I did some grafting last month with my NWC to M111 along with a lot of other apples and the DropTine's and 30-06's are the most vigorous growers so far in the nursery box.
CAR is bad here this year. All NWC varieties handling it well except for one. The Yellow Delicious looks pretty rough. Not sure yet if it will be bad enough to be a deal breaker or not. Really pleased with the other varieties from them.
Looking forward to checking on my trees next week. We had a long (six week) dry spell in western NC but got up to 10 inches in the past 4 days. It will be interesting to compare the trees I planted March-May. I wouldn't be surprised if I lost a few.
FWIW I sent them an email today asking a few questions and to my surprise they told me to email them what I wanted to order and they would put me down.
Got to check my trees in late August. A few of my May 2018 NWC trees have fruit already. I removed it in hopes to deter the bears from ripping my cages down. My April 2019 planted trees from NWC are huge, what a great year to place an order.
Mount Everest crab, picture taken August 2019. Planted May 2018.
Droptine crab, also planted May 2018.
It’s very early obviously but nice to see some fruit already. I also removed a few (4 I think) tubes. Wanted to try tubes as an experiment but only put them on a few trees. I’m not anti or pro tubes but for apples I’ll stick with window screen at planting time, no tubes. I had to evict a rather large wasp community from one tube.
I have Droptines and 30/06 from NWTC but not Crossbow. I don’t think the Crossbow variety has been sold long enough for anyone to have them producing yet.
I have a few of Terry's Crossbow but they've only been in the ground since May 2018. He's a strait shooter and can make recommendations based on what your goals are.
I emailed him a few days ago. He's been all over looking for more disease resistant varieties to add to the lineup and says he has some more great ones coming in the future. I'm no apple expert but he mentioned the past 3 extreme wet years were favorable for blight and a great opportunity to really see what trees held their own.