Crabapple timeline
- Thread starter sandbur
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Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
You got decent fruit on your B-118 at least. The B-118's I let grow out ( they didn't grow much after 5 years ) had 3/4" fruit at best. They looked more like bushes than trees - no good with bears here. I yanked those and planted grafted apple & crab trees in those spots.
Glad you got decent fruit on yours.
2 of the seedling crabs you mailed me the seed for grew about 4 feet this summer. The others not quite as much, but they all look good. I can't wait to plant them next spring at camp. All are in pots.
Glad you got decent fruit on yours.
2 of the seedling crabs you mailed me the seed for grew about 4 feet this summer. The others not quite as much, but they all look good. I can't wait to plant them next spring at camp. All are in pots.
sandbur
5 year old buck +
B118 fruit is smaller than Geneva Crab. Again, white seeds so the fruit isn’t ripe.
B128 has better flavor than Geneva at this point.
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Should be B118, not B128.
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sandbur
5 year old buck +
I had very poor luck with seeds this year. We had two weeks with warm weather and the ground cracked like seeds were sprouting. Then two weeks of very cold and ground refrozen. One seedling emerged and it just won’t grow.
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sandbur
5 year old buck +
My B118’s are all trees but very slow to fruit. I will probably top work at least one of them next spring. I think there are 5. Some were planted as is, some are failed grafts.
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sandbur
5 year old buck +
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
^^^^^^ The B-118's I planted at camp were only as high as halfway up your cage. No signs of upward growth - just bushes more or less. I guess I drew the wrong samples.
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
I started the seeds in pots indoors so I could baby them early on. Some grew, some didn't and died off. But the ones on our patio have done well. I added a mix of some bagged compost, peat moss and composted manure to the pots earlier in the summer. Only sunshine and water (rain or hose) since then. The tallest one is a seedling from Yellow Dog at just over 51 inches tall.
sandbur
5 year old buck +
My one and only seedling is now about 8 inches tall, speaking of last fall’s seedling planting.
In other years, when I had good growth, I thinned seedlings based on keeping faster growing varieties and bronze leafed varieties.
One fairly knowledgeable person said that there is a genetic link between slower growth and later blooming time. He is in a northern environment and felt the later bloom might be better suited for areas with late frosts. It seems like he was from Canada. True or not, I have no idea. Just his observation.
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sandbur
5 year old buck +
I tried a couple of windfalls. The seeds were white in both cases, so the apples are not ripe.
The clusters of fruit with Geneva crab impress me. The fruit should add color to cider.
Geneva crab on my wild swamp crab and on dolgo rootstock has been one of my fastest growing grafts.
You can see the drought stress in the leaves! All I have been doing is hauling water. 900 gallons hauled yesterday.
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Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
I'm keeping the slower growers too. Some of the Buckman seedlings are lagging - but still growing. Some of those are about 2 feet tall now - but look good and stout. No bronze or red leaves, but variations in leaf shapes and densities are evident.
4wanderingeyes
5 year old buck +
I picked some chestnut apples this past weekend. They were really good. But there wasn’t enough to do anything with them.
sandbur
5 year old buck +
Martha Crab is ripe and dropping. It is a very juicy crab with decent crunch and a mild flavor. All of this is based on one apple. The other apple dropped and I can’t find it.
B118 are ripe and about done dropping based on 6-10 apples. Geneva Crab is ripe but very slow to drop. This might be a decent deer apple, yet.
Rescue crab doesn’t seem to drop easily, but it turns to mush.
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Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
^^^^ Nice size for deer.
H20fwler
5 year old buck +
Bastians Orange Flesh is near ripe.
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Love this one! Sweet looking crab.
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