This past week, after much preparation and study, I bench-grafted 24 semi-dwarf apple trees with a grafting-knowledgeable friend on Thursday the 13th in Bloomington. Grafting method used was the whip-and-tongue graft. With daytime temperatures topping out at 68F, and a light breeze, we couldn’t have timed the work better. Rootstock used for apple grafting was G.969, which is resistant to fire blight, collar rot, and wooly apple aphid, and has excellent-rated anchorage. It is precocious, and is ideal for use in growing free-standing, semi-dwarf trees.
Trees were potted up in 2-gallon pots, and Roots Organic potting soil was used to backfill them. Trees will be grown out in their pots all year and will be planted next early spring, or late fall/early winter this year if they outgrow their pots. Scions used for this project were:
- ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’
- ‘Blue Pearmain’
- ‘Hubbardston Nonsuch’
- ‘Northern Spy’
- ‘Northfield Beauty’
- ‘Reinette Zabergau’
These trees have a range of required chilling hours but are all at least moderately resistant to fire blight, except ‘Hubbardston Nonsuch’ (somewhat resistant). The most disease-susceptible apple of the bunch is ‘Northern Spy’. While resistant to fire blight, it is susceptible to bitter pit, powdery mildew, apple scab, and cedar apple rust. There are no known cedar trees nearby… but we will have to keep an eye on these 2-3 trees.
All these apples are heirloom varieties with multi-purpose uses (fresh eating, baking, storage, cider), with one being highly rated for cider use (‘Reinette Zabergau’). I wanted to see what if any heritage/heirloom apples would do well under organic-management conditions in Central Illinois.
This project was executed first and foremost to learn how to graft, so that our Unit could put on a Basics of Whip and Tongue Grafting workshop in late winter next year. The secondary goal was to add fruit tree production capacity to the Refuge Food Forest – a 1.5-acre interplanting of agroforestry-friendly crops in Normal, IL that our Extension office jointly manages with the Town of Normal Parks and Recreation Department. Currently, we have about two dozen apple trees on site that are managed organically, are used for workshop and classes, and harvested for a food donation project annually. The goal is to get that number up to four dozen established trees in the next years. A bench graft success rate for this project will be shared next month.
This past month saw high temperatures reach as high as 79F on Friday the 14th, and the lowest temperature was 16F. We are all hopeful that deep freeze conditions are behind us. It has been a bit drier than normal with just 2 inches of rain and no snow in the first several weeks of March. Soil temperatures reached 59F during the warm spell the week of the 10th, with a 5-day-average of 52F at the time of this writing (St. Patrick’s Day). I am hopeful that the warm spell has helped cook the Canada thistle that we are solarizing with black silage tarp (see last article). Happy Equinox, all!