Good luck with your project! Looking forward to his response.
Have you considered using cuttings? I have not started a fruit tree that way, but I have been successful with crepe Myrtle and seem to recall it’s faster with a tree than with a seed. .
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I do not know anything about cuttings so I am kind of leaning away from them at this point. I was going to plant another dwarf apple tree within 30 yards of it because it is a sunlit spot in my meadow. But I think I will plant some seedlings, too, just to see how it turns out. I just realized I tossed a couple worm-bitten apples to the side when I harvested the good apples, I wonder if the deer left them in place or if they got eaten?
I also considered planting the other apple tree right next to the existing one so there would only be one fenced enclosure. Maybe 15 feet apart? But a 30 foot by 15 foot enclosure is kind of big. So far my tree only has a circular fenced enclosure that has an 7-8 foot diameter and is 5 feet high. The deer have not gotten at my apple tree yet, and hopefully it will grow up more than out, but we will see. I am not sure what variety of dwarf apple it is, so I do not know how high it will grow. Hopefully higher than a deer grazes, but I have my doubts about that.
On edit: I probably would not do the tree any harm by harvesting/clipping one of the lower branches. It might actually help encourage the tree to grow up rather than out. I may try a clipping or two. I need to figure out when and how. Time to do some research.
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Apple seeds seldom are like the parent, even if self-pollinated. That’s because most apples are complicated crosses, with many varieties over the generations. Their genes re-scramble and there’s no knowing what you’ll get.
Apple seeds need to be washed and kept barely damp, in the fridge, through the winter (stratification). Do not dry the seeds out. Once it warms up, they can be planted about 1/2 inch (1.27cm) deep . Seeds typically make “standard” trees, which get pretty tall. When the seedlings are about 1/2 inch in diameter (1.27cm), you can graft the tree you like (scion) onto those seedlings (rootstocks). If successful, you’ll have the exact same fruit as the scions. However, the growth rate and size of the trees may not match each other.
A more practical, quicker way to duplicate the tree is to purchase already-grown rootstocks, such as MM-111. Pick a semi-dwarfing rootstock for ease of managing. Here are some others.
Apples are not hard to graft and this is an ancient practice. I won’t go into the details here, but you can search how it’s done. Apple rootstocks have been chosen not because their fruits are good; they’re often terrible. They are chosen because of hardiness, resistance to pests, disease and they can have an effect on how large a tree gets. Though you like the flavor of your apple, its root system might be weak. If you rooted cuttings of it (not easy), the root system will be an unknown.
BTW: Bees can travel great distances in search of flowers.
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Thank you for the heads up on the seeds! I have not found one of the wormy apples yet but if i do i will know how to prep and care for them!
I may just go for another dwarf salpling even if i find any seeds. More is better. I will keep looking at info on root stock and cuttings, too.
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nice work !!
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Happy to report the electric fence which we installed around our grapes seems to have done the job. We are getting grapes to enjoy, and have seen zero signs of the carnage (broken fencing, ripped bags, scattered and decimated clusters) that have been so well documented by myself and others on the Food Gardening threads.
Overall it wasn’t a huge grape harvest this year - I blame the cool weather. On the the upside, we’ve had far less fire-smoke this year than in some previous years, and the grapes are fairly clean. They suffer when there is a lot of smoke.
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Wow! I am so envious of your tomatoes! An embarrassment of riches.
How do the indigos taste? I grew some when they first came out, the plants were amazingly hardy but the fruit was really lacking in flavor. I’ve read that they’ve since improved the flavor aspect
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What do yam leaves taste like?
They might be my favorite vegetable.
Raw, they taste like a cross between watercress and turnip leaves (earthy, a bit bitter and pungent), but when cooked they become more mellow, almost sweet, reminiscent very much of roasted Swiss chard.
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Does anyone have experience with bunching onions? This is my first time and these 8 months old plants are a mix of big and small onions with small bulbs.
What should I expect and do over the next two seasons?
Mound soil around the outer edges and they’ll keep growing thicker and thicker. Meanwhile, you can harvest the greens. I’m not sure how far you can go with that; I always leave one stalk per plant, but maybe that’s unnecessary. In any case it works: I had a patch growing for around 8 years that I started from seed. (Until my irrigation system broke down while I was out of town at the height of summer, and they died. Sigh.) In the winter – New England, so pretty cold – I did absolutely nothing special and they came back, year after year. However, they were in a raised bed and not a container so I’m not entirely sure there.
In the spring they’ll flower. I like to use the petals as a garnish; they’re beautiful white or purple depending on the variety you’re growing, and have a wonderful sweet oniony taste. (I developed a mushroom pizza garnished with the petals that have been very briefly fried in olive oil, that I make every year…this makes them nice and crispy and they pair really well with the mushrooms.) You’ll want to cut out the stalks that the flowers grow on, as they’re very tough and seem ill-equipped for culinary uses. (Maybe you could put them in a stockpot? I just threw them into the compost pile.)
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Thank you!
Funny that this happens with my scallions/green onions too. Some of it is spacing, as I’ve noticed much bigger and thicker stalks after I moved them out of their cozy, tight ground space (my mom planted them there years ago). Some of them will grow bigger and thicker over time, but I’ve noticed some of my scallions multiply and split a lot, while some seem to do so much slower, despite being from the same stock (and many are likely even from the same root plant that split over time). I wonder if some of the bulbs of your bunching onions are just growing bigger and taking up the space a neighboring plant would need to grow bigger too.
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Thanks! It was a slow start with a dry summer that was very hot. My tomatillos didn’t grow fully, but August and September were great for tomatoes. The dark ones are okay. Cherry tomatoes are not my favourite, as there is too much skin for the amount of flesh inside. I have to admit I only bought the seeds for the colour. The variety was called ‘Blueberry’. I have been throwing almost all the tiny tomatoes into the freezer and will no doubt appreciate them more in January.
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That sounds tasty. Are they the yams that grow the big edible tubers, or the yams that people grow as kind of a specimen decorative plant?
Are those sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) or are they yams (Dioscorea)?
I never thought about it, but I have not seen a true yam in a grocery store that I frequent and I am not sure that I have had one served to me at a cafe. My family did not serve sweet potatoes that often, generally just at Thanksgiving, and we used “yams” and “sweet potatoes” interchangeably to describe the dish.
But we never actually served real yams.
Another item to add to the “i want to try this at a good cafe” list.
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One of these listings mentions sweet potato (Ipomoea).
“Yam leaves are primarily from the Ipomoea genus, commonly known as Sweet Potato leaves, and are found in fresh markets worldwide.”
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