Waubay crab

greyphase

5 year old buck +
Has anyone grafted this variety of crab from GRIN? It's from the Iowa Experiment Station, introduced in 1933. A Grimes Golden X Mercer Crab cross. Flavor rich, spicy, subacid sweet, hardy, long keeping. Several years ago I grafted several limbs of an Antonovka seedling to this variety. I've been watching 15 or so apples all summer maturing nicely with no disease or bug damage. A few nights ago a bear knocked all but 2 of the apples off and left them on the ground. I consider myself lucky that it did not break off any limbs. Here are the two apples I'm hoping will make it to maturity.
Waubay_crab.jpg

The bear also broke a nice limb off a Purdy apple tree and another limb off my Luscious pear, leaving it with one limb and no pears this year. A lesser man would give up but I'm addicted to this fascinating hobby and will keep plugging along. :)
 
Those are some very clean looking apples. Bugs have been worse than normal here this year. My Priscilla apples look worse than normal. Probably the cleanest ones are King David and some of the crabapples.
 
I did a couple Waubay tbuds in 2015 with GRIN budwood.

One was on a G222 planted in my orchard. It had very weak growth last year, just a few inches. I think it has done a little better this year but still not much, maybe a foot to 18" tall. Thinking about it now, I might replace it this fall with something from my nursery.

The other Waubay tbud was on a potted dwarf M27. I lost track of what each was and lost a couple so I'm not sure I still have the Waubay or not. As those fruit, I'll get them re-labeled.
 
Stinkin bears, nice job Rick!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I have stayed away from the Mercer crab crosses as I was concerned about hardiness.
 
Noticed any fireblight?
 
Noticed any fireblight?

no sign of fireblight so far. GRIN rates it as very fireblight resistant.
 
Top