What did you do in your orchard today?

CrealCritter · Apr 20, 2024

R2elk said:
I have a 10+ year old Carmine Jewel dwarf cherry (the first of the Romance series). It is a good cherry but doesn't produce near as prolifically as my Evans Bali cherries.

The largest fruit of the Romance series appeals to me which is why I am trying the Cupid cherries.

Maybe next year we can talk about scion swap for Evans Bali. I would offer to swap a bareroot grafted North Star cherry but I'm putting them on mazzard root stocks. Mazzard is only good reliable USDA zone 4.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

R2elk · Apr 20, 2024

CrealCritter said:
Maybe next year we can talk about scion swap for Evans Bali. I would offer to swap a bareroot grafted North Star cherry but I'm putting them on mazzard root stocks. Mazzard is only good reliable USDA zone 4.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

I will be more than happy to send you Evans Bali seeds. Nothing expected in return. They bloom later than the other cherries and are unlikely to get hybridized.

I have tried North Star here numerous times and not once did they survive the winter. It isn't always about the cold hardiness. Sometimes it is also about the water quality.

They can grow Montmorency in town but I can't grow them out here. I did have two Meteor that survived a long time and lost them in one bad winter. One came back and is looking good. It appears that the other one came back from the root which was supposedly a dwarfing root and is now over 12' tall. It is a good pie cherry though.

One you might be interested in is the Garfield Plantation cherry. It came from Fedco.

Burnt Ridge Nursery sells Evan Bali on it's own root or grafted on a dwarfing root.

CrealCritter · Apr 20, 2024

R2elk said:
I will be more than happy to send you Evans Bali seeds. Nothing expected in return. They bloom later than the other cherries and are unlikely to get hybridized.

I have tried North Star here numerous times and not once did they survive the winter. It isn't always about the cold hardiness. Sometimes it is also about the water quality.

They can grow Montmorency in town but I can't grow them out here. I did have two Meteor that survived a long time and lost them in one bad winter. One came back and is looking good. It appears that the other one came back from the root which was supposedly a dwarfing root and is now over 12' tall. It is a good pie cherry though.

One you might be interested in is the Garfield Plantation cherry. It came from Fedco.

Burnt Ridge Nursery sells Evan Bali on it's own root or grafted on a dwarfing root.

It would be an interesting experiment to graft North Star and Montmorency onto Evan Bali root stocks and see if they survives the winter. Cold hardness has a lot to do with roots and also the variety to. If your Evan Bali are doing well for you, it might be cherry root stock go to for your local area.

Let me know if you want to try, I would be more than happy to send you North Star and Montmorency scions the later part of the dormant season which would be the end of February here. I also have Surecrop, Stella and Bing, if you would like to try those also.

I was looking very closely at Garfield Plantation. I should have ordered when I was looking so close, because it doesnt show up anymore at Fedco. Fedco is top notch in my book, every order I've placed with them, I would give stellar reviews.

Have you heard of or tried milden apple? Good to zone 3. I'm going to graft a few next season.

Milden Apple Scionwood - Fedco Trees

Fall-Winter. Alton, NH, before 1813. Also called Milding and Winter Gravenstein.All-purpose Baldwin-type variety popularized long ago for growing where Baldwin lacked hardiness. Still an excellent choice if you have a root cellar and are looking for the best apple for winter storage. Famous for...

www.fedcoseeds.com

I do appreciate you responding.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

CrealCritter · Apr 21, 2024

CrealCritter said:
Then tank and I whip and tongue grafted this M111 rootstock that I air-layed two years ago. Then planted in the early spring last year and pruned to grow multiple branches. We grafted 6 varieties of apple, from scions I harvested back in February, for a apple fruit salad tree.
View attachment 25703

I believe we did good work, but we'll see how many take.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

Just an update on the March 10th "Science Experiment" all 6 grafts have taken and the tree has basicly exploded with new branch growth. The granny smith graft is showing off flowering, which I find truely fascinating. It's late for flowering, all my other apples have finished flowering, so i'm not expecting any granny smith apples unless a bee find a late bloom season crab apple and finds the granny smith apple blossom. But with all the new branches growing that means more potential graft points for new year

Granny smith gract flowing at the top.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

R2elk · Apr 21, 2024

CrealCritter said:
It would be an interesting experiment to graft North Star and Montmorency onto Evan Bali root stocks and see if they survives the winter. Cold hardness has a lot to do with roots and also the variety to. If your Evan Bali are doing well for you, it might be cherry root stock go to for your local area.

I have Evans Bali on its own roots and grafted on dwarfing roots. I see no difference in how well each do.

If I were located where Montmorency grows, it is the only tart cherry I would grow. It is the king of pie cherries. But they have never survived a winter for me here.

I do have limited area that I can water. Nothing grows here without being watered. With the White Nanking Cherries that I have on order along with a couple of cold hardy plums and mulberries that grow in North Dakota, I am already struggling to find places to plant more trees.

R2elk · Apr 21, 2024

CrealCritter said:
I was looking very closely at Garfield Plantation. I should have ordered when I was looking so close, because it doesnt show up anymore at Fedco. Fedco is top notch in my book, every order I've placed with them, I would give stellar reviews.

Garfield Plantation sells out very quickly in the fall. It is an interesting cherry sold on its own root and produces a nice sized cherry with a fair amount of yellow on it when ripe. I have no problem eating tart cherries straight off of the tree and it is one of the better ones to eat that way.

CrealCritter · Apr 21, 2024

R2elk said:
Garfield Plantation sells out very quickly in the fall. It is an interesting cherry sold on its own root and produces a nice sized cherry with a fair amount of yellow on it when ripe. I have no problem eating tart cherries straight off of the tree and it is one of the better ones to eat that way.

Tart or pie cherry I suppose is what they call a subspecies of cherry. Some tart cherry varieties are sweeter than sweet cherries. So the names sweet and tart or pie don't apply uniformly.

From my experience, cherry trees are almost as hard as peach trees to get established, they need loose soil around the roots 2 to 3 times the diameter of the root ball and regular watering. Once established though, they seem to grow very well.

It's interesting to me to read of your challenges for the zone your in.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

CrealCritter · Apr 21, 2024

LaurenRitz said:
I wandered and looked at all my trees, grinning like a loon.

Five seedling apricots and 4 peaches survived the winter. 4 almond seedlings up so far this spring, and 1 more apricot. No cherries or plums have survived their first winter yet.

I want all my fruit trees to be ungrafted seedlings.

Hi there, I used to be in your camp until I was greatly disappointed with seedling results.

Most stone fruits will grow "close" to being true to seed. Prome (apples & pears) will not grow anywhere close to being true to seed. That said, I do however have a contender peach chance seedling that produces good quaility peaches for canning but not so much for fresh eating because they lack the size and melting flesh appeal. I'm giving the tree one more year (this year) with hopes it will produce better quality peaches. If not I will probably graft on reliance or frost proof peach on to it because its roots are well established and vigorous. Not sure about almonds, i'm not much of a fan of almonds, I prefer pecans and walnuts.

But then again growing out a chance seedling may produce a new wonderful variety or not. That's why the refer to it as a chance seedling.

Grafting a known variety with desirable characteristics onto a root stock also with desirable characteristics produces consistent results, many years sooner than most seedlings do.

I hope you have success and who knows you may have a new wonderful variety just waiting to be discovered amongst your seedlings 👍

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

R2elk · Apr 21, 2024

CrealCritter said:
Tart or pie cherry I suppose is what they call a subspecies of cherry. Some tart cherry varieties are sweeter than sweet cherries. So the names sweet and tart or pie don't apply uniformly.

From my experience, cherry trees are almost as hard as peach trees to get established, they need loose soil around the roots 2 to 3 times the diameter of the root ball and regular watering. Once established though, they seem to grow very well.

It's interesting to me to read of your challenges for the zone your in.

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

All my "soil" is loose, I live on a sand dune. Regular watering is required to keep anything alive.

Winter thaws followed by sub zero temperatures followed by more thaws and more sub zero temperatures is what kills most trees here.

I believe this is the first year that I have had a Contender peach tree survive the winter without dying back.

LaurenRitz · Apr 21, 2024

CrealCritter said:
Hi there, I used to be in your camp until I was greatly disappointed with seedling results.

Most stone fruits will grow "close" to being true to seed. Prome (apples & pears) will not grow anywhere close to being true to seed. That said, I do however have a contender peach chance seedling that produces good quaility peaches for canning but not so much for fresh eating because they lack the size and melting flesh appeal. I'm giving the tree one more year (this year) with hopes it will produce better quality peaches. If not I will probably graft on reliance or frost proof peach on to it because its roots are well established and vigorous. Not sure about almonds, i'm not much of a fan of almonds, I prefer pecans and walnuts.

But then again growing out a chance seedling may produce a new wonderful variety or not. That's why the refer to it as a chance seedling.

Grafting a known variety with desirable characteristics onto a root stock also with desirable characteristics produces consistent results, many years sooner than most seedlings do.

I hope you have success and who knows you may have a new wonderful variety just waiting to be discovered amongst your seedlings 👍

Jesus is Lord and Christ ✝️

My experience has been entirely different. My parents grew most of our trees from seed. They gave away cherry, plum and peach seedlings, and many of those trees are still producing, or their descendants are.

My neighbor in my old area had a seed-grown apple that didn't brown. We had an InterlakenxConcord that had the growth habit of the Interlaken, the taste of the Concord, and ripened early in the season. I have seeds for that one. Seedling almonds, seedling apricots. I have no experience with seedling pears, so I'll let them grow and find out.

At the very worst, in a few years I'll have smoker wood.

In the meantime, I am developing varieties that can tolerate our water, heat, cold, wind and drought. Win-win.

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