Apple planning phase.... - Transfered from QDMA forum

[yoderjac]

Background:

When we first purchased our property, we embarked on a heavy food plot program as an emergency room function. While we will always have a food plot program, I don't think we can sustain it at the current scale. So, a few years ago, I started to work with mast trees.
Our property is a commercial pine farm, but we do have some hardwood riparian buffers with white oaks. We did clear-cut some hardwood ridges that were primarily scarlet oak for bedding because we were loosing the shallow rooted trees to storms anyway.
My approach with mast trees has two major drivers:
1) Enough volume and variety to provide as close to 12 months of food as I can.
2) Near zero long-term maintenance.
My two driving efforts are with Chestnuts and Persimmons. The chestnut project is high volume of low cost trees that I grow from nuts. The persimmon project is mostly grafting to native rootstock. We have tried a few kieffer pear trees and I'm experimenting with Jujube as well. I am just now starting a seed grown pawpaw project.
So far, I have avoided apples because of the higher maintenance.
Time For Apples:
I'm now looking at adding apples for variety. I'm still concerned about minimizing maintenance. My approach is growing crab apple from seed and planting them. I plan to take some subset of them and graft domestic apple to them.
Right now I have Siberian Red and Dolgo crabs that I started from seed this spring. Most are about 5' tall with a 1/2" caliper at the base. I will be planting them in the next couple weeks from 3 gal RB2s and protecting them with remesh fencing.
The Questions:
First, do any of you apple guys see any problem with grafting domestic apple to crab apple?
What are your favorite low maintenance varieties? By low maintenance, I mean that will produce well without pruning, spraying to control insects or disease, or regular fertilization. If you have a favorite, would you be willing to part with a few scions for next spring?
My thought was to W&T graft the central leader after leaf-out. Is there a better method or time for apples? My thought was to graft fairly high so that if the graft fails, I can just let it revert to crabapple.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

I am not impressed with fruit trees as far as food for deer but would consider pears.We eat what apples we get and my soil isn't the best but there are alot of things that can happen to fruit trees and years of waiting are gone.I cut down 7 pears that ended not being fire blight resistant so this year I am set to get some from turkey creek orchard and try them.

I don't think you can graft an apple to a crab apple but, I'm not 100% sure.
Crab apples are pretty much no maintenance. As far as deer apples go I really don't think you need to do anything with an apple. I have several hundred apples on the property that produce heavy most years and nothing has ever been done to them except make sure they get good sun. Sure there is dead wood in them and sometimes the branches break but in my opinion it's very hard to kill an established apple tree.

Jack, I can't speak to grafting but i will say that if you are only looking for deer food, then in my opinion, pruning apple trees is overrated. Professionals prun for two main reasons, to keep apples within reach for picking and to maximize space.
As long the trees get good sun and frost doesn't get them while they are in bloom they produce.
We have idareds dropping now with mcintosh, palua reds, cortlands, 20 ounch and northern spy which will drop between now and mid December. If you want any scions from my trees i will be happy to send them to you.
Our orchards are deer magnents all year long. We dont have a more perferred browse in our woods.

Heavy pathing occurs around apple trees starting in early July and stays active until the last apple is gone which occurs between November and March depending on the year. Evidently the trees drop excess apples starting then and continuing thru summer and into the fall when the apples mature.
As Buckly says it just happens all by itself without any intervention other than keeping competing trees from blocking out the sun.

Jack--I am not at the stage to tell you apple varieties that will work for you as far as low maintenance and spraying. I have about 8 different varieties on my land and they are all too young yet to produce.
What I can help you out with is the grafting part. I have started probably 50 or so apple trees from apple and crabapple seeds. Dolgo rootstock will produce a full size tree and you can graft apple varieties to the crabapple. The only difference between crabs and apples is the size.
I have done 3 different types of grafts when grafting to 1 year old apple seedlings. W&T, cleft. and saddle. If the root stock caliper is large enough and matches the scion W&T is by far my favorite. You get the most cambium contact and the fastest healing of the graft. Plus the trees that are W&T grafted grow at a much faster rate then compared to the cleft graft. Probably due to more cambium contact and nutrient transfer. The saddle graft is close to the W&T but I find it just a tad bit more difficult. Maybe bc I don't do as many saddle grafts. I have grafted seedling in pots and also seedlings that I planted directly from the RM 18's at the farm. All of my seedlings at the farm are tubed.
I do spray my apple trees with Bonide Fruit tree spray twice a year but that is it. I did a little pruning when they were little just to establish a main leader.
todd

Yoder, you should get up with David at century farms. He's located in the NC mountains and has a big variety of natives. Very knowledge guy and will answer all your questions and give you a list that will do well in your area.

 

[yoderjac]

Folks,
Thanks for the feedback. I was pretty sure one could graft domestic apples to crabs but I wanted to hear from someone who had done it.
Anyone else with variety suggestions? I did have a long conversation with David at century farms back when I was doing my initial research into trees and I recall he had a number of heritage varieties. I was hoping to hear from some apple guys with favorites and why they like them.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

I would go with pears myself but if you continue, the Liberty gets a lot of nods. I do have 4 Liberty apples but they aren't producing yet but they haven't got blight or anything. I had pears this year from trees that were planted spring 2013.

Interesting. We planted Keiffer pears about 5 years ago. The trees are huge with great vegetative growth but have not had a single pear.
I'll put Liberty on my list!

 

[yoderjac]

You can graft apples onto your crabs. It is possible some combinations will not be compatible but worry about that later if it happens. The only disadvantage is you don't know how big the trees will get.
There are lists of disease resistant apples available but everyone's list is a little different. There are a number of diseases and each variety has a different resistance and susceptibility to each disease. The newer ones are still patent protected so you can't legally propagate. Lots of old varieties have various resistances. I have focused on fireblight first and scab resistance second. If you have red cedars, look at cedar apple rust resistance. Fireblight can kill a tree. The rest can weaken a tree if severe infection of the leaves. They can affect the fruit too but that is more of a people concern. Deer will still eat small scabby apples.
You might want to look up bloom times and plant similar ones together for effective pollination.
A few years of winter pruning will get them off to a good start.
Given the size of your seedlings, it would have been great to bud graft them a month or so ago if you had access to budwood. For next spring, the caliper of your seedlings sounds big for the scionwood you'll get. Cleft grafting will probably be easier than whip and tongue.

If you are grafting, you are welcome to come get scions from them. Just let me know.
My Keiffer haven't produced. I'll have to double check but my Orient Pears has the most pears along with another variety that I can't remember right now.

Liberty, enterprise, goldrush, arkansas black, wolf river are all good varieties that have great drop times and also on the good dz resistance. I have 2 granny smith that have been growing like crazy with no dz issues. My winesap is also a great grower with no signs of any dz except some very mild CAR. I also have a honeycrisp, braeburn, red beauty, golden delicious, and a Gala. The braeburn and red beauty had a heavy load of CAR this year but are still thriving. The wolf river which is suppose to be very dz resistance did develop some type of fungus and is struggling but still alive. I'm wondering if it was mislabeled at Home Depot and not actually a WR as other people on here have had a lot of great luck with WR variety. If it doesn't thrive next year I will cut it down to the graft and regraft it with a different variety. But like I have said I have not had any fruit yet.
todd

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/BP/BP-132-W.pdf
I like this list because it gives resistances to several diseases for many varieties.

Ideas:

• I have scions for DR varieties (Liberty, Enterprise, Goldrush, Williams Pride, Florina), southern heritage apples (Arkansas Black, Yates, Black Twig) and some of the better crabapples (Dolgo, Kerr, Chestnut, Virginia (Hewes))
• I've decided to baby my trees at least during the early years to get them started as well as they can, so I don't really know which of these varieties would be best if taking a low/no-maintenance approach, but I think they'd all be pretty good
• While grafting apples to crab apple rootstock will work, rootstocks are so cheap (and available in relatively small quantities), I think grafting to rootstocks with known characteristics makes more sense
• grafting is recommended in late winter/early spring, but before bud break
• Vintage Virginia Apples (located not too far from you) holds a grafting workshop every year. I haven't taken it yet, but others here have and recommend it. Here's the listing from last year's workshop: https://www.albemarleciderworks.com/news/workshop/grafting-workshop

Jack, I have successfully grafted many apples on crab roots. Ask Brushpile about the results or see his thread...very successful. I believe that some early pruning will lead to healthier trees which produce a higher volume of fruit with less limb breakage. Wild grown seedling are slow to produce, but grafting onto established root crabs will speed things up by a few years at least. My first crabs on their own roots produced this year in their 8th leaf. Some still haven't produced, and most will get grafted with alternate varieties next spring as the crabs were too small to be of use for deer. Apples are definitely more work than persimmons and chestnuts, but are a great source of food for deer and with the right planning can produce food for several months. Also, you are in Apple country unlike me, so I would expect you to have a bit easier time of it.

Seedling apple rootstocks are less commonly used now but I think we tend to overstate the value of clonal rootstocks. Sometimes there is a real reason to use a specific one. However, most of us have planted trees on a variety of clonal rootstocks based on what was available. I planted apple trees this year on B118, P18, M7, G222, G30, and G890 rootstocks. I'll add some MM111 and MM106 next year. Given that range of semi dwarf to full size, precocity, disease resistance, and other attributes with not much regard to matching the rootstock to the vigor if the grafted variety, I would not claim I'm really any better off than grafting onto seedlings. Except I can do another one just like it if I want to in the future
If you are planting a block of Fuji or Gala in an orchard, you'd want them all on the same rootstock. For a handful each of a variety of apples, probably not a big deal.
Plus Jack is an accomplished nurseryman who would be disappointed at how little roots are on the purchased rootstock compared to his seedlings.

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback! The reason I'm using crabs as rootstock is simple. I'm concerned about maintenance and looking for the long run. I convinced myself that crabs, once established, can be pretty much ignored. I'm still not completely sold on domestic apples. I thought I would simply try grafting a few of the crabs with some lower maintenance domestic apples and see how they do. If they do well, I can graft more, if not, I can just let them revert to crabs.
Glad to hear apples want to be grafted before bud break. This will deconflict with my persimmon grafting.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Jack, I may be wrong but I think that is for bench grafting. If you are field grafting then you want to wait until they are leafing out just like persimmons. If you are interested in any of my scions when I prune next year just let me know.

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks for the kind offers. I only have about 10 trees right now, mostly Siberian with some Dolgo. I'll only graft a few next year and see how it goes. I will definitely plant more crabapple from seed next year. When it comes time to take scions this winter, I'd love to have a couple of folks favorite low maintenance varieties that are listed.
I do need to make a trip to Virginia Vintage Apples one of these days. It is certainly close by.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

It sure seems like more apples are grown in the Virginia ,NY,PENN.Is it that more apple trees were started a long time ago or is it the weather.In .Kansas we may have 110 degree temps down to 0.I have some apple trees but they don't produce heavy crops but appear healthy.I had pears that produced quickly and nice crops until fire blight started.I just was wondering ,sounds like they work great for you guys.I can't say I know of a farm that has a single apple growing on it that wasn't planted in the last 15 years.

Good question. I don't know the answer. I guess like everything thing else, the specifics of the region make a difference.
I'm sure it will take many years for these seed grown trees to produce. As Doc says, grafting my shed a couple years. I'm not in a hurry at this point. My persimmons and chestnuts should come on line with production in the next few years. I'm still young enough to keep the food plot program going for a number of years. My interest in soft mast trees is for the long haul.
Right now I have well over 50 pawpaw that are going dormant on my lower deck. I will grow them at home for one more year where I can control sun exposure. Next fall is going to be a lot of work! Right now, I have about 40 trees sitting outside my barn ready to plant. Most are in the 5' to 6' range. They are a mix of Nikita's Gift Persimmons, Crabapple, with a couple Dunstan Chestnut, a couple, Jujube, and a couple Allegheny Chinquapin.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Ideas:

• I have scions for DR varieties (Liberty, Enterprise, Goldrush, Williams Pride, Florina), southern heritage apples (Arkansas Black, Yates, Black Twig) and some of the better crabapples (Dolgo, Kerr, Chestnut, Virginia (Hewes))
• I've decided to baby my trees at least during the early years to get them started as well as they can, so I don't really know which of these varieties would be best if taking a low/no-maintenance approach, but I think they'd all be pretty good
• While grafting apples to crab apple rootstock will work, rootstocks are so cheap (and available in relatively small quantities), I think grafting to rootstocks with known characteristics makes more sense
• grafting is recommended in late winter/early spring, but before bud break
• Vintage Virginia Apples (located not too far from you) holds a grafting workshop every year. I haven't taken it yet, but others here have and recommend it. Here's the listing from last year's workshop: https://www.albemarleciderworks.com/news/workshop/grafting-workshop

Thanks for the suggestion. I had been meaning to check out Vintage Virginia Apples for a number of years and finally got to do it today. My wife happened to be down at the farm today and wanted to drive around. We had some time to kill so I suggest we check them out. Had a great time tasting cider and even bought a bottle as well as a half bushel of apples. I had an interesting conversation with one of the guys working there. I told him what I was doing and he suggest Black Twig. They told me that they will be holding another grafting seminar in late February or early March. I'll try to make it.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Yoder, apples aren't hard at all if you just do a few simple things....buy disease resistant trees, get them started right w/ fencing, staking, vol guards and water, but after a few years they are almost care free. I've sold hundreds of trees and have had lots of feedback from growers and it is boom or bust. The few that are a bust, didn't fence or put on vol guards! You can't fix stupid though, I took them out and the orchards and showed them exactly what to do. They didn't take the time for a few easy steps.
I've grown thousands myself, and though I do have a commercial orchard and have all the tools to grow good trees, I've grown hundreds for deer w/ little care, the key is buying DR trees and guarding against pests. If you are not willing to put in the time to fence and put on vol guards, don't bother growing them.
Buy some trees and get yourself started, if you like it and have good luck with them, start grafting, but again only go with DR sticks. These two trees put down about 4-500lbs of apples per year and I do no more than an hour of work on them per year now. Pretty good return on investment! It takes a lot more time to plow up and seed a 1 acre foodplot than to grow a small orchard and they will last a lot longer!

Maya,
Really glad to see your post. I know you are a great apple guy with lots of experience.
I've avoided apples so far because of the maintenance. I'm trying to use mast trees as a feeding tool. I'm concerned that as I get older I won't be able to maintain my food plot program at this level. So, to me volume and low maintenance is important. 1 hour a year doesn't seem like much but I've planted over 400 chestnuts and grafted over 50 persimmons. If I had to spend an hour per tree that is 450 hours per year. Right now my total time in the field runs around 600 hours for all trees and plots.
Having said that, I'm now far enough along to start including apples. My plan is to grow crabapples from seed and start by grafting a few of them for attraction with some domestic varieties. If I can convince myself the maintenance on some domestic varieties is low enough, I can always graft more .
So, what is your recommendation for the most DR varieties? So far Black Twig is one that is being recommended.
By the way, it is interesting to hear different perspectives from apple folks. I know you have always maintained that apples are not as much of a maintenance issue as folks think. When I talked to the guy working at Virginia Vintage Apples and told him what I was looking for, he really scratched his head. He did come up with Black Twig which was on Lot2Learn's list as well. He basically said that most everything he could think of required significant maintenance.
At any rate, now that I'm starting with Apples, I'm gonna need to dig up and re-read many of your old threads!
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Jack,
I started my apple tree adventure with David at Century Farms. He gave great advice and every apple tree I bought from him (10) are producing apples. The first started in 3rd season I had them in the ground. They were Hewes crab and Liberty trees. The Liberties and Hewes crab have been heavy products every year since then, with each year producing more than the precious. This year they didn't produce more but a heavy, destructive hail storm hammered the newly forming fruit off in June. If I had to choose between the 10 varieties plus I have planted since then I would choose Liberty and Hewes. They are Sept producers and most have fallen off the tree by now. The fruit doesn't stay on the ground too long.
My pear trees I got from the Wildlife group started to produce this year(year4)
I will have to check the names of the most heavy producer but they are big and there are over twenty on it. I also purchased Trophy pears from the original orchard that sold them(last year he was in business) and this year they exploded with pears. Doc's special and trophy have done the best. All my soil is heavy clay.
I got 10 more trees from Turkey Creek Nursery this past spring and added a couple more varieties to my collection. Time will tell how much they produce but am looking forward to them fruiting in the locations I have them. They are in great soil compared to my clay and hopefully will love it.
All trees were caged when put in the ground, no staking, irrigation, or fertilization done.
I have liberties on m7, m11, and full size tree rootstock from 3 different nurseries. Hewes on the same and the others are a mixture of the three.
Brush pile recommended David at Century Farms and he was spot on for service, knowledge, and quality of trees when I worked with him.
I have lost two trees total, one I damaged the cage when mowing and failed to repair it which led to deer pulling branches down so much they broke all branches down(on a asian pear that was loaded last summer) and one of Turkey Creek's died after leafing out this spring. Otherwise I have a great orchard for deer located in 5 spots.

If you want to provide supermarket quality apples to your deer, apple trees are very high maintenance. I do not think your deer will be that picky. You just want to get the trees of to a good start. Like anything else, maintenance and effort has a lot to do with your personal goals and preferences.

Hewes crabs are very susceptible to blight IME. I almost lost both of mine already and will most likely replace them this coming spring.

When I ordered from Dave I specifically inquired about CAR and blight resistant varieties and these were some of the ones he recommended. So far so good but I guess one never knows.

I think we are in the same zone as the farm is only about ten minutes south of Mo border. We got 8 different trees from David that went in the ground winter 13/14. Won't remember all without pulling list but we got Liberty, enterprise, Arkansas black, King David, grimes golden. The other three I will have to check list on. We have lots of cedar but only one tree is showing significant spotting on leaves but it seems to growing ok.
This past winter we added crabs and pears from stark bros.
Very pleased with stock from both places.

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks for all the info guys! I actually spoke with Dave for quite a while when I first started using trees. I looked at apples hard before moving them down on my list. One interesting thing I learned from Dave is that if you plant an apple with the graft below the soil line, it will produce roots from above the graft and become a full size tree.
I've always wanted to try an experiment. I like the idea for full size trees for wildlife in the long run but the problem is that they are slow to fruit compared to the dwarfed tree. I wonder what would happen if you planted a dwarf tree normally *or even in a slight dip give well drained soil). Then let it age until it starts fruiting well. Then add soil mounding around the tree to cover the graft and let it form roots from above the graft.
Would the tree completely revert to a vegetative state and stop producing fruit?
Would it continue to produce fruit, perhaps at a lower rate than otherwise, and continue vegetative growth?
Would it simply stay in a dwarfed state?
David at Century is certainly a knowledgeable resource.
Gator,
Thanks for the heads-up with local experience with Hewes.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Here's a list of DR trees from ACN, see what floats your boat. Several of them I have grown and sold, but I'm sure others are good too. It just makes the job much easier to go w/ DR trees. I graft, but honestly I'd just buy them, unless money is an issue. Grafting will just add more work and a couple years until they fruit!
Most all of the bigger nurseries are good, I don't worry about that to much, but just do your homework and read on their sites. As for black twig, they aren't grown up here so I don't know much about it other than it was grown a lot for cider and is not grown as much anymore in mid-Atlantic states. Not sure why. My top 3 for deer up here are Liberty, Enterprise and Galarina. They are all easy to grow and really produce, for supermarket apples...SMH. PM me if you've got any questions.
http://www.acnursery.com/acn_resistant.php

Listen to Maya for sure!
I grafted Goldrush, Chestnut Crab, Liberty, Priscilla, PRistine, and Enterprise onto both wild and big box trees. There will be SOME maintenence, but you don't need to overdo it. Basically if you just keep them pruned (i.e. getting out dead wood, opening the center a bit, and making sure limbs aren't crossing) that will help A LOT with diseases.
Just have fun with it! Apples are super easy to graft, at least bark/rind graft.

 

[yoderjac]

Well, I guess it is time for me to start thinking about grafting apples again....
Looks like the crabapples I planted last fall are already starting to leaf out!

Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

My trees 30 miles south of you don't normally leaf out until mid-April...maybe my April 1 pruning schedule is going to be a little late this year!
BTW, that's a great looking whip.

I have not seen any other trees leafing out except these crabs yet. I was shocked when I saw it today. Maybe they know something we don't!
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

My dolgos and wild plums are starting to leaf out right now also. Who would have thought it being still February.
Do you have scions Jack?
My orchard is still young but I have a few good DR scions if you need any.
todd

Todd,
I don't have scions yet. I'm hoping attend a grafting class at Virginia Vintage Apples next weekend. I won't need many as I don't want to graft all the crabs I planted but I do want to try some. Several folks have offered them up and I appreciate that. I'm going to wait until after the grafting class to make a final decision on the varieties. Let me know with DRs you've got.
Thanks,
Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Jack,
I bark grafted liberty to mature crabapples and haad fruit and 8 feet of growth in three years.
Liberty is my best dresistant tree so far. Many i cant evaluate fully yet. Insects are going to be a problem with any apple i know of, but not so much dissease.
Goldrush holds late, but CAR is a problem. Two early season sprays can control that.
Good luck!

I have a few wildlife group pear trees that have broken bud and are leafing out here in west Arkansas.

 

[yoderjac]

I'm at the farm today and took a closer look at the trees. All the crabs with leaves are Siberian Red. None of the Dolgo have leaves. I found one interesting Siberian red. It had produced leaves. I have 18" tubes on them for rodent protection. Above the tube the leaves have died and turned brown. In the tub not only are there leaves, there is 3" of new growth.
Here is a pic of one of the Siberian red crabs:

 

[yoderjac]

Wow thats odd. Did it pop early and get frostbit except in the warmth of the tube?

Looks like it. All of the Siberian Red began developing leaves well before any other tree. They are a northern species so they probably take the risk of early dormancy break for a longer growing season. My guess is that they can handle this but we will see. I'm guessing the tube was just enough to keep the inside a little warmer. This did not happen with any of the other trees, so I'm guessing it is a micro climate thing.
Thanks,
Jack