yoderjac
5 year old buck +
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
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