Grafted apple tree 35 years later

     In the last century I top-grafted a number of good-quality apple scions onto volunteer trees that I found elsewhere on the property where the birds or squirrels had some years earlier deposited apple seeds after eating the fruits. The volunteers were young and most had not yet come into bearing, or if they had their wild apples were either too tart, too bland, or poor in another way. About 1987 I top-grafted what I then thought was a Shiawassee scion onto a small fruit-less volunteer in a small blueberry field across from the house. It took well, and as the years went by it came into bearing, true to the Shiawassee, with red stripes gradually overtaking a green background, the flesh sweet and pear-like with occasional red blush in the interior, while the skin was flavorful and somewhat tart until it was dead ripe in mid to late October. 

Shiawassee, Dutchess, or Fameuse?

It was a Maine pomologist named Herbert Wave who in the early 1980s identified the original tree as Shiawassee, when he walked the property back in the days when it was possible to contact the state agricultural station and arrange for an expert to come take a look at your fruit trees, free of charge. The original tree was at least fifty years old then, Wave said, and as the century came to a close it grew larger and bore annually a good crop that I made use of most years in a blend for cider wine along with other apples. I myself wondered if the variety wasn't Dutchess of Oldenberg. In October 2014, however, an early blizzard fell with wet snow and howling wind that toppled many trees and branches, and among those that were damaged were the original tree, which has not been the same since. Early in the current century I took a few of the Shiawassee/Dutchess apples to the Common Ground Country Fair, where John Bunker, the fruit explorer, rescuer of heirloom Maine apple varieties, and Fedco apple guru volunteered to identify old varieties that fair-growers brought for him to view and taste. He did not hesitate and named it Fameuse. This identification made more sense than the others, but I'm still harboring some doubt about its true name.

Fameuse, Dutchess, or Shiawassee?

 

The top-grafted tree, in the meantime, remained in some ways like most of the volunteers in this area, not especially well favored but with a will to live. An interesting development was that it grew a strong branch below the graft, which I hadn't noticed at first. When I did, I decided to let it grow and see whether it would bear any wild apples on that side of the tree, while I hoped that the graft would work out well and bear Shiawassee, or Dutchess, or most likely, Fameuse. Sure enough, it did. And so the tree had in effect two main trunks. The wild apple was green and good-sized, and from its looks seemed to me to be an offspring of a Rhode Island Greening that was growing about 100 yards away, but because apple trees don't come true from seed it would have had to be part Rhode Island Greening and part something else. It came ripe at about the same time as the Greening, and was a decent cooking apple (whereas the Greening is an excellent cooker). 

The grafted trunk is at the right

This year the apple crop was unusual, partly on account of the weather and partly due to the plague of brown tail moth caterpillars, which in June decimated the leaves and newly budded apples on most trees in the main orchard, including the Fameuse and also the Liberty which usually supplies good apples for eating; but somehow left trees elsewhere mostly alone, including this double-tree. The weather was unusually wet, which helped size up the apples on those trees that were unaffected by the caterpillars. Today I went out to this double-tree and harvested a basket full of the wild green apples. I'll make applesauce with them. In a week or two I'll harvest a couple of baskets of the Fameuse, some for eating and some for a most delicious applesauce. There aren't enough apples on the property this year for cider wine, but plenty for eating, cooking, and sauce.   

The double tree

 

Garden Report for 2020, part 4

Dry bean rows, mid-August

By mid-August very little rain had fallen. The leaves on the dry bean plants were starting to yellow and it looked like the harvest was going to come in a couple of weeks earlier than the usual mid-September. That was a good sign in the sense that mid-September is usually rainy, which isn't good for drying beans, as it can start mildew and will also beat them down to the soil where they may start to rot. Still, I set up the ropes to dry the beans outside in a week or two before bringing them, tying them in bunches, and hanging the bunches in the loft to dry completely before threshing the following spring.

Cucumbers and squash, mid-Aug.

Squash and cucumber harvest was just getting underway. I usually plant these a little later than others do--that is, at the same time as the dry beans, in the first week of June--which is why the harvest is late; but in the first week of June the weather has usually settled into summer and the soil is warm. (I'm writing this on Memorial Day weekend in 2021 and the high temperatures are only in the 50s. No frost though.) The squash leaves are subject to mildew in September, but the variety--Gentry--is very prolific, and I was able to put up a couple of dozen quarts for the fall and winter. Tomatoes had been ripening as well, with the earliest Sungolds coming in at the end of July. 

I also planted some Cherokee Purple and was harvesting those in mid-August, but yield was small. The Better Boys were a little later, but they came in during the third week of August and didn't stop till frost in early November. Unlike the Cherokee Purple they were prolific and the perfect size for salads and grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches. Their taste was good but lacking in acidity/tang.  I also grew Roma tomatoes which came ripe in September but were also touched by late blight, so I only got a few quarts of tomato paste out of them. 

Sungold tomatoes, mid-August

Garden Report for 2020, part 3

As I start to get the vegetable garden space ready for 2021, my thoughts return to last year's crop. By the end of July, although it hadn't rained much for a couple of weeks, there was enough residual moisture in the soil to enable the vegetables to grow a lot since July 6 when the last photos were shot.

Bean rows, July 28, 2020

The beans look very healthy as they fill out between the rows, shading the weeds that have been growing there. The weeds between the plants still need pulling, of course. A little every day except when they're wet. Weekly cultivation also helps. At the bottom of the picture are the dry beans: rows of Black Coco, Light Red Kidney, and Kenearly. Black Coco often are grown as shell beans, but I like them in stews and chili. The kidney beans are strictly for chili, while the Kenearly, a selection of Maine Yellow Eye, do well for traditional oven-baked beans. 

More beans, with chard, kale, cabbage, broccoli, and greens

The beans at the left in the photo just above are bush snap beans, which I've begun harvesting, mainly for freezing. Mostly Provider beans, but I was also trialing some Burpee "Big Kahuna" beans. Swiss chard is next, with kale behind it; in the next row is red cabbage, with parsley and lettuce (going to seed) behind it; the next row has broccoli, which I've already been harvesting for meals and also the freezer; behind it is a row of Asian greens; and behind it at the upper right are the beans shown in the last picture, but from a different angle. 

Cucumbers, tomatoes and beans, July 28, 2020

And here is the last of the photos from July 28. At the bottom are some tomatoes, in cages or attached to stakes; in the picture are Sungolds, Cherokee Purple, and Better Boy. The cuke variety is General Lee, the slicing cucumber that does the best in this soil and climate, as I learned after many trials and errors over the past forty years. And behind them are the beans that were shown in the first picture. This was my first year with Better Boy. Usually I've stayed away from the Burpee tomatoes because I found, during the first ten years of gardening (1980-1990) that although Burpee tomatoes usually grew well, they didn't have much taste. Heirlooms are much tastier, but they produce fewer tomatoes per plant and are more susceptible to diseases like early and late blight. In fact, growing tomatoes here is difficult: as a rule summers are cool and damp, and of course tomatoes like heat and low humidity. But I was unable to grow tomatoes out from seed this year, so I had to make do with what was available at a nursery; and by the time I got there in mid-May, about all they had left were Better Boy. As usual, they grew strongly, produced many tomatoes per plant, and their taste was bland. I guess some people like bland tomatoes, but not I. Anyway, I ate a fair number of grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches last summer, and even made some sauce with them, anyway. The Sungolds have been a staple of this garden for thirty years. They are deliciously tart cherry tomatoes best eaten as snacks, either right off the vine or from a bowl of them indoors for a few days. Very prolific, disease resistant, they have only two drawbacks: they have tough skins, and yet they're prone to cracking after a good rainstorm. 

At this time of the year the rains are apt to hold off, so I had my fingers crossed and kept an eye on the water level in my rain barrels, which I'd been using for the past two weeks to make up for the low rainfall. Using well water for the garden isn't a good idea at this time of year; all of it is needed in the house. So I depend on rain barrels in mid-summer.