My grandparents had an apple tree growing in their back yard. It was probably 30 feet tall with an equal spread. To 10-year-old me, it seemed huge. They yelled at us when we climbed in the tree and told us the apples would make us sick so don’t eat them. They didn’t tend to the tree or harvest the apples. It was just a shade tree they had to clean up after in the fall. So, it was a nuisance in the fall, but it provided cool shade in the summer when there wasn’t air conditioning in every house.
A friend of mine has a 100-year-old farm house with three apple trees in the backyard. He tends the trees religiously, harvests the apples, and makes cider every fall. The trees are 25 to 30 feet tall. To prune the tree or harvest the apples, he takes a long extension ladder and just leans it against branches. Then he climbs the ladder, and it sinks into the branches until there is enough tension to keep the ladder from falling over. He hopes. He has done it enough years, that he doesn’t worry about the possibility of falling down and crippling himself. Still, it’s a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of risk to prune it, spray it, and harvest the apples every year.
And if you want apples, you will prune it. Apples grow on a two-year cycle. Sunlight that falls on branches this year grows the spurs this year, that will produce blooms and apples next year. Then, the apples need direct sunlight to ripen properly. So, the primary purpose of pruning is to open up the tree so that sunlight penetrates into the tree to all the branches and all the spurs and all the apples. Otherwise, you only grow apples on the outer branches on the southern side of the tree. Then you have lots of “tree” producing useless green growth everywhere else and no apples. And, you need your spray to penetrate into all those branches growing all those apples or you get fungal infections, bacterial infections, and insect damage on the tree and the apples.
If you do your job right, your full-sized tree will produce upwards of 20 bushels (800 pounds) of apples each year. If you don’t live close to someone that also has an apple tree (of a different cultivar), then you have to plant a second tree to be a pollination partner (we’ll talk about cross pollination another day). So now you have two full-sized trees to climb into and prune and spray and pick the apples. Then you’ll have 40 bushels (1,600 pounds) of apples each year to deal with (and you thought getting rid of extra zucchini was a challenge).
But what if you don’t want half a ton of apples every year. What do you do, if you only want a few bushels of fresh apples each year? The answer is to plant apples trees that are grafted onto dwarfing rootstock. The rootstock acts as a skinny straw that limits how much water and nutrients the tree can draw from the ground. This prevents the tree from growing to its full potential. Depending upon the rootstock, the resulting tree will be anywhere from 4 ft tall (very dwarfing) to 16 ft tall (semi-vigorous).
The most common modern dwarfing rootstocks were developed in the early 1900s in England and are identified by the prefix M (Malling) and MM (Malling-Merton). Other important varieties were developed in the late 1900s at the Geneva facilities at Cornell University in New York. These are identified by the prefix G (Geneva).
Apple trees grafted on to dwarfing rootstocks can be planted in small yards and can be managed (pruned, sprayed, and picked) from the ground or a short step ladder. Several trees can be grown in the space that a single full-sized tree requires. This means that multiple cultivars can be grown in a limited area to ensure the trees have pollination partners. On the down side, dwarfing rootstocks tend to produce small root systems. Under a heavy load of apples, the trees can actually uproot and fall over. So many varieties of dwarfing rootstocks require the tree to be permanently attached to wooden or metal posts to support the tree.
Even apple trees grown on dwarf root stock require diligent pruning to ensure that sunlight can penetrate to the center of the tree to keep production high and to allow spray to reach all parts of the tree. The example above, shows dense green growth which has no real value and just gets in the way. These trees, while relatively easy to manage, are still fairly inefficient at growing apples. And that’s what we want right? We want apples not trees.
If you just want a pretty shade tree to fill in a spot in your yard, then buy a shade tree. If you want to grow apples, (or pears, or peaches, or whatever), you need to prune the tree to grow as many apples as possible in the space that you have at your disposal. And then you want to grow just enough leaves to keep the tree healthy and happy while ripening the fruit.
Spindle Trees – Violating Social Distancing Rules
These orchards are planted on semi-dwarfing rootstock which will allow the trees to grow about 10 feet tall so the trees can be managed from a tall step ladder. The trees are planted very close together (2 to 4 feet apart), and are arranged in rows with wire trellises providing support. The rows are far enough apart for a tractor to drive between the rows. The trees are pruned to give many short, stubby branches were all the apples will grow. There is very little green growth on the trees.
If the rows are arranged heading north and south, then both sides of the row of trees will receive full sunlight as the sun traverses the sky from dawn until dusk. This ensures that all the apples get lots of direct sunlight which is necessary for proper ripening.
The same technique can be used in the backyard orchard. Using dwarfing rootstock (which produces a 6- to 9-foot-tall tree) trees can be planted in the ground a few feet apart and tied to a permanent stake for support. Using very-dwarfing rootstock (which produces a 4- to 6-foot-tall tree) trees can be planted in pots and moved around for to where ever is most convenient.
Isn’t modern horticultural science wonderful. Growing trees that don’t look like trees in confined spaces to provide fresh fruit in your own backyard. No ladders required. Simple pruning tools. Basic garden sprayers. It’s truly amazing that no one ever thought this before. Like ever. Or even in the last 500 years or so.
Espalier – Getting Medieval On Your Trees
So, you’re stuck in the castle. The enemy is digging trenches and getting ready for a long siege. You did the best you could at gathering up the crops, and you’re fairly well stocked on grain. This means that bread and beer are your basic sustenance for the foreseeable future. Still, a nice apple tart would be a great way to brighten up the day. Good thing you planted some apple trees in the courtyard.
To conserve space, you planted the trees right next to a stone wall. You pruned away anything that isn’t directly next to the wall. And you tied the remaining branches to a trellis that is mounted on the wall. Now you didn’t just pick any wall. This wall faces south. So, the wall absorbs heat all day from the sunlight and then radiates that heat back out at night. The benefit of this is that it keeps your blossoms from freezing if there is a late frost in the spring or keeps your apples from freezing if there is an early frost in the fall. You care about this because you are in the middle of the little ice age in northern Europe. Without that wall, the growing season is just too damn short some years.
Not only does it work, it works really well. The trees produce more fruit per foot of branch that a regular tree does; the fruit is larger; and the fruit is higher quality. When the siege finally ends, you decide to try this out in the orchard. After getting the trees established on trellises you find that you get more bushels of apples per acre that you do from traditional, full-sized apple trees. This is great, but the infrastructure costs (trellises) is really just too high to justify redoing all the orchard.
However, one of the peasants that work your fields figures out how to plant trees close together; grow the branches at an upward angle; and then weave the branches from adjacent trees into a basketweave of sorts. These trees become self-supporting and do not require a trellis. When planted in long rows, the trees become living fences separating fields from each other and from roads. And these fences produce high-quality fruit.
Planning Before Planting
Now you’ve seen the new ways and the old ways of managing apple trees to optimize the production of high-quality fruit in confined spaces. Yet there is still much to decide before planting your first tree. Many considerations go into choosing which cultivars (varieties) to plant based upon plant hardiness zone; flowering group; disease resistance; and what you want the apples for — eating, cooking, backing, and juicing.
So, what to do if you want to prevent the tree from fruiting?
Plant a pine tree?
That won’t give me apple wood.
What, you’ve never heard of pine-apples?
Plant one tree. Make sure there are no other apple trees nearby that can cross-pollinate your tree.
Better yet, find someone that has trees and offer to help with pruning the trees. You’ll get all the apple wood you want and more.
Giant condoms?
Nice Kinnath!
We have a Plum Tree in our backyard that the previous owners really jaked up (IMO), so i’ll see what can be done with it. Still produces a large harvest, and i’m not really sure what to do with all the plums.
Make Slivovitz!
And then squat like the Slavs
That was fun! now I want applesauce,
As a teenager I worked at an apple orchard back when they were growing full sized trees. They would use kids like me to bring in some of the really early apples. Then for the real harvest, Jamaican workers would show up and make us look really bad – they were paid by the bushel not hourly. Now most of the orchards I see around here appear to be using various forms of dwarf stalks.
I didnt grow up in a part of the country where apples grew well, but I recently lived right down the road from Tougas Farm outside Worcester Mass. Was pretty cool seeing all the tractors and equipment on the road unless I was running late to work. They had some really good apple cider donuts too.
I was in Westborough – half the town used to be orchards and farms. Now it’s a suburb of Boston.
I would consider it a suburb of Worcester, but I’m sure the current residents consider themselves more Bostonian. Only thing I go to Westboro for now is the Chik Fil A
If my mother and brother didn’t live there, I’d never go back.
It’s beyond I-495. Calling it a suburb of Boston is a bit of a stretch. Though I traveled there a couple of times because the very first Wegmans in the state opened there (or in Northborough).
There is a train station there (actually Grafton I think) that gets you into Boston pretty quickly.
My sister and her husband lived in Westboro Ugh before they had their first kid and moved to a starter house over in Leicester. That was 30 years ago. My how time flies.
And then there are the bears that destroy your apple trees…
Or the deer that eat all the apples within reach.
That is cool. I need to show my dad this.
Faux News
More than 600 doctors signed onto a letter sent to President Trump Tuesday pushing him to end the “national shutdown” aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, calling the widespread state orders keeping businesses closed and kids home from school a “mass casualty incident” with “exponentially growing health consequences.”
The letter outlines a variety of consequences that the doctors have observed resulting from the coronavirus shutdowns, including patients missing routine checkups that could detect things like heart problems or cancer, increases in substance and alcohol abuse, and increases in financial instability that could lead to “[p]overty and financial uncertainty,” which “is closely linked to poor health.”
“We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients,” the doctors say in their letter. “The downstream health effects … are being massively under-estimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error.”
The letter continues: “The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.
“Because the harm is diffuse, there are those who hold that it does not exist. We, the undersigned, know otherwise.”
If only the people who signed that letter could learn to love SCIENCE.
Queue the demand that those doctors have their licensees revoked!
No shit but that’ll happen on Twitter and not in the real world.
The lockdowns are nothing except pure malice now.
“increases in financial instability”
Sounds like medical scope-creep.
They are exactly right that the public health work that has been done on this pandemic is horribly bad, because if focused on exactly one public health variable (COVID) to the exclusion of all others (which they enumerate).
None of this is “medical”, which has to do with the treatment of patients. Its all “public health”.
Those doctors are trying to kill Grandma!
As Shithead Cuomo would say, these are Trump’s Doctors.
Ok, now I’m seriously wondering about the cost and upkeep requirements for an apple-fence.
A couple of villeins with corvee service requirements.
Two more articles coming. The third will cover this topic for sure.
Because as a privacy hedge, that would be the absolute tits. I know EXACTLY where I’d put it, and it would be running north-south too. I’d need some sort of other fencing mateiral to keep the dogs in the yard though. Horse wire?
you want to grow just enough leaves to keep the tree healthy and happy while ripening the fruit
When I was a child, cotton plants were five feet tall. Of course, you can’t make a tee shirt out of all that green stuff.
My grandparents grew up as cotton picking/tobacco cutting Georgia/Carolina sharecroppers. When grandma was 11, she only to pick a 1/2 bale per day (the boys had to pick a whole bale) but had to leave the field early to make lunch for the boys. The best thing grandpa ever did was join the Army Air Corps in 1933. Now I’m all weepy because I miss them so damn much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNl_Fh0KEMY
Thanks for the apple lesson. *hands Kinnath an apple
you are welcome. and thanks.
Interesting article Kinnath. Thanks for sharing.
Ok, now I’m seriously wondering about the cost and upkeep requirements for an apple-fence.
What? those deer a so cute when they’re standing on their hind legs to pull the apples off the tree. And why wouldn’t you want bears to get fat for winter?
I have yet to see bear-sign in my yard. Pretty much every other kind of local game animal though. And dead porcupines in hte road.
Had a black bear easily 500 lbs amble up the hill from the state forest last week – he went through the unfenced part of our yard and kept on going into the woods by the neighbor’s house looking for berries I assume.
I know that they are around… somewhere. Technically it’s illegal to have birdfeeders out now because of them.
What about putting out bear feeders?
Why not a squirrel feeder?
Have you priced pic-a-nic baskets lately?
I didn’t realize this was allowed.
What? Apples, or Articles About Apples?
The apples! You can make plants grow how you want?!
Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
“Meat is murder. Dairy is rape. Horticulture is.. larceny in the third degree?”
Meat may be Murder, But MURDER is also Murder!
:winks at sean:
So what you’re saying is… we eat the activists? But they’re filthy!
Vegetarians do tend to make for better eatin’
grass– kale-fed?If you think that’s weird, check out the square watermelons.
Anything rectangular rather than oval ends up with more rind per volume, which is a waste IMO (unless you like the rind, in which case eat a cucumber). OTOH, it keeps it from rolling off the counter and breaking open on the floor.
The lockdowns are nothing except pure malice now.
Exactly.
“We’ll show those plebs who’s boss.”
we also planted 8 Raspberry bushes this year, so i’m hoping that they turn out well.
I did 3 (against some advice here). We’ll see.
I had crappy luck with raspberries whn I lived in Oklahoma. Blueberries worked great, as did varous trash berries like blackberries and mulberries.
I grew up on blackberry jelly/jam. I don’t really know why it’s so looked down upon.
Because blackberries don’t actually taste like anything. They’re just kind of generically fruity. And they have thorns, wasps, spiders and snakes.
Blackberry mead is quite tasty.
As in blackberries added to the produce or honey produced by blackberry-feeding bees?
yes and yes
As is my blackberry wheat.
Blackberries have a specific and imo good taste. The wasps, spiders and snakes are there to keep out the eaters.
I love blackberries, especially in jam form, but I’ll eat them in nearly anything.
Blackberries are, by far, the superior berry to all other berries.
Blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, then in the depths of hell you’ll find blueberries.
I love blackberries. Great in pies (by themselves or as part of a “bumble-berry” pie), and fabulous jam. When we were still living in The Hated Lower Rainland™ (spit! ptui! yuck!), blackberry bushes grew around every ditch and were treated by the locals as if they were an invasive weed good for nothing. Further east in the Okanagan Valley, a famous sweets and jams manufacturer (Summerland Sweets) does an amazing blackberry jam, which I stock up on every time I drive through the area. They also do a blackberry syrup which is superb on pancakes etc., as well as a spritzer.
Man, I’m hungry all of a sudden.
Here’s Summerland Sweets’ website:
http://summerlandsweets.com/
I didn’t have good luck with raspberries or blackberries. Deer ate them to the ground.
We have a field behind our yard that i see deer in every once in a while, but so far never in my backyard, so i’m hoping they keep out.
“The same technique can be used in the backyard orchard. Using dwarfing rootstock (which produces a 6- to 9-foot-tall tree) trees can be planted in the ground a few feet apart and tied to a permanent stake for support. Using very-dwarfing rootstock (which produces a 4- to 6-foot-tall tree) trees can be planted in pots and moved around for to where ever is most convenient.”
Impressive.
As someone with 3 fruiting apple trees in my backyard, I found this article interesting and informative.
Thank you!
You are welcome.
Also,
This is why God invented cidering.
Brewer/mead-maker/cider-maker plants an orchard for some reason or other.
Apple wood smoked bacon.
On bacon, these guys are sold out. But I have an order of their whey-raised acorn-finished pork chops seheduled for delivery on Sunday. And a steak from an Angus steer that was living in Argyle up until this week. I’ll let you know if it’s any good.
Lots of useless growth is pruned off trees every year. There is an endless supple of kindling to go in smoker.
This is a side benefit of an orchard.
Mmmmmmmmmm.
Once I had a dream of a privacy fence of cross-hatched branches (although not with apples). Fruit growing is intimidating to me, so I am very impressed.
Thanks, kinnath.
And you are welcome.
I would guess the most common use of espalier today is decorative trees, non-fruit-bearing.
My biggest wish is to have a potted lemon tree that bears fruit. Do you think you can do the spiky prune with that and get the same result?
You can do espalier in many shapes with potted trees.
Check out these photos.
Nice post. My mom has just one apple tree of medium size. The problem is that they get worms despite being sprayed a couple of times. The stupid thing is a worm is more frequent when 2 apples touch, but the bloody things grow in bunches so most time they do touch. I don’t get why fruit do that, apricots as well.
But this tree makes apples every year, sometimes more sometimes fewer. My grandma had a large tree that had apples every second year, some years actually 0. Those were a cultivar I dont’ remember seeing since, the apples even raw were not sour, they were light and not particularly dense very easy to bite, loved em as a kid. One of the neighbors had the opposite, tree with really sour unripe apples, very dark and dense and hard. I ate both types myself. this was in the yard, there were other apples trees in the garden, which was separate from the house, across the street.
Some cultivars are biennial. They will put all there energy into growing apples and not produce buds for the next year. The next year, there are no apples, so the trees put all their energy into growing buds. Then repeat.
With careful thinning and pruning, these trees can be made to produce every year.
My grandma’s tree grew how it felt like. There was no pruning but it was tall and not very dense so most of it got some sun. It never produced a huge amount of apples and they were worm free despite no pesticides. But then again it was in hill country away from big cities, maybe that mattered worm wise
Chickens or more wild birds around to eat the worms probably.
I thought apples were ammunition.
https://www.instructables.com/id/Apple-Cannon-Cheap-Effective-and-Simple./
Let’s see if I can post this in the right thread this time…
Remember how Trump’s Fifth Avenue remark demonstrated the depraved hero-worship of those idiot Trumptards?
I am too far south. Apples don’t do well here. I have tried….they struggle and die.
Dammit.
You can go north, or you can go up in elevation. Neither is really an option where you live.
Is it possible you could grow a dwarf apple tree indoors? Or is the temperature too constant?
It will live, but it will not produce. Apple trees need a significant number of “winter chill hours” to tell the tree it has gone through winter and it is spring.
Yep. I am too far south for apples and too far north for macadamia.
IF: I was a slave for a few years to a potted avocado that my wife desperately wanted.
Never. Again.
I put your ass in the ground. You either live or die on your own.
I grew a pineapple plant from the discarded top cut off some bar fruit. It got quite large but after more than a decade on a NOLA back porch, it never bore any fruit. I gave it to a friend before my move to NYC, where it would surely have died long ago.
Tell her to grow it herself, and then make up the couch for sleeping on.
Ha-ha. *Nelson voiced Yankee
*realizes oranges, olives, avocados, and a lot of other tasty plants won’t grow up here and has a sad
With enough effort Oranges can
Yeah, LA satsumas are gods own gift. I think I’m going to up my order to a full bushel.
Some of you (notably nw and UCS) helped me with Cods & Cuntes, with marching armies and so forth. I cannot for the life of me find more than one thread and I know there were many of you who did, but I can’t remember who. I would like to credit you in the acknowledgments because you were very helpful. Please raise your hand if you remember discussing marching and supplying medieval armies.
I did not, but I’d like an acknowledgment anyways.
“I’d like to thank the Glibs, especially banginglc1 because xe wanted me to mention xem specifically.”
Actually, I think a call out like this would be best: “I’d like to thank all the Glibs except banginglc1, because he deserves no credit and is truly a despicable human being.”
Done.
If you put that in the book you’ve got a guaranteed sale.
(I’ll probably buy it anyways).
Awww, thanks! *blush*
The discussion on how far away the town to be spared was from the siege? I was in that, but not sure if I actually contributed anything.
There was that one, which I have bookmarked, but I thought there was another one that was more recent than that that had more/different participants and I can’t find it. I knew I should’ve bookmarked it.
nw said in the town/siege thread that armies had been marching at 12 miles per day since forever.
In the thread I’m thinking of, someone else said armies marched ~20-24 miles per day (I can’t remember) since forever.
This? comment 38
YES!!!! Thank you!!!
There’s marches, and forced marches.
Regular marches don’t go as far because you want to do them day after day, and you need your baggage train to catch up.
Forced marches are typically to get to a particular strategic point before the enemy does, whether advancing or retreating.
We did a yearly 100 mile with the 9th Infantry Regt. (MANCHU). It took about 25 hours of shuffle-jog-shuffle-jog. We were in no condition to operate after these events and would be given a few days off to recover. For this, we received cool belt buckles and Regimental and Division Challenge Coins.
There are a few things going on.
1. 4 armored men and a very willing hostage riding 120 miles on destriers. The first 3 days of that was through woods and half of that was picking through a stream. After that it was on roads.
2. 8 armored, mounted men traveling 60 miles for an incursion with 4 pack horses. The first 40 miles they did on roads during daylight; the second 20 miles they did at night through the woods. They come back with 60 people, 2 women, 2 children, a nursing baby, and 1 wounded.
3. 100 armored men, family, carriages, wagons going 60 miles to a faire with packed roads of everybody going to the same faire.
4. 1 lone rider going 20 miles at a canter/walk on a road
5. 5 mailed riders going that same 20 miles to try to catch #4 before she gets herself in trouble (which, natch, she does).
I just realized how much traveling my people do.
6. 1 lone messenger riding 220 miles round trip as fast as feasible.
7. 2 armored men riding 150 miles round trip as fast as feasible.
8. A company of 50 armored men and support people with many empty wagons going 110 miles one way and coming back with them loaded. In the middle of coming back, they engage in battle.
9. A force of 300 armored men going back that 110 miles to flush out who attacked #8.
This is all in northern England and southern Scotland, all northeast to southwest one way or another.
I have all but one of these worked out. The only one I’m still not quite sure about is #8.
I’m fairly certain that I called you all nerds. Does that count as contributing?
Well, of course.
“The Hyperbole, living up to his reputation as the local contrarian, called us all nerds. This, of course, caused the nerdidity to intensify.”
Er, nerdosity mebbe? Nerdaciousness?
I like nerdidity, but would also accept nerdition.
Say “nerdidity” aloud and tell me that’s not fun to say. I dare you.
‘Cause it sounds vaguely dirty. ;-)
Another little tidbit from that link:
Dr. Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta, reflected the comments the other doctors made about how the medical system has been able to handle the coronavirus without being overwhelmed, but also noted that the reported mortality rates from the coronavirus might be off.
“The vast majority of the people that contract this disease are asymptomatic or so minimally symptomatic that they’re not even aware that they’re sick. And so the denominator in our calculation of mortality rate is far greater than we think,” he said. “The risk of dying from COVID is relatively small when we consider these facts.”
You’ll never see that guy on Morning Joke or Meet the Press.
Dude, are you going to believe the auto mechanic of doctors? I bet you think that you really do need that transmission flush with every oil change.
Apple trees are jerks.
I’m sitting at an honest to gods bar drinking beer. They built movable dividers to stick up between every two seats. Unfortunately, my first choice decided not to reopen yet.
Great article, K. Were any of the pictures of your trees? I remember that you said (I think) that you had 175 (275?) apple trees? What do you do with the apples? Contract?
My 3 new little sticks are finally growing, bareroot and 3-4 feet tall. Last year’s is looking good, only 1 survived of 3, ’cause I over fertilized. I have 2 crabapples near by, the sap suckers are doing their best to kill them, they are in serious decline.
Really enjoyed the article, enlightening, I choose full size trees, for better or worse, thinking they may do better in the cold weather. Do you do any thing to keep the mice from killing the young trees, under the snow? I used aluminum foil last winter, about 18 inches tall, worked. I wish pears could stand Zone 3, too iffy. Thanks.
Looking forward to the next articles as well.
None of the photos are mine.
The 3rd article will be focused on my orchard. There will be photos.
I have 31 trees. I know people with hundreds of trees (and people with thousands of grapes). I am trying to keep this at the hobby level.
“mice from killing the young trees”
Uh, now I have to worry about mice? I put up chickenwire to keep the rabbits out and a 5 foot fence in the fall to keep the deer out. No one warned me about mice. Now I won’t be able to sleep at night.
Get a cat. It will also help with rabbits and squirrels if it’s feisty.
We had a year of the Deep Snow, the mice lived under the snow and girdled the young trees, I lost about 10 or so fruit trees, I gave up, until this past year. Again, we had deep snow, with the aluminum foil wrap my only living tree survived. I’ll wrap from now on, I only have a few anyways. I wrapped about mid Oct, before the ground froze, so I could put a couple inches below ground.
I put the trees inside a 6 ft chain link, no deer/no bears. Bees are inside an electric fence, so far no problem this year. I see gophers mounds already this year in the garden.
Tiny little land mines should do the trick.
Make up a solution of sugar water, ammonia, and iodine. Soak paper in it and tear into small pieces **while still very wet**.
Little am monism triiodide bombs. Sadly, the explosive is so unstable it will begin self detonating before 3 days have passed.
But it will blow the ever loving crap out of fles, bees, wandering ants, or heavy breezes.
Sigh. Damn auto-correct. Ammonium triiodide.
Ah, nitrogen tri-iodide. Someday I’ll tell the story of the “dud” batch I made and threw away in one of our garbage cans. My Mom never let me forget that.
I haven’t read anything about size making a difference on cold-hardiness. As long as both the scion and rootstock are cold-hardy, the tree should be fine.
There are Russian rootstocks available (I think), that I believe are extremely cold-hardy.
When I was in eighth grade, we moved to upstate New York (between Glens Falls and Lake George). The house was built in what was essentially an abandoned apple orchard. The first couple of years were spent cleaning up those apple trees; pruning dead branches away, etc. For cosmetics. After that, those trees put out apples like crazy.
Mowing the lawn in late summer and fall was an adventure, between the million not-yet-picked-up apples and the swarms of bees and wasps guarding them.
My Mom planted a dwarf apple tree in her back yard in So Cal.
It was like a tree branch off a 30 foot tree growing out of a little stump. When apples popped, they were so big and heavy they would lay the tree on the ground if you didn’t prop it up.
Best apples ever. Crisp and tart-sweet.
Planted next to a 80 year old apricot tree, left over from when the area was an orchard. They were delicious too, but that was like the propble you talked about.
Only worse. They all got ripe in one week and then would rot right off the tree and big fruit rats would invade the yard.
We had an Apricot just like that. Big old fella, and it was PITA to clean up after. We would try to harvest what we could to make jam, and to make apricot leather, but still would spend hours cleaning up the ground of windfall apricots.
My folks planted a small orchard when I was little. The peach trees tried to kill themselves every year, just a ludicrous yield to the point that branches were shearing off if we didn’t prune the fruit prematurely.
I enjoy apples.
and Knives?
You got it!
#metoo
This is really cool. Can you do the dwarfing method with orange and other types of fruit trees?
No idea regarding citrus.
I have four pear trees growing on semi-dwarfing rootstock.
https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2020/05/ex-judge-of-elections-in-pa-accepted-bribes-fraudulently-stuffed-the-ballot-box.html
My shocked face. Let me show it to you.
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Why does the stupid spam filter hate my expression comments?
(._.)
My wife grew up down the block from a Philly Judge of Elections. That woman was a god among mortals within the city.
If you wanted to run for office, you had to come petition her in person for permission. If there was a 911 call on the block, the cops showed up en masse immediately while just a block over they wouldn’t even bother to show at all.
Basically, the Judges of Elections run the politics in Philadelphia. They’re the hidden power that decides who gets to run Democrat in a one-party city and they keep the Republicans off the tickets. They’re as politically corrupt as they come.
In other words, Demuro must have really fucked up in order to have been charged. Normally, they’re untouchable.
So what you’re syaing is they should all be incarcerated and external auditors run the elections with every transaction being made in full view of the public.
What I’m saying is that they say they don’t have local voter fraud because the undesirables never make it onto the ballots in the first place.
It’s different for statewide and federal elections, obviously.
Look. Election fraud is a Right Wing Bugaboo. We know this because there is no data to back it up. And Because there is no Data to back it up we don’t need to investigate it, because we know we won’t find any data to back it up.
That article doesn’t mention the guy’s party affiliation for some reason.
I will spending the rest of the afternoon in the lab running tests.
So have at it. It’s an open post now.
“Hrmm… this apples tested positive for Wuhan”
Not exactly. Does this system perform per its requirements?
Fun with numbers
In March, as states across the country began implementing stay-at-home orders and commuters got off the road, traffic dropped, but a new National Safety Council report finds that the number of motor vehicle fatalities per miles driven increased by 14% compared with the March 2019 rate.
The total number of motor-vehicle-related deaths dropped by 8% in March of this year compared with March 2019, but the number of miles driven dropped by over 18%, because of myriad COVID-19 related impacts.
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“What really strikes me is the incredible speed of the changes we’re seeing on a roadways,” Ken Kolosh, manager of statistics at the National Safety Council, told NPR. “Looking at other recessions what you usually see is a decrease in the number of deaths, or the injuries and fatality rate holding steady or decreasing slightly.”
The council also found that for every 100 million miles driven in March, there were 1.22 deaths on the road, compared with 1.07 in March 2019.
“When we see the combination of both a dramatic decrease in number of total deaths coupled with a dramatic increase in the fatality rate on our roads, that was very surprising,” Kolosh said.
In particular during the first three months of 2020, states such as Connecticut, Louisiana, New York and California saw significant jumps in roadway fatality rates.
The new nationwide data comes as some regional officials have reported that during the pandemic, people have been driving more recklessly and there have been local upticks in car crashes.
OMG!!!!
That’s it, then. Tear up all the roads and crush all the cars, before we all die.
If it just saves one life
It’s only logical.
Apple brandy?
I’ve made plenty of apple wine but I’d love to make brandy. I don’t have the equipment or know-how for distilling though.
Do you have a pressure canner?
I have a pressure cooker, and two regular (not pressure) canners, but no pressure canner.
Also you can make Apple Jack just by leaving your fermented apple juice outside on a cold day. Scoop off the ice crystals. What remains is sometimes pretty good stuff.
Ok that sounds great. You can do that with other things I’m assuming?
Yes, it’s referred to as freeze concentration. The temperature you get it down to will determine the final ABV of the product. Just remember that the water will expand as it freezes, so don’t use full bottles. It will also concentrate the flavor (and any fusel alcohols from fermentation).
It is the procedure used to make Eisbocks.
Do you keep your eisbocks in your icebox?
My grandmother used to make all sorts of homemade wines, including plum wine and dandelion wine (which was glorious). All from fruit grown in their own orchard. Funny part of that was that Grandma was teetotal, she gave the wine away to any family member who wanted it.
But for some reason she never made anything with apples, despite a couple of very productive trees.
When I was a teen in South FL, we had a neighbor who made wine from the carambola (star fruit) growing in his yard. Absolutely delicious.
I’m pretty sure its illegal to distill alcohol in any quantity without a license.
If you care, of course.
I had 4 apple trees here when I moved in, 3 planted by my grandpa in the 70s and one planted by my sister in the early ots. In the last 8 years or so the three my grandpa planted succumbed one by one to what I surmise was Fire blight that I didn’t notice until it was too late. The one sister planted must be a dwarf because it’s still only like 5ft, I’ve never seen more than two apples at a time on it but they were really big apples. I might need to plant another tree to keep that last one fruiting, but I’ve got a few trees in my woods, my grandpa had a small orchard on that land in the 40s before he let it grow into a small woods, perhaps they are close enough to pollinate.
Honeycrisp is far superior to any other apple. Fight me!
Unfortunately they are hard to grow. The one I planted has produced exactly one apple in 8 years. And a fawn snuck under the fence to eat it before it was ripe.
The other apple tree in my yard is one of those biennial varieties. Great baking apples. No idea what kind they are.
The apple tree at the old family farm in West Virginia had the worst apples. No idea what variety. But my uncle always said, “those, hell, even the hogs won’t eat ’em”
There was another apple tree at the top of the pasture hill when I was a kid. It died and we went up there and had a bonfire around it. Legend has it that all the locals though we were up there burning a cross due to the shape of the tree as it burned.
I’m sure the Moody Blues coming from the boom box echoed through the hills and only added to the intrigue.
I think that’s the rule: most apples are nasty. Only careful cuttings from known stock produce anything worthwhile.
Johnny Appleseed was providing fermentables, not fruit.
There are old-skool hard cider apples that are high-acid and/or bitter with tannin, for english-style cider, totally inedible. Could have been one of those.
The awful reign of the Red Delicious. How the worst apple took over the United States, and continues to spread
I happened to see that article right after I listened to a prolonged rant from my mother about the devil’s spawn that is Red Delicious. I don’t know what she uses now, but she never used green apples for anything. The last apple pie I made, I used Granny Smith.
Tart.
😉
?
Have one of these flowering in my backyard right now.
Fuji, which is a cross of Red Delicious, is the best eating apple.
We had a couple of apple trees from my MiL tossing cores in the backyard, but the last one got uprooted during heavy rain and snow, just toppled over.
Love that article. Best apple I’ve ever eaten is Cox’s Orange Pippen, was sad to leave that tree behind. Gala’s are somewhat related but missing all the interesting parts of it. Honeycrisp are weird and sweet but tasteless.
Haven’t had them in a long time, but as a kid in New England, Puritan Apples were my favorite.
My go-to eating apple has long been Golden Delicious, but when we’ve bought apples recently, I’ve been fond of the Pink Lady variety.
My mother made the world’s best applesauce from so-called transparent apples. One of my sisters has also done so, and I did on at least one occasion, but I’ve found you need to put in a request early to get any transparents from the local orchards. They sell out almost immediately.
Goldrush > all other apples.
Sweet Sixteen > Honeycrisp.
Snapdragon also > Honeycrisp.
When I was a young ‘un, we lived in a newly-developed neighbourhood to the southwest of Toronto called “Applewood Acres.” I’ll let youse folks guess what kind of land they developed the subdivisions on. ;-)
We had six Macintosh apple trees on the property, which produced about two quintillion tons of apples/year. My Mom’s apple pies were great, but after the twentieth or so (not to mention the stupid amounts of applesauce in our chest freezer), they started to wear a little thin.
Macs made great pies, but I rarely see them in stores in Western Canada.
The last apple pie I made, I used Granny Smith.
Yum!
Dutch apple, I should specify. The next time I make it, I think I’ll drizzle caramel over the top.
Finally, a political compass that makes sense.
I can’t make heads or tails of that.
It’s based on this.
lol
Only you can prevent communism.
LOL
For those who care, the Great American Beer Fest has been canceled this year, to be shifted over to a “digital experience”.
Drink beer on zoom?
Isn’t a digital experience what Tara Reade alleges?
You’ve put your finger on it.
Claw back the puns, guys.
nailed it
She won’t knuckle under!
Two thumbs up!
Alright ladies, the undergarments emblazoned with the douchebag of your choice are now available:
https://www.tmz.com/2020/05/19/cuomo-fauci-newsom-underwear-undies-line-canava-garcetti-coronavirus-hot-commodity-trend/
That presents quite the dilemma. If you get her down to her underwear, and it says CUOMO on it, do you continue?
(Trick question! By that time the consent agreement would have tipped you off and you’d be home drinking and looking at one of Q’s links).
A neighbor has an espalier. He has multiple kinds of fruit grafted onto it. So it is apples, pears, peaches and some other things.
We call those “fruit salad trees” around here.
I have no idea how true this is, but it suits my personal narrative, therefore it must be true:
“Government travel expenses for Barack Oblista’s Presidency and his family totalled $105,662,975, according to records obtained from the Secret Service. The records show President Donald Trump’s travel expenses total slightly over $4 million.”
https://twitter.com/johnflipside/status/1263421789570359296
We’d have gotten off cheap if they’d stayed gone.
Money well spent. The more time they spend vacationing and traveling, the better.
Barack Oblista
Better than Block Yomomma but I’m not seeing it.
Wow! Just got a notice that my Yuzu (lemon like citrus) and Ume (Japanese plum) trees are shipping. Should be here to plant on Saturday!
Wow! Very interesting, kinnath!
We must have had a dwarf of some kind in our yard when I was a kid. It was pretty small but the apples were tasty. Our neighbor had a half dozen or so, probably what took care of the cross polination.
I’m really intrigued with the pot-grown trees. They look really cool and it would be fun to grow.
Bookmarking this one. Thanks, kinnath!
Kinnath, this article is fantastic. I’m constantly amazed and the depth and breadth of the knowledge amongst the folk found here.
Since no one else is going to take this one…I, too am impressed by the breadth. It is large with a supple nuance that allows us to really plunge deep into the issues with a firm but reassuring thrust.
This post brought to you by Rodham, the new novel by….
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This was fascinating. Thanks!
Very nice article, kinnath, makes me want to start growing potted apple trees.
I am amazed at the fruit to leaf ratio of those pole trees. How in the world is there enough energy left over to create all that fruit?