Planting apple trees

[Jstpssng]

^^^^
The place I referred to earlier was planted by the owner's father in 1955. He died of a heart attack in the orchard shortly after, so I'm sure there's some sentimental value to keep it going. At one time he had a couple of hundred trees but just couldn't keep up with them or find a market for all of the fruit they produced; at least partly because most are MacIntosh, which (understandably) isn't as popular as it once was. When I started in 2005 he had 80 full sized trees, plus about an acre of dwarfs; over time he has taken about 1/2 of them out as I didn't have time to prune them. Last year I had minor surgery and couldn't do them; and decided that was a good time to bail on the project and spend the time on my own property. I hated to do it as he's 80 years old and can't care for them himself; but I was burning up most of my vacation time while essentially charging just enough to pay for my trip to drive there, and really don't have the time it takes to do them.

 

[HillStreet]

You can propagate your orchard cheaply by grafting your own apple trees. I buy my rootstocks and scionwood from FEDCO in Maine. Grafting is done when the scionwood is dormant so your time window is very close now.
I also live on an 8.5 acre old apple orchard that I am bringing back. At the advice of our Cooperative Extension I removed one acre of old trees and replanted with dwarf apple trees—70 in all now and I just grafted 30 more that look like successful grafting. If you want to but apple trees ready to plant, go to Stark Brothers and you will find a wide variety of trees.

 

[Oaktree]

You can propagate your orchard cheaply by grafting your own apple trees. I buy my rootstocks and scionwood from FEDCO in Maine. Grafting is done when the scionwood is dormant so your time window is very close now.

I never had much luck with grafting. Was never able to get 'em to "take", not sure what I'm doing wrong.

At one time he had a couple of hundred trees but just couldn't keep up with them or find a market for all of the fruit they produced; at least partly because most are MacIntosh, which (understandably) isn't as popular as it once was.

I didn't realize that mac's are declining in popularity. It's my favorite apple, along with Cortlands.
Why are they less popular, and what's gaining in their place?

 

[Jstpssng]

I never had much luck with grafting. Was never able to get 'em to "take", not sure what I'm doing wrong.



I didn't realize that mac's are declining in popularity. It's my favorite apple, along with Cortlands.
Why are they less popular, and what's gaining in their place?

Gala, Fuji, Honeycrisp, and a few others. Macs are good early apples but once the others start ripening they take a far second place.
I stop buying them when Cortlands show up. I eat about 15 lbs of apples per week when they're in season... and got spoiled because to me the best way to eat a Mac was to reach up and grab one from the tractor seat, while running down through the orchard for another bin.

 

[forgeblast]

We are tying out something new to us this year. We had to move two young pear trees due to our garden expansion. We moved them and decided to try a Plant Guild.
This is a permaculture technique where you have attractor plants, repellent plants, ground cover and accumulator plants grown in a circle around each tree. The Attractors bring in the pollinators, in our case we used daffodils. The repeller's we used garlic dill and chives. Then strawberrys for the ground cover, the accumulators are clover and lupini (flowers).