Three ways to get more apples
When I placed my perennial order last fall, I hadn't planned on attending a grafting workshop.
So, in addition to a couple of second-generation hybrid hazels, another
hardy kiwi, and a blueberry gift for Kayla, I ordered five pear
rootstocks and eight apple rootstocks for the two of us to split.
You'd think those rootstocks would be going begging with ten newly
grafted plants in a nursery bed, but I still had five pieces of
carefully collected scionwood waiting to be put to the knife. I
remind myself that these apples will be going onto M7 instead of MM111
rootstock, so they can be planted a few feet closer together --- surely
I'll be able to find them a home at this time next year when they're
ready to leave the nursery bed?
One
of the apple varieties I wanted to try this year is the chestnut crab,
which I think might make the sweet, tiny apples I used to pick from a
street tree when I was a kid. A reader sent me some extra
scionwood, and when I pulled the twigs out of their protective wrapping,
I discovered that the bases had callused.
This enlarged white area is what often happens when a cutting is
starting to root, so I figured I'd take the extra pieces and stick them
in a pot of soil in my propagation area to see what will happen.
My understanding is that most crabapples don't get much bigger than an
apple grafted onto semi-dwarf rootstock, and since crabapples can also
be used as rootstocks for other apples, if these two cuttings root, I'm
sure they'll have a use on the homestead. (Yes, I am incapable of
turning away from anything perennial that shows potential for rooting.)
On a final appley note, I pulled my Arkansas Black seeds
out of the fridge a week or so ago and noticed there was ice on the
damp rag I'd put in their container. So I let the whole thing sit
out for a few days and soon noticed little roots pushing their way out
of the dark seed coats! I carefully transplanted each sprouted
seed into a depression in a pot of stump dirt and now the baby apples
are opening up their leaves. Yet another fun fruiting experiment
in the making!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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