That was my thinking as well. It obviously won’t fruit the graft year, as there won’t be any flower buds on such young trees (planted indoors from seed last January). But, I’m hoping I can get them to fruit next year.
Why graft over it? That seems like a good thing to try both for fruit and as a rootstock. Were you looking for a dwarfing rootstock, as Honeycrisp is pretty small, and Goldrush is productive and bears early?
It would be interesting to see if the Honeycrisp-related roots cause any bitter pit, or if that is completely controlled by the scion.
I hadn’t really thought about what to do with my seedlings now. They are still sitting there, growing in pots (1-15 gal). There is no way I have room for a half dozen seedling apples in my yard.
This year, the cross I’ve been making is Goldrush and Court Pendu Plat. But I haven’t really been on top of it and I’m not sure I pollinated enough times after removing the petals to ensure a take. If that fails, maybe I’ll plant a couple seedling from it, as the two trees closest to it are Goldrush and Pitmaston Pineapple, both of which would be interesting crosses.
That sounds like my Hoople’s Antique Gold - while I spray some, its pretty much organic and every apple came out looking (and tasting) perfect. Hooples is a YD sport. I have another russet called Rusty Coat that is similar in terms of how good the final apples look. Razor Russet is another GD sport, mine has not fruited yet.
Re: PC injury, I don’t think any apple is really immune, but the curc clearly has favorites. This year my Maigold got it the worst, I lost about half the load.
[quote=“BobVance, post:21, topic:1360”]
Why graft over it? That seems like a good thing to try both for fruit and as a rootstock
[quote]
You’re right Bob, it would be. I just needed the parking space since I had an abundance of good wood and needed parking places for them.
I can do the cross again, that’s no big deal. I really should have been mindful and kept the piece I cut off though. I later created more grafting spots and could have done it.
BTW…here is a photo from last week of the Sweet 16 you sent me. I left the blossom go.
Over the last few days I’ve been bagging and Goldrush fared better than most. The only two apples (with a whole tree sample size) which did better were Crimson Crisp (no hits at all, with quite a few apples) and Liberty.
I was very surprised by the Liberty. It had large apples spread over it almost perfectly, with almost no bites. I had expected it to be more like William’s Pride, which was among my most bitten trees, along with Red Boskoop.
Three Kazakhstan apples I grafted last spring were a pleasant surprise. None of them had a single bite, though some of the grafts only had a few apples on them. All together it was around two dozen apples (to be thinned down to maybe a dozen), but there were no bites on them, even though the host tree had plenty of PC hits. On the ARS site, 2 of the 3 were described as “Free of disease and insects.” The 3rd was listed as free of disease, but had heavy codling moth damage.
Until I started participating on this forum everything I read indicated that all varieties of apple suffered from fruit damage, so I mostly focused on the ones with resistance to the various tree diseases such as fireblight. It is refreshing to see that some varieties did much better than others.
I’ve been bagging my way through the yard and came across two other trees which have zero insect damage. Wouldn’t you know it, they are also Kazakhstan apples. ARS lists them both with ~14 brix and “Leaves clean, no insects” in the wild. This time, they were from Cummins:
These are very young trees (planted spring 2013), each with only 4-5 apples after thinning. Still, it is very encouraging.
If someone is holding off on planting apples (or has given up on getting good fruit) because of insect concerns, these Kazakhstan apples could be worth a try.
No guarantee that they would work- maybe it is just small sample size. It may also be that on their own Kaz apples would get hit, but since I have so many better targets, the PC leaves them alone. I also did one coat of Surround, though it didn’t stop the PC on the other trees.
Here’s my older Goldrush from about a week ago. I think this was from right after I thinned it (again). As they started to size up I realized that the load was a bit much on quite a few of my apples. I thinned a very full grocery bag, mostly from 4-5 trees.
Some of the thinning was easy- get rid of the badly deformed ones. Goldrush was one where I had to get rid of some sound apples.
I’m still continuing to thin. It’s amazing to me that after the first thinning it will look like there’s hardly anything there and then as they size up you realize there are still a hundred too many. Knowing this and having it in mind when thinning, it just never ceases to amaze me.
Since beginning Imidan I have no PC issues at all. I saw maybe a dozen total stings out of many hundreds of apples. I removed all those in the initial thinning. In some ways, more PC stings would probably make me a better grower because I would thin better. All the fruit I’ve been removing has been pristine.
Imidan has really proved itself to be the key for PC. I couldn’t imagine anything working even close to as good as this stuff.
Dang, I was hoping that the varieties that see resistant to PC would also be resistant to codling moth, but Liberty gets codling moth as bad or worse than any.
Yeah, it’s been mentioned a lot here. John Trout has mentioned it also on his youtube channel, but everything taken into account he loves the apple. I would have thought Liberty might sustain PC damage pretty bad too. Glad to here it’s doing well for you in that area. Markmnt sent me wood this past winter. I grafted it to a seedling tree and it’s going absolute gangbusters. The foliage is totally pristine, so it seems it’s living up to it’s rep in that department.
Good to hear. II was just going off of what BobVance said in this thread 'll pay more attention to my Goldrush and see if they are doing any better than others with codling moth.
The feedback about insect resistance on different varieties in my opinion is very important. I feel like everyone here strives to be as accurate with reporting as possible. This information will help me and others select easier varieties to grow. Thanks, Bill
