Monday, September 16, 2019

How 'bout them apples

The apples from these two trees won't win any prizes. One variety is deep red and has a very mealy texture. Probably a cooking apple, but you have to hurry because they don't last very long and when they cook they turn into applesauce. The other variety is better, but not by much. Also best cooked, it will hold its shape in a tart. It also makes decent applesauce (I have some in the freezer from last year). Neither apple is very good for eating raw.

These two apple trees are relatively healthy and seem to be resistant to mistletoe, at least for now.

We had three other apple trees in the yard when we got here. One was pretty much dead and we took it out. The remaining two, one small and the other quite big, are dying. Age and mistletoe have taken their toll. The big tree has dropped large limbs over the years (firewood!), and the main trunk is splitting. The tree bore no fruit this year and many of its upper limbs are dead. We'll probably lose the tree altogether within five years (more firewood!). It's too bad, because those apples were the best of the five trees.

So now we're thinking we should find a nice cherry or other fruit tree to plant before the apple goes away.

6 comments:

  1. You could get a cutting from your old & best tree grafted onto a new rootstock.
    Now is the time to do it... you will find that all sorts of events are available where they will do this for you... costs about 5€... it will take the little shoot around five or six years to start fruiting...
    We did it two years ago with our old, inherited Reinette Blanche... and she is growing well.
    It is also fascinating to watch an expert grafter at work... they make it look so easy!!

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  2. So, the apples were satisfying and tasty, as long as you cooked them?

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  3. I wonder if anyone uses that expression anymore. I love it.

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  4. We lost our wonderful Santa Rosa plum this year to some sort of bacterial blight. We hope to replant with a Blenheim apricot.
    Our daughter did the grafting thing with her excellent mystery apple, and now she has a well-producing tree to replace the one that was removed so they could add on a room.

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  5. I like the idea of grafting from the old tree to make a new one. And apple trees often live very long lives, I've seen them around cellar holes in northern New England where they had to be at least a hundred years old and still producing.

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  6. tim, sounds intriguing!

    judy, most of the time.

    mitch, sounds like something the Kid Brother might say...

    chris, cool!

    emm, cellar holes? That's a new one for me. :)

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