Mine isn’t branched really and is still whip-like but may need to consider switching to espalier training like yourself. Found an additional cluster coming on as well. Seems to have a propensity to flower early… And hopefully not biennially…time will tell.
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Meet Novamac.
I have been hand pollinating these since i have this NM espellar located on the south side of my home… and my other apple tree (currently blooming) is out in my orchard a way on the north side.
Looks like success.
Hope to get to eat one this year.
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Lovely! I hope you, and I, do too!
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@Jujube … i manually pollinated a few more newly opened novamac blossoms today… it is getting very hard to find fresh blossoms on my other trees now… early mc had just a few stragglers today.
Think i have already pollinated 60+ blossoms on this little novamac.
I have never seen a tree bloom so much in year 2… but also my first experience with espellar.
Think i can stop pollinating now… going to have to thin most of those off anyway.
But yes here in TN … Novamac is still blooming first of May.
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Mine is basically just a twig and I have seen the same thing with new clusters appearing later, I’ve had 3-4 large flower clusters and didn’t expect anything this year. I’ve hand pollinated some but I think my bees have been aiding me 
.
It bloomed first and last here in central Ohio but I don’t have many others flowering anyways but I still have flowers May 4th though it’s about done
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Mine is still blooming… just counted 10 blossom clusters at various stages… and some of my earlier blossoms have developed nice little fruitlets.
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My tree hasn’t even leafed out up here in eastern Canada. I’m in Zone 6, but we get a real late spring, with apples and cherries not blooming until late may/early June, and we get a longer fall in return. I’ll be taking some photos of my 20ish year old novamac to share when it blooms, it’s usually quite a show.
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I thinned the fruit on my Novamac last week… to one apple per blossom cluster.
May have to thin them more than that… several clusters.
Nice looking fruitlets… very clean and round so far.
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As promised, here’s my novamac. Not as many blossoms as previous years. Also, please excuse the bags, I’m working on a breeding program, had to bag some blossoms so the bees don’t undo my work.
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Beautiful! What are you crossing with it?
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My little 2 yr Novamac on b9 (espellar) bloomed quite a bit (20 blossom clusters) mid April until nearly mid May.
I pollinated it with late blossoms on my gold rush, early mc and crabapple.
It set lots of fruit… but since it is still quite small… i let it keep 2 apples per branch… 8 total.
But late may early june it dropped all 8 apples. Guess it just was not ready yet. It has grown nicely this season and bet it will hold fruit next season.
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Mine also put out many blooms in year 2 but I thinned to only 1 apple and so far it’s still on there.
I’ve noticed this year that my tree has a propensity to growing lateral branches at 90 degrees to the trunk. I hope the pattern continues. Have either of you observed this behavior @TNHunter @WildApple23?
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@Jujube … i have mine strapped down… forced into growing limbs at 90 degree from trunk.
Below is a pic of mine from late last season.
It has grown some since then… quite a bit bushier now… i am going to summer prune it again this year… but leave some nice scion wood that i will collect this winter for trades.
Last January i cut most of that central leader part off and got some scion wood there.
Trying to keep the cental leader to a minimum and force fruit to develop on those four branches.
That little tree bloomed and set fruit all along those 4 limbs this spring.
It seems most eager to fruit… even more so than my gold rush.
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You can kind of see it behind the novamac, but I have a Royalty crab apple there, so that’s one cross, and I’ve also purchased a lot of pollen from Steven Edholm @SkillCult, specifically Sweet 16, King David, a red fleshed apple pollen blend, a savoury apple pollen blend, and his apples Black Strawberry and Cherub. Steven has certainly inspired me, and the wonderful flavour and high disease resistance of novamac seems to be to be a great base for some new apple varieties, both red fleshed and white fleshed.
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newbie apple question - can anyone recommend a pollinator (apple or crabapple) for novamac that would have the same or similar disease resistance? while I can find plenty of polinators that have overlapping bloom times, the “standards” for high disease resistance like Liberty and William’s Pride are much earlier bloom from what I can find.
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Per Maple Grove:
From there go to orangepippentrees.com pollinator checker for Gala (which pollinates Novamac and are much more common) and they list a bunch of other pollinators
the disease resistant ones include Empire, Dayton, Enterprise, Florina, Freedom, Galarina, Gold Rush among others
if you haven’t seen already, a nice summary of disease resistant apple cultivars
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I’ve seen the purdue list and it says Novamac is very resistant to everything and nothing else seems on par
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not sure if I’m looking at this correctly or not but it would seem Crabapple cultivars ‘Adirondack’ (group 3), ‘Prairie Fire’ (group 4), and ‘Professor Sprenger’ (group 3) all can pollinate Novamac while also having comparable disease resistance. these three crabapples are decorative cultivars so they are not included in the Purdue document.
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At my new home location i have my Early Mcintosh and Novamac planted.
Early Mc is in Group 2… and I would say that Novamac is in group 4.
My Early Mc just has a few late blossoms still on when Novamac starts blooming.
When my Early Mc and Novamac at my new home location get large enough to add other varieties too… i plan to add Clarks Crab (group 3) and Pristene (group 4).
The Novmac at my new home location… i grafted a scion of Novamac on m7 (spring b4 last)… and then this past spring i planted that 4 ft long whip in ground. It grew nicely this season… and yesterday while doing some mowing outthere… i noticed it has 5-6 fruit spurs developed already (first year in ground).
I really like fruit trees that are eager to fruit.
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