In 2016, Brendan and I had a dream. We were living in St. Augustine working as maritime archaeologists and dreaming of a rural future one day . On the long drive up and back from Florida, we schemed a plan for an experimental apple orchard with different varieties for eating and cider-making.
Year 1… 2016 Welcome home little trees
Eager with our new project, we purchased twenty bare-root trees from Stark Bro’s Nursery. Having never ordered bare root trees, I was amazed at the slender box carrying our orchard to-be. Our original order included 20 trees and eight varieties: For eating: Granny Smith (3), Pink Lady (4), Arkansas Black (3), Winesap (2), and Golden Delicious (2). For cider: Orleans (2), Smokehouse (2), and Wagener (2). Each tree arrived as a 3-4 foot-tall whip ready for planting.
Apple trees contain a rootstock (semi-dwarf in this case) that determines the size and vigor of the tree, and a scion that once grafted to the stock determines the species. The year before we bought our trees, they were professionally grafted. In hindsight, it would have been nice to know the type of rootstock that came with our trees. It is most likely M-111, a versatile rootstock that produces a tree 80% the size of a full tree and that is well suited to a range of soil types.
Brendan purchased a 3-point auger for the Fergusen and excavated holes across a grid with vertices 16′ and 20′ apart. Each tree was planted with the graft several inches above ground surface. We used pieces of plastic irrigation pipe for tree guards and a stack of tobacco stakes and baling twine for support.
We planted our trees in March and by spring, we had a new flush of leaves. In May we treated with fungicide and by November, all had shot up to between 53″ and 96″ in height. We lost a single tree (an Arkansas Black) the first winter. The tree grew well but never woke up in 2017.
Year 2… 2017
The second year we learned that apple trees are delicious. Every bug, beast, and fungus known to man loves apple trees. The main problems are:
- Apple Scab
- Powdery Mildew
- Cedar-Quince Rust
- Phytophthora Rots
- Fire Blight
In addition, local rabbits and deer found them quite tasty and in late summer, hordes of Japanese beetle descended to feast on them. Understanding we would have losses, we made a day trip to Albemarle Ciderworks & Vintage Virginia Apples, to learn about some local varieties and fill in a couple of empty spots in the orchard. We brought back four new whips and two 2-year old trees.
The new varieties were: Albermarle Pippin (2), Black Twig (2), and Hewes Crab (2).
We replaced the tobacco stakes with T-posts and created cages from hogwire. Our newly expanded orchard grew and by late summer, many had trunks between 1/2 an inch and an inch in diameter. We lost one of the newly planted Black Twigs to fire blight but the other trees grew well.
Year 3… 2018
2018 was the last full year we lived in St. Augustine and watched our small orchard grow from afar. In February we came up for the weekend and pruned our little trees. The spring and summer were warm and wet, not ideal for apples. We saw our fair bit of rust and lost a Granny Smith from crown rot. Still too small to produce apples, our good neighbors, the Flippins, helped apply pesticides and keep the funk at bay. We couldn’t resist getting three Grimes Golden from Albermarle Ciderworks to ‘fill out’ the area and fill in a few holes. Two trees tried producing their first apples (way to go Pink Lady and Arkansas Black)! By Fall, eighteen of our trees were more than an inch in diameter and we cautiously awarded several a Grade “A” for excellent performance! Of the stars, Arkansas Black, Orleans, and Golden Delicious seemed well suited to their home in 6B, and all had trunks more than 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Of the less vigorous varieties, both Smokehouse got poor grades for slow development.
In October 2018, Hurricane Michael brought nearly six inches of rain and gusty winds to the area. Four of our star trees (two Arkansas Black, one Pink Lady, and one Granny Smith) were knocked over by the weather. All had larger diameter trunks and more branches which contributed to their top-heaviness. Looking back, it would have been better to plant the trees in smaller holes and provide stronger, long-term support.
When planting apple trees, it’s best to provide long-term support. Some full-sized trees do fine without stakes but most semi-dwarf and dwarf varieties benefit strongly from staking.
Don’t eat the apple blossoms, they’re pretty but not edible.(CHET TO BRENDAN)
Year 4… 2019
By now, we believed several of trees were large enough to remove their ‘cages’ and strong enough to support themselves. We provided treatments in the spring of Dormant Oil (February), and Copper fungicide and Eight (an insecticide) in June. The deer grazed and nibbled while a buck used three trees for his rub.
If you want to enjoy the fruit of your labor, some spraying is necessary. By June, all but one of the remaining original trees were over an inch in diameter. Last year’s early producers tried again and were joined by five new varieties. The trees trying for apples in 2019, in their fourth year since planting were:
- Pink Lady (n=4) ,
- Arkansas Black (n=27),
- Winesap (n=15),
- Smokehouse (n=4), and
- Granny Smith (n=1). We were so excited that we counted the apples!
Year 5… 2020
During our first full year at Glendale, we tackled a huge stack of projects. Having once been center stage, the apple trees took a supporting role to the rest of farm happenings – from creating a new circle driveway, to stumping pines for future pasture and field, and creating new home workspaces from a former corn crib and tobacco barn.
Excited after last year’s first showing, we sprinkled a splash of 10-10-10 general fertilizer on the apples (turns out we didn’t need to do this and apple trees generally do better without any fertilizer during their early growing years) and watched the spring blossoms arrive! An early warm spring greeted us with butterflies and blossoms, a real treat!
The early bird gets the worm, but Mother Nature has the last laugh. On May 10th, the temperature plummeted and we had two nights with 28 degree lows. We jumped to cover our veggies and cloche the delicate spring shoots. While we were able to salvage most of them, the freeze toasted the tomatoes, our little pecan trees’ spring shoots, and most of the apple buds. The newly formed clusters of fruit blackened and dropped off. A warning not to count your apples before June! Despite the chill, our June count showed a few stubborn apples clinging fiercely to life. The year’s stubborn producers were (in number of apples):
- Pink Lady (n=1),
- Orleans (n=11),
- Smokehouse (n=2),
- Golden Delicious (1),
- Granny Smith (n=1),
- Winesap (n=7),
- Hewes Crab (n=36). Hewes Crab is a biannual producer so we’ll see what happens next year.
Unfortunately, of the apples above, none made it to harvest. Thanks, deer! Another year to wait… During the summer and fall we kept the same treatment plan as previous years but began to struggle with blight in early May. We kept trimming and cutting, and purchased some Fertilome to spray next year. Each chemical has a special window of application – with bloom, wind, and temperature all needing to fall within the correct window. Too soon or out of sync and you waste the chemical and/or damage sensitive pollinators.
In 2020, we added the last new apple trees, a Red Delicious and Golden Delicious that were on sale at Tractor Supply and too good an offer to pass up. The orchard now stands at 30 trees and will likely stay that number until we learn which varieties produce and which withstand the rigors of time.
Year 6 … 2021
This year, we purchased a 15 gallon sprayer and shared the pruning tasks in February. Several of the trees are pushing 10 feet and will need some more serious attention this summer. For Christmas, we adopted a 3.5 HP Hercules hit and miss engine (Merry Christmas Brendan) and in February found a apple cider mill for sale. Both require a little fine tuning but we’re hoping that the coming years will provide an opportunity to press both into service.
The winter was casualty-free and the spring has brought an abundant bouquet. By the first week of May most of the apples have finished blooming and started the process of setting fruit.
The first harvest yielded ~3 lbs of Hewes Crab, 8 lbs of Gold Rush, and 9 lbs of Arkansas Black apples. The other trees produced a few apples a piece and we sampled them surreptitiously to see when and how they ripened. The sampling lasted from early September through the end of October and hints of harvests in years to come.
