I’d be very interested in seeing close up pictures of the graft unions to look at what is happening there. It’s got to be a nutrient flow issue since this variety very much CAN grow very vigorously when it’s got good sap flow.
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In that middle picture they look just like tejocote, but I’m sure they 1000% more flavorful
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I’ve got scions on order. Count me in.
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What will you use for rootstock?
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The keeping quality is excellent. They are the best storage apple you will find. Rain wont bother them or ice or snow. There were many years my face was stinging from the cold as i picked them. Our weather has changed and now it is warmer longer. Our winters are more intense when they come. The apples keep months once picked. Literally you can eat them until warm weather rolls around again if they are kept in cold storage. Once you eat one they are addictive. My problem is eating them to fast!
They are well balanced with an excellent true apple flavor. I caution everyone the tree tends to be to productive. If it makes more apples than leaves that can impact flavor and size on any fruit as you know. The thing unique is the flavor is very good even with a very heavy load of apples.
Apples are finicky and not like grafting other trees as most people think. If you cut a pear down to the main trunk and graft it you will get rapid growth. If you cut a mulberry down to the main trunk and graft it you will get rapid growth. If you cut an apple down to the main trunk and graft it you can kill the tree. This is my fault for not discussing this sooner. @smsmith knows it depends on the age and variety of an apple tree. Apples become very old very quickly. The standards seldom live more than 40 years and the dwarfs only half that time. They can live hundreds of years. Any apple that is grafted should be put on a healthy new vigourous rootstock. Clarks crabapple is a natural dwarf in that it produces apples heavily more than extra wood. All apples have some grafting issues. If you graft Clarks crabapple graft it on the tips of branches and leave the existing branch structure of the apple. Apples like to be invigorated with minimal pruning but never cut back. @alan is a good guy to follow when it comes to pruning apples.
Is likely growing them on mm111 because of its versatility in multiple soils. My soil is terrible at growing apples and the preferred rootstock here is 111. He also likes b118. My soil has a heavy clay composition and b118 does not work as well as mm111. I developed Clarks crabapple originally because apples are very hard to grow in my soil. Like the infamous healthberry of my grandfathers. Blackberries by the gallons
Many people look at my blackberries or Clarks crabapple or pears and think i can grow fruit well. The truth is slightly different. It is very hard to grow anything in Kansas well and often times i had to develop techniques and hardy varities to make it work for me over the years.
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I used to graft them on B118 because it can help size up lower vigor crab varieties like Dolgo. Clark’s Crab turns out to be relatively high vigor and seems to do a little better on M111. I have some on Bud 9 i meant to plant out in our orchards but sent them to @tonyOmahaz5
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I’ve got M7, MM111, and BUD9 on order. What would you use?
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I bought mine from 39th Parallel as a grafted sapling.
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Mine is on m111 also.
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My scion was an unexpected gift and M7 was all I had left so I have 3 on M7. I think I would choose M.111 now that I’ve had it in the ground since 2020. They were, however, yanked from the nursery bed and planted out in the orchard in their 2nd year. They’re just starting to size up, I haven’t allowed them to fruit yet, probably this year.
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I plan on starting mine on M111 and then will place some on P.18 later as I am only getting 1/8th caliper size this year. I might do one on P.2/P.22 just to test maximum precociousness…lol
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This is beside the point, but generalizations about California’s climate always make me smile. We have every possible climate here, encompassing the full range of cold to hot, wet to dry. And you flat-out can’t grow fruit at the top of Mt. Whitney or the bottom of Death Valley! 
I live in a part of the state where it’s just possible to keep the hardiest fruit trees alive, and the latest-blooming varieties have some chance of producing in a given year. This great group gives me lots of ideas that are applicable here, so please don’t think I’m dissing anyone when I show up grinning like this! My sister lives in the Santa Clara Valley where stone fruits reign supreme, and I 100% agree that it’s hard to find better-tasting fruit than what she grows in her little yard or what I buy at top-notch fruit stands such as Andy’s Orchard when I visit.
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Then - having come down from over 14,000’ to 5600’ - you definitely know something about our local climate extremes! Say hi if you visit Benton Hot Springs again (there are only about 10 people in town).
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I second this, people claim CA is dry, but at our place in Del Norte County, we’re supposed to get over 100 inches annually. 65+ on super drought years.
I will however admit to never hearing about “spray apples” before joining this forum, much less a claim to fame of finding an elusive no-spray variety. Possibly growing up on an organic gravenstein apple farm has just made me more tolerant of wormy ones.
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I’ve grown Apples in several southern CA metro locations (south of the San Bernardino - LA transverse range). I spray my apple trees once, maybe twice per year when I see aphids gathering. At present I use Evergreen EC which is permitted for use in grocery stores. That’s it.
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And here, we’re high and dry with 5 to 7 inches precip annually - mostly falling as snow. If we get more than that, it’s flash floods. Speaking of California: Wishing the best to anyone here who’s affected by the terrible fires.
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Please let us know when the Clark’s crabapple blooms for you. Clark’s crabapple was selected from wild seedlings as you are aware. This seedling tastes very good. I wanted this apple to be adaptive and vigorous. I wanted an apple that would store well. I wanted an apple reasonably disease resistant. I also wanted a natural dwarf not a 60 foot tree. Heavy production is a must have. It is necessary for apples to be quick to come into production here or nobody wants to grow them. This apple accomplished all of the things i wanted from an apple in Kansas.
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How well would this crab apple grow in central texas? And what rootstock would you suggest? Ive never done much with fruit trees and i usually kill them lol 
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I’m not a Central Texas expert, but I’d recommend seedling Antonovka the deep tap root is great for drought resistance and quite good in poor soils.
Clark’s Crab is small on its own so it’s generally better not to have it on dwarfing rootstock.
Hopefully someone else gives you an expert reply with experience and knowledge of local diseases that you deal with there. M111 is pretty good for both drought resistance and standing water, but I imagine you don’t have that problem.
But if you have trouble with trees, I imagine it’s your holes not your trees.
I like to dig, well I don’t like the digging so much but it’s exercise, a hole 2 feet deep and 18 inches wide, make sure to save the top soil and sod in a separate pile on the uphill side, the rest of the soil can make a very around your hole with the worst soil on the down hill side, pick rocks as you go, gravel isn’t a bad thing as long as there’s not too much.
Then break up the bottom with a long crowbar (spudbar, digging bar) throw in some road kill or animal carcasses if I have some lying around, if not manure and weeds or unsprayed grass clippings that deep, manure fresh or not is okay once I add the next layer: CHARCOAL!
Charcoal is the only permanent fertilizer and it’s pretty easy to make yourself, especially this deep you can even not worry if it’s still good a good amount of ash in it. Then use the crowbar to break the corners out, making the hole square and letting that layer of soil cover your fertilizer and charcoal, you can do another layer of manure and put your sod on top, upside-down if there’s a chance the tree roots will touch it already, then some of your decent quality soil and eyeball so that the hole will be filled about 2 inches lower than it originally was.
Then you want to have more charcoal, old manure or compost, and some forest top soil for the microbiome and I even intentionally dig up a few living roots and throw them in deep enough so that the root will die but the fungus will hopefully survive.
So you mix that up with your decent soil )and poor soil if you need) and start filling your hole, you might already need to have your tree in the hole, you can usually put your crowbar over the hole and tie your tree to it with the graft above the actual ground level, spread out the roots, and you can even put the longest roots to the corners and cover them with soil until they stay in place, then start pushing soil in and sifting it around the roots. Dig up the sod from the top side of your hole, this will allow water to flow into your hole later, and put the sod in the corners or to hold long roots in place or stand up your tree, touching roots with the soil side, not the grass side.
Now is a good time to put in your stake, I usually put them on the south and maybe north sides of my hole one or two heavy branches and then I put a steel 4 foot fence around it about 16" in diameter with the opening onto the stake on the south or Southwest side so low growing branches can easily be saved when the fencing gets removed.
If you are running out of fertile soil mix ball it up around the roots and use the more poor soil close to the walls of your now square hole.
Hopefully this will get you to the soil line on your tree and about 2" below ground level, you can push that poor and Rocky soil into a U shape facing up hill and now soak the hole.
Fill it with water to mud in your tree, now you can untie your tree, and remove your crowbar, which should be above the soil level still.
You may have a sink holes in a corner and you can fill that in with more soil, or top it all off back to 2" below the ground when you’re done.
Now you can put your fencing and wire the opening to the stake on the south/Southwest, and to your other stake if you have one, then I tie the fence with cloth loops to my tree from 2 or 3 sides so that the tree stays in the middle of the fencing.
If I had more fencing or if it were cheaper I’d use bigger fencing tubes, but 16" seems okay as long as you are not too worried about keeping the trees super low and dwarfed, and you’re willing to cut the fencing over cutting the branches.
So I know this is an earful, and not an exact science, and probably overkill, but almost all of the purchased trees I had survived, except my Hosui Asian pear, which I will replant eventually and spray with copper sulfate against fireblight, and a plum that the deer got and I geniusly decided to graft over to apricot, and when I plucked off a bud from the plum, it died, my bad.
Also in the first year I watered them ever three days in the hot sunny times, unless we had rain, then I would give them until we had two or three really hot days before watering again, in the second year there was less watering, but still a decent amount in the hottest part of the year, and basically everything purchased survived, I have seedlings and small grafted trees I did that did not have such high success, but are doing fine generally.
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