To be honest, I went to the USDA website, looked at the apples they had from European countries (skipping France and England because I figured they were already well-represented and researched) and clicked through and looked at the descriptions and what information they had.
If I found an apple that looked promising, I googled it (and had to run several things through Google translate! LOL) and added it to my potential list if it seemed promising. Some of the apples seemed to have a bit of history behind them. From what I understood from Google translate (so to be taken with a grain of salt) the Karastoyanka was a very popular, well-loved apple in the past. However, with communism and the centralization of agriculture that took place in the 60s-70s-80s, the Karastoyanka was forcibly replaced with other, more commercially profitable apples.
So some of them have a bit of history, some of them (like the Ruhm aus Kirchwerder) just seem to be good apples that, for whatever reason, never became popular here.
I know this seems odd I would have this interest, especially just getting into apples, like I am. However, in a past life, I was a researcher, and it is still a hobby of mine, so doing this research is just part of the fun for me.
Perhaps I’ll find that none of them are suited to the hot and humid southeast (not a whole lot of tree fruits are!) But perhaps I’ll find one or two that thrive, and I can share scions and information with others and help bring these rare or forgotten apples to a few more gardens.
I just hope the USDA sees fit to grant all or part of my request for scions. However, I will certainly understand if they do not as I am not planning on commercially selling these apples. Perhaps at a farmer’s market if I get excellent harvests, but that’s many years down the road, and not the main goal for my request.
Bob, thank you very much! I’ve just requested tart cherry scions.
Here is my order (in case someone is interested). All are European tart cherry varieties known for high-quality fruit (good for fresh eating). Most (although not all) have decent-to-good disease resistance. I plan to graft them on Krymsk-5 rootstocks.
I spent a few hours last Wodensday picking pears at the Corvallis site. I really need to write down names as I go. Last time I wrote a few, as in three or four out of a hundred varieties picked and maybe 25 sampled. This time I picked maybe 30 kinds and tried maybe twenty of those. I did overhear something about a scion cutting day/time sometime in the future. I think I’m going to volunteer to help out on that…yeah, I think so. There are some amazing pears out there.
I also got to taste, and bring home, some pawpaws (first time, wow), quince, an apple/pear cross, some kind of groovy cider apple and some other stuff, I think. And hazelnuts…they also have hundreds of different kinds of those. Here are two:
I thought about ordering Ya Li or the other chinese fragrant pear they list. Does anybody grow these and are they worth considering? My main concern is that if they are truly as fragrant as they are listed will it attract more critters? I have enough of those and do not need any more. lol
Also, has anybody grown Rogue Red pear? What can you tell me about it?
Thank you for posting that link and those instructions, Bob. No lie, it probably took me over an hour to find the website and figure out how it worked, and how to do advanced searches. It is definitely not user friendly.
I know you’ve saved many people time and frustration.
It may take some time to become official and work its way into the online tool. I was told the good news, informally, by about as credible a source as could be.
If it allows you to add it to your order, I suspect you’ll be fine.
I received my Geneva order yesterday and it looks excellent. Hopefully I will get my Corvallis order pretty soon. It will be very nice to experiment with these difficult to find types. Hopefully I find some that will work in my orchard. My area does not have a lot of orchards and diseases such as fireblight are a big problem here. I now have the task of translating the numbers on the tags to the names we would call the apples.
