Well if you have existing large trees there are ways to reduce ladder use and save some time too. For pruning I would suggest one of those telescoping pole saw/pruning head combos. I have a Corona brand one. It works well for pruning my cherry that is a Balaton on mazzard. I can do the pruning from the ground and it’s a good sized tree.
For thinning, I have a couple of suggestions. First, you may want to look up and try pole thinning. Essentially you take a pole or broom handle and attach a piece of rubber hose or sometimes people tape a piece of cloth or padding to the end of the pole. Then you beat the branches to remove excess fruit. It takes some practice to get the technique down but it works.
Another option is chemical thinning, commercial orchards use this method. Non-organic orchards tend to use an carbaryl insecticide mixed with naphthalene acetic acid to do the thinning. Organic orchards use a mixture of lime sulfur and fish oil. In any case the mixture is sprayed on the trees. I have never done chemical thinning and would want to do a fair amount of reading before using it but it could be an option for you.
As far as harvesting from high branches my grandfather used a fruit picker 40 years ago. It was a basket on pole and designed to be used to pick fruit. They still sell fruit pickers. Home Depot carries them for example.
Fame is Fleeting. Cummins has almost totally axed Geneva 30 from its offerings. Zero G 30 rootstock currently for sale. Only six trees grafted on G 30 for sale, probably leftovers from last year. Boy did I jump too soon on that bandwagon due to fire blight paranoia.
Tried and true is the name of the game. Live and learn.
Definitely not encouraging, though! I’ve been looking at this thread kind of sideways the whole time… I’m not convinced there’s any big problem. One helluva lot of growers have invested an incredible amount of money into these stocks, I find it hard to believe they’ve screwed themselves so badly despite all due diligence. I’m also happy that I live in sunny California, where we don’t get all the extreme weather that does in your guys’ trees…
G30 was always hard to propagate and it wasn’t easy to produce finished trees on G30 either. Now there are new Geneva rootstocks in the G30 size class G969 and G210. So I imagine these new stocks will replace G30.
I have been following this thread. I have 7 apple trees which are 2-3 yrs old, I think 4 are grafted on G222 and 3 grafted on G41. They are mix of splice, whip & tongue, and cleft grafts done by a friend who was kind enough to help a brother out when I had even less time (props to Andy in CO). I have certainly not been babying them due to time constraints and they show it based off of their growth at present, although this is a good thing because I keep hoping to get them planted in their permanent positions next spring. That’s what I have been saying the last 2 years. All in all though they are about the size spectrum of trees you would buy at a big box store. Honeycrisp, Queen Cox, Goldrush, KdS, Ashmead’s, Golden Russet, and Red belle de boskoop. I can’t remember who’s on what at the moment. At least I’m not dealing with Gala that was bud grafted. Anyway, I really appreciate all the info in this thread and will continue to follow it. So sorry for the tree losses guys!
I forgot which nursery told me what… I recall there being an important reason why G.30 wasn’t as popular anymore. I forgot what I was told, since it wasn’t a rootstock of interest to me. Depreciated in favor of others? Or was it something bad? Sorry, memory eludes me on this one.
Maybe someone whose in the nursery or has a large scale orchard can chip in an fill in the blanks.
I have had similar lack of success grafting to G210. Tried grafting a dozen trees the first year with rootcks from Cummins. Got 40 percent take. The same year i had 90percent success grafting G30 from Raintree Nursery. I thought it must have been poor quality G210 from Cummins so the following year i ordered 100 each of G210 and M111 from a wholesale nursery here in Oregon. I had 40 percent survival with the G210 and 90percent with the. M111. I wont use G210 again. Trying 50 G890 this year. I like the Geneva series because of their precosity, fireblight resistance, lack of suckers, and good branch structure, but it is an ongoing exoeriment.
I look forward to your results, and I’ll share mine as I have 50 G.890 on order for this spring as well! I’ve already received 22 new varieties of apple scion from Geneva, and I have 21 varieties ordered from 39th Parallel to round out the number of some existing varieties. I also ordered some B.9 from Mike which will be new to me, and some M.111 to round out some varieties already on that root stock. Thanks for posting Deborah, lets hope the G.890 works out for us, looking forward to hearing your results.
I grafted a little over 100 apple roots last spring…it was small caliper Antonovka seedling rootstocks that pulled my overall average down below 80%. G890 was in the 80-85% take somewhere. Not quite as good as B118 and B9, but not significant.
B9 seems more tolerant of drought conditions than M9 or G41 or G11 for sure…and I suspect more tolerant of wet soils too. And definitely cold hardy.
Tried G202 three times…still don’t have an opinion on it, except that growth rate is slow.
