For some reason each year I just HAVE to have a dozen or two more apple varieties to graft. Sounds great in the winter but now I have to find places to graft them. A friend looked at one of my trees and said “You really need to stop.” Was very funny. I mean how would life be complete without say a Green Pippin that Tom Burford raves about. Or a rare Colorado Orange (apple) from the Montezuma preservation orchard in Colorado. I’m sure a Colorado heirloom apple will do just fine in the sultry swamps of tidewater Maryland. Ha!
We all get credit for being great experimenters.
So far this year have grafted (all apples): Hauer Pippin; Liberty, Magnum Bonum; Paducah, ArkCharm, Hooples Antique Gold, MonArk, Green Pippin, Colorado Orange, Red Rebel, Royal Limbertwig, Dula’s Beauty, Boskoop, Hunge, Milo Gibson.
Some of these are re-do’s of varieties that succumbed to a series of unfortunate incidents in the past including Roundup, collar rot and other causes too embarrassing to mention.
Yes, brilliant minds work in same fashion about needing more rootstock. I convinced about 15 friends to either buy apple trees, plant benchgrafts I make for them or convert their Bradford Pears to something respectable. I’m breaking these friends in slowly to the idea of topworking some branches in another year or two. I can’t appear too eager. Ha!
@murky Or public spaces! I read about guerrilla grafters in California putting all sorts of goodies in public parks, median strips, during cover of darkness.
Baker’s Delicious apple of Wales. Stephen Hayes’ favorite early apple in southern England. Crisp juicy sweet tart aromatic Cox-like flavor for the early season. Flesh color creamy white. Possible scab & mildew resistance. Would ripen July/Aug in the Mid-Atlantic U.S.? Gets soft a week after picking; does not keep. Slow grower. Does not like heavy soils, so elevate planting. Unknown whether prone to fireblight. Widely available in the British Isles, but hard to find in the U.S, though scions can be found traded among apple enthusiasts here. Hocking Hills Orchard of Ohio may currently be the only reliable domestic commercial source.
This is only my second year grafting but I’m going all in - 34 varieties of apple and only a dozen rootstocks (most are going on my frankentree) and another dozen pear, plum, cherry! A delicious hobby that builds patience (like my one of my other hobbies - winemaking).
Matt, where did you find SunTan and Baker’s Delicious? I’ve been looking for them for a while now. I was pretty happy to find May Queen (second hand from Seedsavers) this year.
On the subject of Running out of places, I was just out in the orchard attempting for find places for all my apple grafts. I’ve gotten a bit excessive this spring with 117 different additions (not counting Davis, which probably won’t send me anything).
Only 33 of them are apples. I think I’m close to having enough spots, but will have to make another pass to find a home for everything. When Beachwreck put up his list of leftovers a few weeks ago I was so tempted to ask for 4-5 of the apples. But, I (just) managed to hold back, as that would be going too far beyond what I have space for.
New apple additions:
Albion
Aunt Rachel
Carter Blue
Chestnut Crab
Colby baldwin
CrimsonTopaz
E36-7
Freyberg
Hawaii
KAZ 95 08-04
KAZ 96 08-17
Kaz, GMAL4030.n
Kaz, PI- 613998
Kaz, PI- 650994
Loop russet baldwin
Lord Hindlip
May Queen
My Jewel
Pomme Gris
PRI 1312-6
Red Westfield Seek No Further
Reinette Grise de Portugal
Rubinette
Ruby Red
Seedling #1- Medium Green
Seedling #2- Red/Yellow Medium
Seedling- #3
Tolman sweet
UFO
Vanilla Pippin
Victoria Limbertwig
Wagener
Wickson Crab
I’m thinking that with apples and pears I’ll only make one graft of each. Then, in ~3 weeks I can go through and graft another of anything that didn’t work on the first pass. Given a 90%+ take rate, this should save me quite a bit of effort and space. For things like peaches, I need to make a lot more grafts to ensure success.
Finished my grafting here at home today. Still have more to do for friends. But my last graft here was a beautiful whip and tongue Belle de Boskoop that fit perfectly. A thing of beauty when that happens. Tomorrow I tackle year two of makeover of a huge old apple tree.
I did a similar thing my 2nd year - I think I added 300 varieties.
Fortunately after awhile you have tried about all you have an interest in, there are only so many good apple varieties believe it or not. These days the majority of my grafting is moving things around.
Re: Suntan, I had it for awhile but it had various problems and I never saw fruit on it. I have heard it is a problematic variety from other sources (fireblight and rotting if I recall correctly) so I did not add it back.
Matt, I would watch out on summer apples, most of them do not do well in our climate. They often rot badly. I removed many of my summer apples this last winter.
Good to know Scott about summer apple rot in Md. For summer I’m trying out MonArk, Williams Pride, ArkCharm, Aunt Rachel, Hunge. No rot on WP last year. Aunt Rachel will fruit first time this year, will wait a couple years for the others. I plan to ziplok bag each apple so that may add to rot problem, not sure. WP was ok inside ziplok.
