Project W: Columnar Apple Shot Plot

[chickenlittle]

We haven't talked in person yet so I do not know what will get his interest in doing genetic testing or how much I will need to do for him to agree to test my samples. And we have not gotten into what disease gene testing he can provide which is my real interest. Testing that shows likely disease resistance is only good if you follow through to confirm that with experimental testing. If they can help me do that too, it would be very much worth my time. As I get farther along, I could see enlisting some high school students interested in biology and chemistry to help.

I do research at work and am working part time on my PhD in engineering so I am comfortable with very technical research. But I do not have lots of time to devote to this so I have to keep my workload down. It will help when my my 5 year old daughter can start working on excel spreadsheets to help me track. Might be a few more years until she is ready.

 

[chickenlittle]

Good time for an overview of my progress on columnar trees and my wildlife apples (and pears). After 3 years, I now have:

In my backyard garden nursery in NY.

• 1 tree each of 12 columnar apple varieties. 10 were purchased trees, 1 grafted from USDA GRIN, 1 grafted from another source.
  • Looks like 7 columnar varieties will flower this year. And hoping no late frost this year. Could get a decent number of seeds to start next winter.
• 46 columnar trees grafted - either last year's Tbud or this year's bench graft. Won't get all to take but decent pipeline to plant out into shotplots. Trees on are on a mix of B118, M111, M106, and P18. Any grafts that fail to take will get t-budded in August.
• 2 P18 root suckers were planted and are doing well. T bud if ready in August.
• 32 regular apple trees, 25 varieties. Some of these were last year's trees that needed another year or were hit by rabbits. The rest are last year's tbud or new bench grafts. I don't have much room left for trees at the farm. Some may be given away, some may be t-budded to columnar trees. I gave away 8 trees this spring to help make room in the nursery. I have some Bud 490, Novole, and G.65 grafts that I will try turning into stoolbeds or trees that I harvest cuttings off of to root.
• 8 OHFx97 pear. I had planned to t-bud this summer but GRIN not offering summer bud wood this year for pear. Will get scionwood ordered and graft next spring.
• 23 columnar seedlings are planted in the nursery. Rabbits got into that fence and chewed them off in December at the snowline, abuot 3" tall. Looks like almost all will leaf out and grow. Hopefully a good year's growth will help weed out those that did not inherit the columnar gene. I discarded 4 last year that looked like normal growth.
• 12 columnar seedlings are started under lights. I will start transtioning those outside in mid-May to harden off and will figure a spot to put them.

Columnar trees planted on farm in PA, in the orchard or shotplots:

• Currently 25 trees planted along a row at the bottom of my orchard
  • 7 trees are good grafted columnar trees but smaller. These can be moved this fall.
  • The other 18 were T-budded last summer onto 2 year old B118 or P18 rootstock. The good T-buds should grow vigorously.
• Shotplot 1 has 12 spots and was started in 2015. I started out planting new grafts and tbudding right there which was not that successful. Right now, maybe 1 of the original rootstock are still planted there. The last of the orginal rootstock were re-tbudded last summer. I found last weekend that 5 were chewed off by voles. I think I caught them in time and brought them home to baby them in the nursery. It is hard to screen trees being budded which is one reason I changed to transplanting in grafted trees. There are now 5 good grafted trees tansplanted into it that I hope will fruit in 2018. The other sites will be filled this fall.
• Shotplot 2 is new this year and about 8 feet from Shotplot 1. I have planted in 4 of my trees and bought 4 more of the Urban Apple series from Raintree on MM106. I think the 4 from Raintree I have in my backyard are mislabeled so this is another chance to make sure I have one of each variety. This shotplot has room for 4-6 more trees. I might get apples off some older trees next year.
• A dwarf shotplot is located with these as an experiment. It is about 8 trees on G11 or M27. I originally planned these as pollination partners in my nursery. These now are planted on 2ft centers with stakes and wires. Hoping the G11 are hardy enough for the location but the M27 might not be. I would expect fruit in 2018.
• Plans for this 2017 - Start planning shotplots for the 70 or so trees available this fall or next
  • Spray, lime, cover crop, setup posts, ready for wire fence.
    • Cut down nearby black walnuts and treat stumps.
  • Include 5 non-columnar trees on G.41 in one of the shotplots.
    
  • Layout similar spots plant columnar seedling for evaluation. Likely 2-3 rows in a fence with 1ft between rows and 8" between seedlings. Would like to plant out maybe a 100 seedlings a year starting in 2017...if I get enough seeds this fall.

Regular orchard on the farm in PA:

• 76 apple trees planted. mix of bought trees and my grafts.
  • 65 varieties. P18/B118 up the hill to the north. G222/G890/G30/M7 to the lower rows in front.
  • 3 new trees bought this year are a Sundance, a Franklin Cider, and Baker's Delight.
  • Transplanted 3 from my nursery last fall or this spring - a Novole, an Elise Ratke weeping crab, a Lady Ilgen weeping crab.
  • 3 were re-Tbudded last summer. If those fail, I'll dig up the rootstock this fall and replace with a tree from my nursery.
  • Room for 8 more trees to come from the home nursery. G.222 and a couple MM.106
  • Varieties that fail to impress will get topworked to something else.
  • Expect another small crop of apples off the Redfree (G.30) and Williams Pride (G.890). Those I planted in 2015 from Cummins.
• 14 pears
  • 4 eating pears and 3 perry pears from Cummins were planted in 2015. Putting on size.
  • 2 perry pears bench grafted last year on OhxF87. Did not do much but alive.
  • 1 OHxF87 planted last year and 2 OHxF97 planted this year to be grafted to perry varieties next year.
  • 3 OHxF33 planted this year. Will graft with eating varieties next year.
    • room for 1 more
  • Have another location I will start planting pears. Looking at trying late varieties found on USDA GRIN.
• 2 sour cherries purchased from Cummins. Unimpressed with the growth, minimal. But they are flowering this year. Getting some cherries will make my Mother happy.

 

[chickenlittle]

Photo tonight of my 3" tall seedling starting to leaf out. Pesky rabbits got into this fencing in december and chewed them off at the snow line. Glad we had 3" of snow or they'd probably be done.

 

[chickenlittle]

T Buds getting started. Two Bud 118 and 1 MM111 rootstocks. Each has 2 Tbuds. Last year I left both buds grow on my rootstocks. This year I'll choose one and pinch the other back to see if I can maximize growth.

 

[chickenlittle]

Maypole columnar crab about to flower.

 

[buckvelvet]

These Columnar Apples still interest me, nice work!

 

[chickenlittle]

This tree is loaded up and down with flowers. Variety is supposed to be Tasty Red but I'm not sure these were labeled right. Most will flower so I hope I can get them correctly ID'd this fall.

 

[Lordkiwi]

As part of my longer term plans, I want to share scionwood with folks that want to try columnar apples. If you are interested, let me know. I would like to get more information on how varieties do under disease pressure with no spray. Love to get some going where scab or CAR or fireblight is bad. I think I can start sharing scionwood next spring for several varieties, more than I will need. Send me a PM or post here.

Hello Chickenlittle, great post I think I have read though it 2 or 3 times already. I too went all in this year and bought the 7 available cultivars from Raintree. I am interested in collecting the other cultivars previously released in the US. When your ready to send out scions please put me on the list. I have a question as well. Rootstock effect the branching angles of the scions and even the fruiting behavior. Have you ever conciderd using a columnar apple as an interstem for a standard cultivar?

 

[chickenlittle]

I can certainly get you scionwood in the spring.

I don't have a lot of info on rootstock differences. That is part of the reason I have them grafted onto Bud 118, P18, MM111, and MM106 is to see which works out best. The most I know is that some rootstock will give more vigorous growth and more side branching shoots.

I don't think there would be benefit as an interstem but you could make a tree that stacks columnar varieties. It would be a novelty for the backyard.

 

[chickenlittle]

Grafts are generally looking good. Almost all the T-buds have woken up and started. These couple though look to be declining. Not sure if they got a bit of frost the other night or something else is the cause. Been wet, rainy, and cool. 2 or 3 more cold nights around freezing in the next couple days.

Right bud is declining and left one has not pushed growth. Will let that red B118 bud grow until I determine if either of the Tbuds will survive.


Left bud is declining. Right looks ok so far.

 

[chickenlittle]

Photos of the backyard columnar trees flowering from the other day.

 

[chickenlittle]

And the columnar Maypole crab

 

[Lordkiwi]

Of the seeds you are growing. Can you tell if they have the columnar genes or do they need more time to show the trait?

 

[chickenlittle]

Of the seeds you are growing. Can you tell if they have the columnar genes or do they need more time to show the trait?

Columnar apples generally have short internode space. That means the buds forming on the seedling will be much closer together than on a normal apple. I showed some example photos in this post (http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.p...lumnar-apple-shot-plot.3681/page-2#post-76823). In my background search, some researchers suggested it could take a couple years to be sure if a seedling was or was not columnar.

Of the seedlings i put out last summer, I did cull a handful in September that had a large internode spacing and had some spotting on the leaves. The rest I didn't know and was hoping to weed out the non-columnar ones this summer. With them being set back by rabbit damage, it might take another year. Here is a photo of them tonight. Only lost one tiny runt after the rabbit damage. I should start picking a dominant shoot and pinch off the others to focus growth into one stem.


For the seedlings I started in January, they are probably a bit stunted and the leaves don't look all that healthy. They only got a bit of Osmocote fertilizer and probably should have been moved to larger pots. So they may have short internode spacing simply because they are under stress. I'll start hardening them off outside and get them transplanted into the nursery so they can grow better. I waited until July last year. Here is a photo of this year's seedlings after watering them today.

 

[chickenlittle]

The two Tbuds I showed a few posts ago have died. Here is the one all brown and shriveled. So far I think the 2nd bud on this rootstock is doing ok. On the other one, I don't think the 2nd tbud is going to take so I'll let the B118 leaf out and tbud again in August if I can.

 

[chickenlittle]

Not sure yet with the cold rainy weather and near frosts how many apples I get off the backyard trees. A few weeks ago I gathered some unopened flowers from a Liberty tree on the farm in PA. I opened those flowers and collected the anthers for the pollen.and let those air dry for a week. Then I put the pollen in the fridge. After the last of the cold nights, I used that pollen to pollinate a half dozen flowers on 4 columnar trees. Most flowers have already opened but these were a day or 2 from opening. I pulled off the petals and hand pollinated the pistils. I left the anthers intact since there is no reason for a bee to visit the flower with the petals gone. And if a bee does pollinate from something else, I don't mind.

Here is a photo showing one. I used some ribbon to mark the branch. I cut off all but the one or two in a grouping that I pollinated. You can see the flower I pollinated at the right edge of the photo with the 5 pistils sticking out past the stamens.

 

[chickenlittle]

Got to the farm yesterday and checked on trees. My Tbuds look pretty good. They are mostly on 2 or 3 year old rootstock. Some of those have a lot of energy wanting to push growth and there were many competing buds and suckers to clean off. Here is a photo of a Maypole crab Tbud that flowered.

 

[chickenlittle]

Some T buds in the nursery continue to decline. Here is another where one of the buds died. The other one shown has the 2nd bud looking poor. That one might lose the the rootstock unless a healthy bud pushes.

 

[Lordkiwi]

Any ideas why it might have failed. Do you wrap your tbuds? Or maybe tbuding is not the best grafting methoid for this try of tree.

 

[chickenlittle]

Any ideas why it might have failed. Do you wrap your tbuds? Or maybe tbuding is not the best grafting methoid for this try of tree.

No real idea what the issue is. It does look somewhat like fireblight but I do not think that is it. I have a few bench grafts that are starting to look the same. Losing a handful is not a big deal. I lost some T-buds last year that looked similar to this. One thing I probably should do it put something on the top of the

Last year I used buddy tape (www.buddytape.com/) to wrap my T-buds. That worked easier than PVC tape I used the year before. The PVC tape had to be removed after a few weeks. Buddy tape will degrade enough to let the bud push through it. T budding or chip budding are much more efficient for propagating columnar varieties than benchgrafting. Because the internode (bud) spacing is so tight, you waste a bunch of buds when you bench graft. Even with budding, I only use half to 2/3 of the buds.