Zone 3 Apple tree recommendations for deer

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

leex, we use welded wire with 3 wooden stakes for the first 3 years or so. We also use PVC piping or tree wraps at the base for the rodents. Then we remove the cages and cover the trunk with chicken wire. The chicken wire is to protect vs Bambi rubbing his antlers and destroying the bark on the tree. It seems that Bambi is always "itchy" and needs to do a whole lot of antler rubbing. I will mention the aluminum window screen to my husband but I am thinking it would be very expensive, no? We have some 300 trees and plant about 50-70 every year. I am thinking that might break the piggy bank but I will check it out.

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

leex, I am looking for this toilet bowl wax you referenced and everything I find is a "waxless ring" - checked out about five or more sites and everyone brings up rings - do you have a brand name of the wax you are using? Will try the google search with a -ring attached to the search parameters. That might do the trick and get rid of the rings. I am thinking the stuff must come in a tube or a jar. If you have a brand name, I will go for that - looks like it did the job just fine based on the photo you posted.

edit - I found some stuff in a jar called "plumber's putty" is that the same thing?

 

[leexrayshady]

nope not plumbers putty,
best place to find it is at your local wal mart or home depot or hardware store. Just ask for a toilet wax ring and they will know what you mean, shouldnt cost more than $3 or so. here is a link to what is should look like
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-Extra-Thick-Toilet-Bowl-Wax-Ring-001110/100017046.

the window screen turns out to be less than $1 a tree if you can catch it on sale, but this would be for vole, rabbit protection. your chicken wire would be best for the antlers

 

[kabic]

best place to find it is at your local wal mart or home depot or hardware store. Just ask for a toilet wax ring and they will know what you mean, shouldnt cost more than $3 or so. here is a link to what is should look like
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-Extra-Thick-Toilet-Bowl-Wax-Ring-001110/100017046.

Do you melt that ring down on your stove and throw away the gasket?

 

[leexrayshady]

no usually the ones I get dont include the gasket it is just wax, and if you get it to room temp it is easy to spread with a butter knife. you dont want to melt it you just want it soft

 

[sandbur]

Lee- is that what you use for all of your grafting?

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

Leex, not to be dense but I am just not getting it. Is the ring made of soft wax such that you use a knife to scoop some up and put it on the tree? Is that correct?. I was thinking that the wax would be something in a jar which you took out with a knife. Based on that pic, I am guessing that you use the knife to cut into the wax and then smear it onto the tree, yes? I am really psyched about this whole bark grafting thing but I want to do it correctly.

 

[leexrayshady]

Yep soft wax you scoop out here is some pics of the ones I used this year

 

[leexrayshady]

Scroll to the end of this thread and you can see how I kind of do the graft
http://habitat-talk.com/index.php?threads/leexrayshadys-orchard.681/

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

Leex, Thanks. I get it now! Sometimes I can be very dense and un-mechanical. Will give it a whirl. The email link comes with a link to your photobucket account. You have REALLY great stuff there! Wow. I love your hostas and your roses. I am just about to order 20 small Hosta June plants and 10 champlain roses. What are the hostas and roses in your pics. All the pics are fantastic. I did not have time to page through all of them but I surely will do so. Is that your new baby and wife I see in the pics, as well? She is a very photogenic and attractive woman, indeed. What's with the baby turtle? I love turtles (and toads, also). Will go back to that one, for sure, when I have more time. Again, these are some fantastic photos have posted. Back to the bark grafts - a lot of folks online are saying they use exterior wood glue and in at least one video, the stuff looks light and fluffy. I am thinking that the wood glue must dry to a hard substance similar to the callous which the tree forms. I am thinking of trying one each way - one with the wax and one with the exterior wood glue assuming I can figure out which wood glue to buy - this all will get done next spring, in any event.

For my ordinary cleft crafts with scions which are pencil-sized diameters or less going onto to small rootstock, I use parafilm which is fantastic. They are not very pretty in comparison to the whip and tongue grafts which he experts use but they work just fine with a very high success rate. I use either B118, Antonovka or PA apple seedlings. With the seedlings I am starting to leave one or more nurse branches below the graft just to see what the apples would be like in case I like them. I keep thinking a am cutting off a great apple! I don't use any seedlings from commercial sources because these all come from orchards were one parent is a crab. It is rather predictable that 100% undesirable apples are coming from that scenario. All the big commercial outfits use crabs to pollinate these days. The State, however, gets there seed from old PA orchards - or so they say - where there is a much higher chance of having two desirable apples as parents. Also it the price from the State nursery is pretty hard to beat. They sell them in bundles of either 50 or 25 and charge $7.50 and $12.00 respectively

 

[West Branch]

The chestnut crab at my parents farm in zone 3 produces pretty good every year, even after this past record cold winter. When I went up this past weekend there was some fresh made apple crisp made from the chestnut crab.

 

[dipper]

Frostbite, snow sweet, northern spy to name a few?

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

That crisp looks really tasty! Here are some of my apples and peaches just before they got made into a pie and cobbler respectively. I took a picture of the peach cobbler but I'll be damned if I can find it now. I am doing more cobblers and pan-dowdies, of late, than I am actual pies these days. That and sourdough bread. The peaches, BTW, are Reliance - the only kind I can get every year. Some years I can get Red Haven but it is a very hit or miss thing and mostly it is miss. It is really too cold up here for peaches. They are not meant for zone 5b. There is one nectarine in the basket which fruit is even harder to grow than peaches. There is a reason for the expression "Georgia peach." The apples are from my huge Astrachan which supplies more than enough fruit for both people and Bambis.

Speaking of tree size, I am getting really fed up with all of the nurseries selling everything on M7 and M26 these days. Seems like you can't buy anything else, of late. Glad I know how to graft! These rootstocks are weak sauce in my book. They are too small, ever needing staking. Give me a good ole standard apple tree any day. I like my apple trees to be solid and big. That is why I also like B-118. Nothing diminutive about that tree. Lately, my husband has been talking about taking out all of the M7 and M26 and replacing them with "real trees"

 

[SD51555]

Looks like some hail dings on those apples. Seen that all too often.

 

[Don'tWorryIHuggedItFirst]

You might wanna look into the Contender Peach. It's rated zone 4. I guess there are a few producing up to the twin cities. I stuck one in to try this spring, so it'll be awhile before i know for sure.

 

[Lois E Brenneman FNP]

The thing I learned about peaches and cold is that it is not so much that the cold kills the tree -although, for sure, it will do so at certain zones and temps. It is more an issue that the frosts and freezes kill the blossoms. Seems that most years the trees come through just fine - nice and leafy but there are no peaches on them. What the Reliance does is hold a very tight bud which it opens late in the season after the last frost has passed hence it can bear fruit. Of course, when we start talking zone 3, now we are talking REALLY cold so I am guessing the tree goes as well. Peaches are very troublesome trees in the first place, anyway. They are extremely disease prone and need a whole lot of care. The, they are short-lived trees in any event. Yes, the peaches taste great but there is proportionately much more work involved. We put in a whole stone orchard in 2007 - peaches, plums, necatrines, apricots, cherries. As the peach and apricot trees die off, we are replacing them with pears which I grafted. Overtime, I guess, it will become a pear orchard. Plums are fairly hardy but very, very disease prone, as well. They too take a whole lot of work. Cherries are fine - hardy and no disease problems to speak of - BUT the birds will beat you too them every year. The trees are literally loaded with cherries then come the blackbirds who set up camp and take over. Next year we are putting up bird balloons on each tree. This year, the birds started eating every single berry in the blueberry patch - left not even one for us. Then, we got the bird balloons and they did the trick! Birds are scared to death of them and we got plenty of blueberries thereafter. The bird balloons move around in the wind and they do look scarey enough.

Well, it is challenging for those of us in the more northern regions of the country. I have my hands full with 5B and I know you guys have it worse with 3 and 4. Yikes, that is cold, alright. So here is what I want to know. WHERE is all of this global warming which Al Gore "promised" us. Damn if I've seen any of it around these parts. It is colder than ever around here with early and late freezes fall and spring.

PS Don't forget to ride your bicycle to work while Al Gore uses enough electricity in his personal residence to power a small city. Do as I say, not as I do, eh.

 

[leexrayshady]

Hey lois, thanks for the compliments on the babys and the wifey, yeah she takes a good pic, I have no idea on the turtle? the hostas I have no clue on the variety they came with the house, I also do your idea og using apple seedlings a rootstock, I get 2.5ft red splendor seedlings from our local conservation district for $1 a piece. then either pot them or put them in a fenced nursery, but the weeds have been a battle so I have been thinking about just planting the seedlings out right and then cleft or bark graft when they are older.

I have been toying with the idea of trying some G30 rootstock as it is supposed to be very precocious and gets up to m7 size I beleive, it does require lifetime staking but I have tons of old metal T posts laying around.

 

[CrazyEd]

I have been toying with the idea of trying some G30 rootstock as it is supposed to be very precocious and gets up to m7 size I beleive, it does require lifetime staking but I have tons of old metal T posts laying around.

I've been impressed so far with the G30 trees that I have. 3 in my home orchard and they are all excellent growers and I have heavy clay here at home.

 

[greyphase]

I have been toying with the idea of trying some G30 rootstock as it is supposed to be very precocious and gets up to m7 size I beleive, it does require lifetime staking but I have tons of old metal T posts laying around.

Lee
I've order some of the new G969 rootstock from Cummins to try next spring. It is described as free standing and is between M7 & M106 in size. Here's a link in which it and many other rootstocks are described.
http://extension.psu.edu/plants/tre...ion/cultivars-and-rootstocks/apple-rootstocks

 

[leexrayshady]

Grey do you know how quick to bear g969 is?