Patti and I had an Adult Day, being that the kids were dropped off with Grandma Nelda and Auntie Cindy at 1030 am, after which we drove 90 miles west to Fairhaven Farm ( see their website at http://fairhaven-farm.com/ ) where we spent the entirety of the afternoon absorbing knowledge in exchange for a case of wine.
Principally, I was learning his past methods of managing semi-dwarf trees for a pick-your-own orchard with fairly intensive planting. I cannot do things exactly the way he has things set up down here, up north where we bought property. Primarily because there are bears up there, and it can get colder, so larger trees are necessary, but the principals of pruning and tree management should be comparable.
Started out with me watching and listening to him, as he worked his way through a Harelson Apple tree, explaining the hows and whys of what he was doing.
Then it was my turn. The tree to the right of the one I am working on, is what his looked like once it was done.
Took me a while. I have to work through the rationale for each cut, (and don’t necessarily make the correct decisions) while when he does it he already knows the why for everything.
After several hours of learning how to manage different types of growth habits (was amazing how differently an apple like Harelson grows compared to Cortland) he gave me a crash course in how to do field grafting of scions.
Here is an example of one of his field grafts from last year. You can see the V shape of the grafting joint where the trunk wood has fused with the scion wood.
Then it was my turn.
No idea if it will take, since this is usually done later in the year, but was good to do while getting pointers about what I was doing correctly, and incorrectly as I worked through it.
Then it was time to concentrate on collecting scion wood for bench grafting. I have 200 apple tree rootstock showing up at my house in less than 2 weeks. Most of it I am going to try to turn into specific varieties of apple. While Dave McGreggor was teaching me pruning techniques I got a bit of wood from those tree varieties, but he has quite a collection. Our pruning work was on Harelson, Cortland and Honeycrisp. He had other varieties for me as well.
Tumanga (German long keeper from around 1930)
Keepsake (U of M introduction in the mid 70s, great eating and long keeping apple)
Alkmene (Early Windsor)
Kindercrisp (an apple Dave McGreggor developed himself, which you can now find at select nurseries)
Clivia (Developed in Germany about 55 years ago)
Fantasia (Cold hardy variety from Switzerland)
Karmijn de Sonnaville (I was really interested in this one. I have tried a lot of apples in my time, but this one knocked my socks off last fall. Not a long keeper, being needs to be eaten within 6 weeks of picking, but absolutely incredible. Puts Honeycrisp to shame. Commercial viability is limited due to short storage life. From the Netherlands where it is considered the best of the eating apples.)
So 10 different types of apples, for most of them enough wood to make at least 20 trees. Of the more rare types, at least a couple.
Dave McGreggor also has the distinction of having bred, years ago, one of the most disease resistant cold hardy red wine grapes. You can google search it as DM 8521-1. He gave me nearly a dozen cuttings of that for growing up there as well.
Just showing all of the scion wood of the 10 apple and wine grape.
We all finished the day at the Spilled Grain Brew House in Annandale. I will personally attest to the wonderfullness of their Highest Point IPA. The place is set up to only serve beer brewed on site, but you are welcome to bring anything you want to eat. If you are making a trip west of the cities on 55, I do recommend stopping in there for a pint or three.
*****
As per Patti’s request: this is the mop springer that followed us out there the whole day. Deaf as a post, just wanted to be near us. Sweet dog.
