Young trees or transplants had an extra level of stress of top of that to deal with. So the “mild” winter could very well have caused some issues.
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