chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
I'll be pruning this one this winter and have a bunch of scionwood
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Project W: Columnar Apple Shot Plot
- Thread starter chickenlittle
- Start date
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Apple photos from this week, columnar trees planted 2015
3rd tree over has 5 apples on it
3rd tree over has 5 apples on it
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chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
A couple 2016 columnar variety bench grafts
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Intended for a dwarf shot plot comparison, my least successful but not dead yet G.41 trees.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Looks like Crimson Spire is not going to be very columnar?
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
It is branching more than I expected. I have another Crimson spire on P18 that also shows multiple shoots. I read a paper comparing columnar trees on various rootstocks that reported more shoots on some vigorous rootstocks. I don't know if it will settle down as it matures or if it will stay very compact even with the extra branching. Damage to the terminal bud can promote multiple shoots too but I do not think that is the case for these.
I don't really want to have much pruning in the long term. I may want to look at less vigorous rootstocks.
I don't really want to have much pruning in the long term. I may want to look at less vigorous rootstocks.
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Update. Haven't been to the farm in close to a month so I'm itching to get down there and see those trees.
At home in my backyard, the nursery is starting to wind down. Since I put on more buddy tape than recommended on my Tbuds, I took that off a couple days ago. Those buds generally looked good so hopeful for next year.
My purchased columnar trees have some apples that are close to ripe. I think some might have been mislabeled. One called Tangy Green that should be like a granny smith is now turning red and the tree labeled Northpole should have a red mac like apple that should be mature by now but is still green. We'll see. The Maypole crab looks good to name and its one crabapple dropped about 9/23. My daughter and I ate it and it was tart. Got 5 or 6 seeds out of it. In the last few days, I noticed the birds were starting to peck the other apples. We ate 2 of the "Tangy Green" and those were not quite ripe yet.
"Tangy Green" had about 6 apples on it.
"Northpole" apple still green when it should be ripe and red by now.
At home in my backyard, the nursery is starting to wind down. Since I put on more buddy tape than recommended on my Tbuds, I took that off a couple days ago. Those buds generally looked good so hopeful for next year.
My purchased columnar trees have some apples that are close to ripe. I think some might have been mislabeled. One called Tangy Green that should be like a granny smith is now turning red and the tree labeled Northpole should have a red mac like apple that should be mature by now but is still green. We'll see. The Maypole crab looks good to name and its one crabapple dropped about 9/23. My daughter and I ate it and it was tart. Got 5 or 6 seeds out of it. In the last few days, I noticed the birds were starting to peck the other apples. We ate 2 of the "Tangy Green" and those were not quite ripe yet.
"Tangy Green" had about 6 apples on it.
"Northpole" apple still green when it should be ripe and red by now.
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Here is an update.
Columnar trees in my backyard: The "Tangy Green" apples above dropped in mid October. I only got a couple, the rest disappeared. The "Northpole" held until end of October. These are both in quotes because these trees appear to be mislabeled as the apples were the wrong color. I have about 15 apple seeds in the fridge stratifying. I have them labeled but I'm wondering whether I really want to track that. I may mix seeds in the future and reduce the amount of record keeping and tracking I need to do.
Seedlings from columnar apples: I planted out 29 mid-summer in the back yard. Some put on growth and some others are still quite small, under 6" tall. I culled 4 in October that showed quite a bit of leaf scab and did not look columnar. I'll watch them next summer and throw out more that appear either not columnar or disease prone.
Potted dwarf trees: Lastly, I took advantage of the mild November and transplanted some trees. I had a some potted dwarf trees on G.11 and M.27 that I had planned to use for pollinating my columnar trees. Having learned to hand-pollinate, I moved them to the farm and created a dwarf shotplot like shown in my original posts. I put them on 2-3' centers, crowned slightly, lumite ground cloth, and welded wire fenced around it that is 6-8" off the ground. After 2 summers in 5 gal rootmakers pots, the G.11 were a little rootbound but not the M.27. M.27 might be too dwarf to work but I have no other use for them. If they don't thrive, they'll get replaced with some G.41 trees from my nursery.
Bare root trees: With weather still nice and the ground workable, I dug up and transplanted some trees last weekend. Some of these were larger P18 and B118 rootstock that went into my regular orchard. Two on P18 were very nice size after bud grafting in August 2015 and growing in my nursery over the summer. They easily were as nice as some of the grafted stock I bought from Cummins. One tree was a P18 that I field grafted last spring with a cleft graft. It had not grown much and while futzing around to get the ground cloth down, I busted the graft off. So that P18 sits in the orchard waiting to be grafted again. Having some holes in the columnar shotplot, I transplanted some 2016 benchgrafts from my nursery and one 2015 bud graft. The bud graft was about 30" tall and robust. I have a 2nd columnar shot plot started next to the 1st. Tposts are in, added some dirt to crown it, and ground cloth. I did not have enough fencing to enclose it or I would have started moving more of last year's bud grafts into it now. I'll let that wait for spring but will start prepping another location for some more of these shot plots. There are some nearby black walnuts that I want to get cut down and stumps treated with gly.
Columnar trees in my backyard: The "Tangy Green" apples above dropped in mid October. I only got a couple, the rest disappeared. The "Northpole" held until end of October. These are both in quotes because these trees appear to be mislabeled as the apples were the wrong color. I have about 15 apple seeds in the fridge stratifying. I have them labeled but I'm wondering whether I really want to track that. I may mix seeds in the future and reduce the amount of record keeping and tracking I need to do.
Seedlings from columnar apples: I planted out 29 mid-summer in the back yard. Some put on growth and some others are still quite small, under 6" tall. I culled 4 in October that showed quite a bit of leaf scab and did not look columnar. I'll watch them next summer and throw out more that appear either not columnar or disease prone.
Potted dwarf trees: Lastly, I took advantage of the mild November and transplanted some trees. I had a some potted dwarf trees on G.11 and M.27 that I had planned to use for pollinating my columnar trees. Having learned to hand-pollinate, I moved them to the farm and created a dwarf shotplot like shown in my original posts. I put them on 2-3' centers, crowned slightly, lumite ground cloth, and welded wire fenced around it that is 6-8" off the ground. After 2 summers in 5 gal rootmakers pots, the G.11 were a little rootbound but not the M.27. M.27 might be too dwarf to work but I have no other use for them. If they don't thrive, they'll get replaced with some G.41 trees from my nursery.
Bare root trees: With weather still nice and the ground workable, I dug up and transplanted some trees last weekend. Some of these were larger P18 and B118 rootstock that went into my regular orchard. Two on P18 were very nice size after bud grafting in August 2015 and growing in my nursery over the summer. They easily were as nice as some of the grafted stock I bought from Cummins. One tree was a P18 that I field grafted last spring with a cleft graft. It had not grown much and while futzing around to get the ground cloth down, I busted the graft off. So that P18 sits in the orchard waiting to be grafted again. Having some holes in the columnar shotplot, I transplanted some 2016 benchgrafts from my nursery and one 2015 bud graft. The bud graft was about 30" tall and robust. I have a 2nd columnar shot plot started next to the 1st. Tposts are in, added some dirt to crown it, and ground cloth. I did not have enough fencing to enclose it or I would have started moving more of last year's bud grafts into it now. I'll let that wait for spring but will start prepping another location for some more of these shot plots. There are some nearby black walnuts that I want to get cut down and stumps treated with gly.
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Here are some before and after pics I'm not happy about. I had some apple seedlings protected by a low "rabbit fence". It worked fine until mid December. I guess that rabbits could climb it up far enough to get through larger openings. They chewed the seedlings off at the snow line. Luckily there was a few inches of snow so there is a little left. I am hopeful most will come back but we'll see. I added some chickenwire around it to cover the big holes.
Last September
Now
Last September
Now
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
Well thats horrifying!
Gravensteiner
Buck Fawn
I hope these trees stay alive. Can you close the wounds of these trees with ointment or something else?
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
It might be a little late to do it but I could put a little grafting wax over the ends.
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
This years columnar apple seedlings. Unfortunately the few seeds I had from the maypole crab variety do not appear to be germinating. Those looked like they might be have gotten moldy and soft but I planted those anyway just to see. 16 seedling from other varieties. I am hoping to get a bunch more apples this year and have a few dozen seedlings to plant out in 2018. Time to start thinking about where those will get planted for evaluation. I am thinking the bottom edge of an old field on my parents farm in annual blocks with welded wire fencing and screening. I'll prep those the year before to kill the sod and plant the seedlings on about 12" centers and maybe 3 rows wide.
Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
Did you taste test any of the apples that your trees produced yet? Are they known to be decent eating apples?
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
I had a couple of the red blush apple a few posts up. Those tasted like an apple and were crisp but I do not think they were completely ripe when I picked them. A couple dropped and got gone so I picked those to make sure I got the seeds. The variety may or may not be "Tangy Green" as I think it may have been mislabeled. Barring frost issues, I expect to have a decent crop this year from most varieties and get the mislabeling thing understood.
buckvelvet
5 year old buck +
What are these seedlings of and what was pollinated with them?
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
The seeds came from 2 columnar trees I got from Raintree Nursery 2 years ago. I don't have confidence that the trees were properly labeled. Supposed to be Northpole and Tangy Green. Some apples were open pollinated and some were pollinated by hand with columnar Maypole crab pollen.
Going forward, I'm not sure I want to track the seeds back to the pollen source or even the seed source. Too much info to keep and not get mixed up and it doesn't really matter. I only care about whether it becomes a columnar tree with good disease resistance and drops 1" or larger fruit from September to January. That builds a catalog of varieties to choose from to put apples on the ground over a particular time range.
Going forward, I'm not sure I want to track the seeds back to the pollen source or even the seed source. Too much info to keep and not get mixed up and it doesn't really matter. I only care about whether it becomes a columnar tree with good disease resistance and drops 1" or larger fruit from September to January. That builds a catalog of varieties to choose from to put apples on the ground over a particular time range.
chickenlittle
5 year old buck +
Here is a cool item. I spend some time looking at apple research literature. I have been reading about genetic testing and how that is being used to help in evaluating trees in apple breeding. Based on prior testing, they can tell if a tree has genes associated with a good or bad trait, like columnar form, scab resistance, acidity range for the apples, some storage defects, etc. I am certainly interested in nothing whether my seedlings are columnar (might take a year or two to be sure) and I want disease resistance.
I e-mailed one of these researchers to say that I was doing some amateur breeding of columnar trees and asked how much the genetic tests cost and what all could be learned from a standard test. He got right back to me and said he wasn't set up to do it as a service but, if I wanted to collaborate, he might be able to do testing for within his on-going research funds. So we'll have to follow up and see how that might work out. It might end up being too much work on my end as I am sure he would like me to keep good documentation on my crosses. But the possibility is exciting.
I e-mailed one of these researchers to say that I was doing some amateur breeding of columnar trees and asked how much the genetic tests cost and what all could be learned from a standard test. He got right back to me and said he wasn't set up to do it as a service but, if I wanted to collaborate, he might be able to do testing for within his on-going research funds. So we'll have to follow up and see how that might work out. It might end up being too much work on my end as I am sure he would like me to keep good documentation on my crosses. But the possibility is exciting.
John-W-WI
Administrator
Sounds interesting... The only thing that scares me is the "research" type person might be a little more detailed than I would be
and become a PITA?
