X-Mas Day Scion Scouting Hike

CrazyEd

5 year old buck +
Took my dog for a hike X-Mas morning at the huge park by our house. I always love searching for new apples, crabs, and pears growing in some wild sections of this place. It seems like every year is different on what is holding and what is not. I've been studying the place for about 5 years now. So far I've grafted around 7 different trees from this park and i'm always looking for more. Here's a few pictures from the area, as well as some of the trees I found that were holding. Fruit size at this place ranges from baseball sized to pea sized, and I've found stuff that drops starting in August and some that has hung on as long as march.

Places like this are exactly why I don't bother planting apples from seed and trying to graft the new varieties. I don't have time for that type of experiment. I have so many choices as it is between this place and my forum friends. To me grafting is much more efficient when it comes to time. I have so many larger apples and crabs, I've been trying to supplement my plants with various smaller sizes for song birds and other critters.

Here are a few of the trees I ran across today. The few tests I like to do is the shake test, see how strong the fruit is in holding. The better it holds, the longer it hangs. I also like to do the squeeze test to see what the flesh looks like, is there any flesh left inside or are they shriveled up prunes at this time.

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These are not a crabapple, not sure what they are. Anyone?
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Here's a picture of one of the areas. There are fruit trees pretty much scattered all over the place, you just have to look around for them.
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Here (below) is a pear tree (bigger in the middle) and a crab apple (to the right of the pear) growing together. The crab apple I call cherry bomb, because the fruit look like cherry bombs. I have a 6' feathered graft in my nursery from this tree.

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Another big area with lots of trees.
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A few more.




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I'm sure maybe its part of the sugars fermenting but that flesh does have quite the orange tinge.

Secondly for a wild tree with no help that tree has a pretty darn nice natural shape!

Thirdly, I wish we had a park like that, I don't have anything like that around me that would have apple trees in it. I drove around the other day checking all the roadside apples that I'm aware of around here, nothing was hanging anywhere, but I'm gonna try again next Monday and drive around a bit longer.
 
I'm sure maybe its part of the sugars fermenting but that flesh does have quite the orange tinge.

Secondly for a wild tree with no help that tree has a pretty darn nice natural shape!

Thirdly, I wish we had a park like that, I don't have anything like that around me that would have apple trees in it. I drove around the other day checking all the roadside apples that I'm aware of around here, nothing was hanging anywhere, but I'm gonna try again next Monday and drive around a bit longer.

Yeah i'm pretty luck that within a 5 minute walk I have access to probably 100+ wild trees. My dog likes it too :)
 
Plus the variety of apples you can get scions for from USDA GRIN. Search by "descriptors" for fruit size/weight (frtweight, fruitwidth), ripening time (harvseason), and how long the fruit hang on the tree (fruittenac). Plus dozens of other descriptors for characteristics that you may (or may not) care about.
 
Plus the variety of apples you can get scions for from USDA GRIN. Search by "descriptors" for fruit size/weight (frtweight, fruitwidth), ripening time (harvseason), and how long the fruit hang on the tree (fruittenac). Plus dozens of other descriptors for characteristics that you may (or may not) care about.

Yeah, good point. I do have an order in with GRIN too.
 
It is interesting to see what is still hanging late in the year on wild trees but good suggestion to observe several years in a row to draw any real conclusions. I remember seeing a tree in a clump on a friends land late Dec holding very well. The next year wanted to really single it out and all in that area were bare though they had fruit that summer. A third year was also zilch.
He also has an Aug apple that is pretty early and this year it is still holding some in Dec. Its right by the road and never saw it hold this late before.

That cherry bomb looks like it should be floating around in an Old Fashion.

I have a bunch of red splendor still holding fruit but not grafted types so what they really are to compare is a mixed bag. They have mostly nickle dime sized fruit like your pics. As they hang longer they get more dull red too vs yellow red
 
I like your " park ". The ones around here are mowed, pruned, manicured, .......... they look like a fairway with a few trees in it. I'd love to see more parks like the one in your pix, CE. Great habitat for all sorts of critters.
 
True BNB, I see his 'park' as more along the lines of our 'stateland woods'. :)
 
Those bigger crabs look like they'd be good deer grub. Do you have any of those grafted ??
 
I think i have grafted a few of these but it's getting more difficult for me to track. I'll be getting some cuttings from these trees in the next month or two. I'll graft a few more of the bigger ones and some of the smaller ones.
 
Nice thread, I need to look into the little crabs more. I have a couple in my neighborhood that hold really late, they would be good additions for wild birds at the farm.
 
Nice thread, I need to look into the little crabs more. I have a couple in my neighborhood that hold really late, they would be good additions for wild birds at the farm.

Yeah. I have grafted a bunch of these smaller ones specifically for birds.

Here's another picture of the cherry bomb, blurry but you get the idea.
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This is another one i've grafted, appears very similar to a Harvest Gold crab, but this is an unknown.
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This one too.
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I've found 3 apple trees still holding fruit in the past two weeks while grouse hunting. Planning on grafting a few scions from them this spring.
 
Calendar and weather tested apples. ^^^^
 
Ed you have inspired me!

I ordered some M111 rootstock from Cummins today to graft some little crabapples to plant for the birds in my brush strips out at the farms.
So I took my duck fetcher for a walk around the neighborhood today and gave the in town crabapples a really hard look. A couple of the trees I know very well a few were new to me, these are the ones I liked for potential scions for grafting.

This one is right down the street from me and always holds really late into the year, in late February the tree is loaded with robins that I guess are after the fruit?





I liked the fruit on this one and the way it is still holding.





This one was at a house of a kid I was friends with in elementary school and the tree was grown way back then so it is at least fifty years old. The fruit is just dropping now and is the softest of the trees I looked at.




And this one is actually a little crab at work that has been planted for around twelve years, firm juicy fruit that actually tasted the best of all of them to me.






I don't know what any of the variety's are just that they hold late into the winter. I am wanting to feed wild birds/turkeys/bunnies and whatever else wants to eat them to help them survive the winter.
 
Those all look great. Little critters gotta eat too. Great plan! If you want any additional scionwood let me know I have tons of varieties. Crabs/apples/wild trees just let me know.
 
Thanks Ed, if you want to try any of these your more than welcome.
If you trim any of your airport apple this winter I sure could find a nice place for it to live!
 
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