Turkey Creek
5 year old buck +
I was contacted by Arbor Day Farm, which is owned by The National Arbor Day Foundation to do the grafting for their heritage orchard. Some of the trees in the heritage orchard are over 80 years old. J Sterling Morton owned the property at one point. ADF is located on the outskirts of Nebraska City, NE. Southeast corner of Nebraska just a stone's throw from the Missouri River. At one time there was close to 100 varieties in the orchard. They have replaced a few trees over the years, but sadly they have lost some of the original varieties. My job is to graft new trees from the existing varieties and track down scion wood for the varieties that have died off, not been replaced, and graft those. To say the least I am pretty pumped to be part of the project!
Today was the day for year 1 scion collection, they have a few metal signs indicating the variety, but some required us to use hand written maps that have seen better days! The orchard maintenance guy had already started pruning, but luckily I found useable scion on every tree we collected from. You can see what a old tree looks like when it was started out in a style I would not recommend! Water sprouts were thick on top of most trees, great for grafting purposes, but a pain for pruning every year. I am going to get them to grow these new trees in a central leader form.
Some uniques varieties from year one's grafting are Almata, Blue Pearmain, Coles Quince, Dr. Mathews, Early Harvest, Fall Russet, Irish Peach, Kandil Sinap, Maidens Blush, Ohio Nonpareil, Westfield-Seek-No-Further, White Winter Pearmain and Zabergau Reinette.
I will add a few more pictures as the project progresses.
Today was the day for year 1 scion collection, they have a few metal signs indicating the variety, but some required us to use hand written maps that have seen better days! The orchard maintenance guy had already started pruning, but luckily I found useable scion on every tree we collected from. You can see what a old tree looks like when it was started out in a style I would not recommend! Water sprouts were thick on top of most trees, great for grafting purposes, but a pain for pruning every year. I am going to get them to grow these new trees in a central leader form.
Some uniques varieties from year one's grafting are Almata, Blue Pearmain, Coles Quince, Dr. Mathews, Early Harvest, Fall Russet, Irish Peach, Kandil Sinap, Maidens Blush, Ohio Nonpareil, Westfield-Seek-No-Further, White Winter Pearmain and Zabergau Reinette.
I will add a few more pictures as the project progresses.