New Fruit Wood/Trees for Spring 2025. What are you trying?

General Fruit Growing
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Our Hooples (on M111) is five or six years old and has produced a few flawless, delicious fruit for two years now. We absolutely love it so far. It has some of the pear notes and the long-term storage capacity of good russets. It has been struggling in our heavy clay soil, and likely unhappy right now because we just moved it to a new spot because it was in a path, but hoping it will survive the transplant and continue to give us more of these awesome apples.

Note: adding some text here to try to trick the algorithm. I replied to the general thread by mistake, so copied and deleted with the intention to post correctly, but then got error messages that my post is too similar to what I just posted :upside_down_face:. Hope this works now :crossed_fingers:t3:

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I am very curious about your seedling and native crabapples. Are you planning to graft on them so you can plant in difficult soil? I have some WET areas where I am planting pacific crab just for that purpose.

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I just got 3 sea berries from Planting Justice at a very good price for named varieties. They are potted and I haven’t looked at the roots yet, but I was pleased at their price and careful packaging.

I got some perennial vegetables from them a couple weeks ago and they were also carefully packaged.

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I am planning to grow the pacific crabs out then grow more from seed when the trees finally mature. With the wild/seedling crabs I’m just plant them and let them grow. If I like the tree I will let it be if not I will probably use them as rootstocks

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Im in NE oklahoma. Adding to my orchard:
Danube Cherry
4 pluott- flavor queen and king, supreme, dapple dandy
2 plum- long john and castleton.

And im actually attempting to grow italian cyprus from seed too. 50 started. Wish me luck.:slight_smile: i killed my 200 spruce. Got them 1 ft and died. Turns out they cant survive humidity.

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127

Wow. That is alot. Warning about that Keifer, i planted one a few years back, it alone exploded with black spots… then spread them to neighboring pear trees. I finally yanked that 8 ft tree when it spread to my cherries! I’ll never do keifer again. It was a problem. Every scafolding branch i spread, it killed and shot out an upward huge shoot to replace my work. Its an annoying tree. It wants to go up and inwards, like a vase and wont allow your work anyother way.

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You got me worried now…

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Border between 8A and 8B, east central Georgia. Very rural.

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There are other pears with a spreading habit that are less probematic, and their friits are better looking and tasting too. I have flemish beauty and the improved Barlett, Harrow crisp. Comice is great too. It really depends on if you want a melting/eating pear or a more firm canning pear. Keifer are strictly canning and almost inetable off the tree. The Keifer pear tree has been banned from the entire country of Canada. Thats how they feel about it.

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I successfully got peaches from 3 mature peach trees in summer 2024! The peaches were SO GOOD I decided that the spraying, maintenance, and worrying about late freezes was worth it. I ordered 8 peach trees and 4 nectarine. I tried to get trees to span the summer.

I also got 7 apricot trees. I love apricots- I know I might get frozen out, but I want to try.

I picked the peaches and nectarines based on what other members mentioned and that I could find.

Peaches: Harrow Diamond, Glenglo, PF 8 ball, GaLa, John Boy, John Boy II, Redskin, Selena

Nectarine: Jade White, Silver Gem, Flavortop, Fantasia

Apricot: harostar, harogrande, early blush, Ilona, orange red, montrose, harogem

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Thats also how i ended up with all of mine as well :rofl: a good, properly ripened fruit is like crack i swear…

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Got my 4-1 fruit cocktail tree from Restoring.

Actually it ended up being a 5-1. The largest caliper bare root I’ve ever received. Of course that doesn’t guarantee success, but it is very healthy looking. Not the best variety choices to grow where I am but…

I’d buy from them again. They even sell espalier though only the Asian pear one would work in my zone.

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I’d loosen most of those tags and/or move them up a bit to smaller branches if you haven’t already.

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I just did a soak and plant. I’ll probably prune it a bit and of course I’ll make sure the tags won’t girdle the branches.

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5 Candy Crabs from Blue Hill

Going to try going easy on expanding the orchard this year

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137

OK, this sounds like a fun game… I’ll play :cowboy_hat_face:
I am in Zone 5b- Northern Colorado Front Range

Apple Scion wood:
American Summer Permain, Benoni, Chestnut Crab, Claygate Permain, Clark’s Crab, Esopus Spitzenburg, Gray Permain, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Lady, Lamb Abbey, Milo Gibson, Orleans Reinette, Pinova/Pinata
Pitmaston Pineapple, Rubinette, Spencer, Sweet 16
These were selected mostly from recommendations by Roland Jacobsen, Tom Burford and Oren Martin, plus reviews on Adam’s Apples, Orange Pippin and Pomiferous. And @clarkinks and @NuttingBumpus

Pear Scion wood:
Ayers, Beierschmitt, Harrow Delight, Magness, Seckel, Warren
These were largely selected based on Growing Fruit folk, particularly @clarkinks @mayhaw9999 @Fusion_power and @belowtheterrace

Haven’t decided yet which apple/pear varieties are field grafts and what I will bench graft onto rootstock. (G-935, G-214 and OHxF 87)

In addition, I have ordered the following trees: Black Ice and Lavina Plums, Summer Rambo Apple, Warren Pear (on OHxF333), a 4 in 1 Pluot and PixZee and NectaZee miniature stone fruit. These last 3 are not zone 5, so they will be going into Air-pots and stored in shed over winter.

Sources: Fedco, Cummins, Stark Bros, 39th Parallel and Bay Laurel.

GrowingFruit has been a great resource this past year for selecting varieties, I appreciate all the help! I take sole responsibility for the fact that I am clearly buying way too many fruit varieties and have little idea where some of these will go!

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138

I have wondered about Gen214. Please inform us how it performs for you.

Only Sundance & Twenty Ounce trees coming my way this spring, actually intended for others than myself.

(I placed the order for 20 Oz. before learning it was established thru my fumble-fingered grafting in 2019, having dropped several scions & thinking I picked up the right one. Instead, I swapped it for something else & had its ID worked out with the fine folks at WA State U. So now I will give one away & sell the other.)
As for Sundance, I am impressed with Gold Rush, which came from the same research team. Sundance is reputed to make a bigger tree & fruit plus resisting CAR - not actually a concern in these parts - so it appears to be worth the trial.

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My thinking is that G.214 might be good for espaliered trees.
From Cummins:
“ G.214 is an outstanding dwarfing rootstock for high-density planting, particularly for the most vigorous of varieties. It can be used in place of G.16 in regions where woolly apple aphid is a challenge, and it will support highly productive trees. This rootstock is very resistant to fireblight and WAA, and tolerant of collar rot and replant disease, making it a good replacement for M.9 on replant sites… Trees grown on this rootstock should be supported to reach their full fruiting potential. The graft union is strong compared to that of G.41.”

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Thank you for showing off your spread of plants.

I’m reading the Fruit Gardener’s Bible and it cautions against trying to “complete” your garden in all in one year. I’m wondering what is a reasonable count of trees & shrubs to order for 1 person to order for zone 4, where summer isn’t that long and all the painting & driveway sealing & house repairs need to be done?

A friend thinks I’ve ordered too much already, but I keep looking at the catalogs and thinking one more and I’ll be done. There’s been several of these “one mores”.

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I think that’s partly because you don’t know yet what will work and what will be difficult and how much time it will take and what you will like. It’s also overwhelming to try and “complete” and plan for everything.

However, I think in your zone you might end up trying a lot of things - a bunch won’t work out and then you will have to be ready to pull something out and try something else. If you have the space, time, and money you might want to try many things. I’d leave space though! There will be new things to try and things you like you want more of.

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