Interstem Grafting Videos

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I just posted up a series of videos on interstem grafting.  This is most of what I know about interstem grafting Apple trees, growing them out, and their advantages and disadvantages.  Maybe a little late for this grafting season, but it’s never too early to start planning for next year!

Some News, and Videos on Scion Storage and Cleaning Black Trumpet Mushrooms

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A couple of videos and a little news on apples and flowers!

It’s grafting season.  A lot of people have probably already finished their scion trading, but here is my take on storing and shipping scions.  I was so caught up in the details that I kind of forgot the basics, like store them in the refrigerator.  If it were more comprehensive, it would also include storing the scions without refrigeration, which maybe I’ll do later, but same basic concepts apply.  Mostly, I was trying to address the potential of excess water and the use of paper to cause problems.

And for those of you who are lucky enough to have black trumpet mushrooms in your neck of the woods, this video is on how I clean them really fast, and dry them. It also includes a (what in my opinion is an all too short) rant on efficiency and work as a symbolic activity.  It is a long video for how to do something really fast, but I think the stuff about intention and mental attitude is just as important as the physical part, and it will save your a lot of time in the long run if cleaning large quantities.

DOOOOODS!!!  Two flowers from the first batch of Daffodil Seedlings grown from seeds pollinated in 2011 have put forth flower buds!  The bulbs are  still rather small, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they are under-developed, but that’s still pretty exciting, especially considering that I haven’t taken stellar care of them.  I figured I was at least another year off from seeing anything.  I seem to pick breeding projects that take a long time.  Daffodils typically take about 4 years or more, and apples 5 or more years.  They should open within the week, at which point I may have to update the Daffodil Lust series with a new post.  Even more exciting, one of the seedlings is from Young Love, the daffodil that inspired it all!

Young Love seedling.  Not sure who dad is.  She was rather promiscuous that year.

I just recieved 50 apple rootstocks in the mail for grafting up my latest round of red fleshed apple seedlings, and last year’s pollinations are sprouting up in the greenhouse.  Good news, I just talked to my friend Freddy Menge, who is sort of my apple guru or early inspiration.  We talk about apples on the phone about every other year.  He’s getting results from his apple seedling trials, which I believe are mostly open pollinated, but he has a good collection of quality hand selected varieties growing, not just some random stuff.  He say that he gets more apples that are worth eating than ones that aren’t.  That’s just what I suspected when I started my breeding project and what Albert Etter seemed to be saying.  It also is totally at odds with what passes for common “knowledge”.  He has sent me two of his seedlings that I’m trying out, one I’ve been calling King Wickson (not sure if he has a name for it) which he thinks is a King David x Wickson cross.  The other selection is Crabby Lady a small, more intensely flavored version of the latest ripening apple here, Lady Williams, also thought to be crossed with Wickson crab.  Crabby Lady ripens at the same time as Lady Williams, and sounds like a real improvement on an already very good and super late apple, so that really got my attention.  I’m hoping King Wickson will fruit this year, but I just grafted Crabby Lady this past week.

Freddy also said that about 1/4 to 1/3rd of his red fleshed apple seedlings have red flesh.  I was hoping for a little higher percentage on that, but such is life.  I may do some crosses between red fleshed apples this year to try to reinforce the red fleshed trait.  Another amateur plant breeder just contacted me through the blog who is also gearing up to do some red fleshed apple breeding.  Yay for grass roots apple breeding for the masses!

I’m off to get ready for the farmer’s market in the morning.  Not much in the way of vegetables to sell anymore, but I cleaned up selling Erlicheer narcissus flowers on Valentines day and have a new batch ready to go.  It’s nice to have that plan working out.  The Erlicheer are planted along both sides of a row of oblique cordon apple trees, so they require no extra care other than what I already do in taking care of the apples.  By the time the apples are leafing out, the flowers are thinking about going to sleep, so they have nearly opposite seasons

Introduction to Frankentree Video

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This is an introductory video I threw together to stoke people up on the idea of multigrafted trees.  Quite a few fruit collectors use this technique and, while Frankentree is a more extreme example, I increasingly think that multigrafted trees with 3 to 30 varieties or so will serve the average person with a few trees much better than single variety trees do.  Add to that the edifying character of the work, the increased involvement in one’s own food supply and the neato factor and it seems like a pretty easy sell, except for the intimidation factor.  I’d like to maybe think this out better and make a more refined version as well as a detailed video tutorial on some of the specific strategies and skills, but this will have to do for now.  The original Frankentree post has a little bit of information on grafting with pictures of a couple of different grafts.

And a Frankentree in Every Garage

I’ll wager you’ll never see this delicious late blood apple in a store, so you might have to grow it to taste it.  But do you need a whole tree of them, or will it even fruit well in your area?  Frankentrees offer solutions.

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If I was president, the essay assignment goes when you’re in grade school.  I remember thinking “but I don’t want to be president!”  But… if I was, I don’t think I’d promise a car in every garage, though I’d probably keep the chicken in every pot.  When I moved here to Turkeysong, I had to decide what fruit varieties to grow.  Inspired by friend and apple guru Freddy Menge, a scrappy young tree that was already here, was used as a framework to test out apple varieties.  Before that it produced hard green apples.  What started as an interest, grew into something like an obsession and the tree became more diverse every year starting with 25 or so varieties and ending now with about 140.  My friend Spring dubbed it Frankentree because, at her house, that’s what they call anything cobbed together from odd parts.  The name stuck.  The term frankentree is also used for genetically modified tree varieties, but it has already taken off among apple collectors, so we’ll just have to see who wins.  And maybe someone searching for info about GMO fruit will run across our frankentrees and be ignited into constructive action instead of plunged into despair at how the world can be dumb enough that we take the risk of genetically engineering an apple just so it won’t brown when cut.

Frankentrees are awesome!  They may take a little attention to maintain, but the advantages are many.  There are so many trees out there that provide too much fruit of one variety in too brief a period for the people that use them.  Other trees just produce fruit that no one likes.   These trees, if they are healthy enough and the form is not too wacky, are very valuable as a base to work from.  A reasonably well formed healthy tree can come to yield nourishment in abundance, interest, variety, valuable information, and even self confidence and self reliance, over a long season.

This isn’t going to be a how to article, it’s more to kick you in the butt and get you started thinking and experimenting this year article.  If you have a tree, or access to a tree that is not very exciting in the fruit department, why not try grafting on something new?  Well, I’ll tell you why you should graft on something new, or actually more like somethings.