Landrace Fruit Trees

Adaptation Projects perennials
125

Here’s an interesting thought to consider.

We are in a community. That means we can help out other people’s goals, especially if an opportunity shows up that we don’t want, and somebody else may.

Granny Smith apples are a great example. I intensely dislike sour things. Thus, if the next fabulous tart apple shows up among my seedlings, I’d chop it down. I don’t want it.

But I’m in a community! Rather than chopping it down, I can document the traits, and ask if somebody else wants it. If somebody else does, I can dig it up and give it to them. I lose nothing, and the other person gains something they love.

Maybe that’s something we can all consider, as we’re growing perennials from seed. It may be great to know what everyone’s goals are, so we can see if something pops up that we don’t want, but some other person in our community may!

1 Like
126

That’s a very great point! Personally, I like a bit more balance in my apples, sweet-tart but not exceptionally so. My youngest teen is a Granny Smith/tart apples fiend. He would happily demolish a bowl of apples most people would think WAY too tart, given the chance. Whereas I don’t like most super sweet apples. So I’d happily take super tart apples from someone who doesn’t want them (and gleefully make cider out of whatever survives the offspring) and offer up anything that is too far up on the sweet scale, in return.

127

Fantastic!

Yeah, I’m all about the sweetness. I don’t want tartness, bitterness, or astringency. I love crispness, smoothness, and juiciness. I want strong, intense flavors. I want fruit that tastes great picked and eaten without any intermediate steps.

What do you prefer as far as texture, flavor, and astrigency? How do you like to eat your fruits?

128

I most like a good crisp apple, with some sweetness, but at least a little tartness for balance. I will eat a good tart Granny if I’m having something like a snack board with cheeses and such, but if I’m eating raw, I want something crisp in the middle of the flavor range. For anything else, I take what I get/find, lol. I generally make a deeply spiced apple butter in the fall with whatever mix of apples is cheap and handy, so texture and flavor are not the primary consideration for me there. We don’t do a lot of baking with apples, it’s mostly fresh eating or canned/frozen goods around here.

My small backyard “orchard” is not much of an orchard… we’re planning to stop at around 5-6 semi-dwarf to small normal sized trees. With that limitation, I’m wanting to focus on fresh eating options (Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Granny Smith if it survives, and maybe some fresh-eating options grafted onto those) plus varieties more useful for processing into jelly, applesauce, apple butter, and cider (currently I have just one larger-fruited crab for this, that I can’t remember the name of).

Do you mostly use apples for fresh-eating, or do you do any processing, too?

129

I prefer to use apples for fresh eating, but in practice, I dehydrate about half the apples we get that aren’t from a grocery store.

I cut into chunks and dehydrate anything that is:

  • Damaged, so it won’t store well, and/or may be unappealing to eat without cutting out the bad spots. (Think coddling moth holes.)
  • Mushy or grainy in texture. Dehydration eliminates unpalatable textures while concentrating flavors, so it’s the perfect option for those. When I get Red Delicious apples from a grocery store that are mushy and grainy, those go into the dehydrator. When I get Red Delicious apples that are crisp and perfect (which are the best apples in the world, in my opinion), we eat those things whole very fast. The best apple I’ve ever eaten was a Red Delicious apple. When you get a perfect one, they’re amazing.
  • Part of a very large harvest all at once that we just can’t eat fresh in time.

I have canned apples, peaches, plums, and other fruit in the past (as chunks, jam, or puree), and I’ve found we don’t really get to them very quickly. We’ll eat dried fruit fast, though. So since dehydration is faster and easier and the results can be stored in plastic containers, I think that’s a better solution for us.

I’ll use any fruit I have on hand in whatever ways make sense – for instance, chokeberries grow wild here, and those have to be processed into jam to eat – but for anything I’m planting on purpose, I want things that can be eaten fresh. I see processing as a Plan B. I want to commit my future self only to labor that I think is reasonable to commit myself to (harvest and eating). It feels more sustainable long-term to me.

2 Likes
130

My backyard orchard now has seventeen apple trees, and three Asian pears. I want to add six or so peach trees and two or so plum trees before spring. We often have weeks of thawed ground in the winter, so I can keep planting trees all winter long.

Fourteen of the apple trees are the cheapest variety I could find (which happened to be Anna), which I intend to overgraft with several different varieties each. I have bought scions from about 50 different varieties that are known to be crisp, very sweet, and ripen at diverse times throughout the year. Probably the tartest I’ll be growing is Lady Williams, which isn’t very sweet, but the fact that it’s the latest-ripening cultivar anyone knows of makes me want to grow it anyway. If nothing else, I want to use it for breeding.

See, I discovered last year that we have way, way too much sun and heat in my back yard for most vegetables. “Full sun” vegetables seem to prefer full sun in the morning and full shade in the afternoon during my high elevation, hot, dry, summers.

Obviously this is a situation that was begging for fruit trees.

I planted the trees about three feet apart, which is way too close to let them grow full-sized, but my intention is to keep them pruned so that they’re never taller than I can reach standing on the ground. That will keep the canopy small enough to give my vegetables the optimal amount of shade, too. I realized that David the Good’s grocery row gardening system was ideal for my goals and my climate, so I’m starting to build it.

131

I have a feeling Future You will be grateful for that. :grin:

My backyard orchard so far is at the 4 apples I mentioned earlier, two plums, and a lone peach. The rest of my fruits are canes/shrubs/bushes.
At minimum, I want to add another plum tree, possibly two, at least one more peach with a little later fruit set (the current one is an early variety), and two more apples. Anything else will need to be grafted onto the others. Being in a residential/HOA neighborhood, I can’t just fill the whole backyard with trees, though I would fill probably half of it with an orchard if I could get away with it. The summer isn’t quite as harsh here as yours, but it does get hot and my garden absolutely appreciates the afternoon shade it can get during the long stretches of high 90s/100s.

132

Lots of fruit bushes, neat! :smiley: What kinds of those do you have?

I have lots of thornless raspberries and blackberries, a bunch of blueberries (which I hope will live – they’re not exactly native to my climate), and I got thimbleberries from a super nice person on this forum late last year. :grin: I can hardly wait to see how they do! They should be happy here, since they grow wild in some parts of my state.

I’m gradually collecting fig trees, which are a bush in my climate because they die down to the roots every winter and regrow every spring. I’ve ordered cuttings of gooseberries and currants, and I’m currently trying to root some feijoa cuttings (I hope it works!).

I’m planning to plant more perennial vegetables, because I suspect they’ll start making food sooner in the spring, which a) means more food for the hunger gap, and b) means they’ll be making good use of our precipitation in winter before it all disappears for the summer. I’m also planning to grow winter crops and winter annuals as often as I can, for the same reason.

One awesome thing about deciduous fruit trees, like apples, is that they lose all their leaves in the winter and create full sun underneath them for winter vegetables, who need as much sunlight as possible because there is less of it in winter. Great system!

I’m hoping to add beautyberries, a thornless rose bush with yummy fruit (Rosa canina var. inermis), nannyberry, banana yucca, chokeberries, and goumi berry. I have seeds stratifying in pots outside right now.

I have bananas, sugarcane, carob, and ice cream bean (yes, I know they’re not hardy to my zone – they’ll live in my greenhouse in winter) growing indoors right now. They’ll go out at the end of spring / start of summer.

I just ordered pawpaw seeds from Experimental Farm Network, and I expect to receive lingonberries and loquats from trades soon. (Thank you, guys! :D)

When I get seeds or clones, I’d like to add honeyberries, blackhaws, kumquats, satsumas, and ugniberries. I don’t have anything from those species yet.

I could easily grow elderberry, but my next door neighbor has a huge elderberry bush she lets me harvest the extra from, so I don’t need it in my yard at this time.

I’ve decided not to grow mulberries because we’ve got plenty growing wild around me.

As you can see, I’m very interested in having lots of different things! :smiley:

133

I have a couple of black elderberry bushes, and I’ll hopefully be adding some of EFN’s Ukranian black elderberry to that this year (currently stratifying the seeds!)
I also have a rather thorny blackberry and volunteer honeysuckle thicket that I mostly ignore except to grab some berries before the birds eat them all, and a patio/container type thornless blackberry that I put in the ground and promptly regretted… it’s spread enthusiastically beyond the place I intended to grow it. Which I suppose just means more plants to relocate to other thickets. Since it doesn’t get much more than knee high, it will probably end up as an understory plant everywhere I have fruit trees. Fortunately, the berries are large and delicious, so they’re worth keeping despite the enthusiastic spread.

Then I have black and red raspberries, blackcurrants, and a lovely stand of sandplum, plus a volunteer mulberry that’s actually quite flavorful. This coming year I’ll be adding Rosa rugosa, more blackcurrants, and some hardy kiwi to replace the ones that didn’t make it last year (something ate them to the ground while still small :frowning: ) and maybe some gooseberries.
Unfortunately, blueberries hate it here (too alkaline). Strawberries don’t, though, so I’ll be putting in a mix of alpine strawberries and some EFN wild strawberry in a few places that need a productive groundcover of some sort. And while it’s not exactly a “fruit” I’m considering trying to put in some wine cap mushroom spawn this summer if I can get a good wood mulch delivery.

All this fruit tree talk has me wondering if it’s possible to graft productive pears onto the ecological disaster that is the decorative pear tree in my front yard.

134

Yes, you absolutely can graft edible pears onto ornamental pear trees! David the Good says everybody should do that in more than one of his books. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

That thornless blackberry that spreads like crazy and has large, delicious berries sounds awesome! Do you know what variety it is? Maybe I want to grow that one, too.

My soil’s really alkaline, but I seem to be able to keep blueberries alive here just fine. I just mulch them with lots of wood chips (like everything else), and if I find any pine needles, I stuff them under the mulch for the blueberries. Maybe you could try something similar. They’re all alive, and none have fruited yet, but I also didn’t, uh, water them nearly enough last year. (Wry laugh.) Hopefully they’ll do okay for me!

What black currant and gooseberry varieties are you eyeing?

I thought honeysuckle berries were poisonous. Or are they honeyberries, the honeysuckle relative? Those are supposed to be really good. I’ve got to get some.

Oh! Hardy kiwis! Yeah, I’m planting them around my yard by my fences, too! I figure I’d rather have kiwis than grapes, since my daughter loves kiwis, and all my neighbors have grapes and offer up their excess of bounty to anyone nearby every year. (Laugh.)

135

The blackberry came from a box store, though I can’t remember if it was Lowes or Sam’s Club at this point. Teeny tiny stick when I got it, but within a few months there were runners popping up several feet away. It’s one of those dwarf Bushel & Berry brand plants… I think the name for the blackberry was Baby Cakes?

I tried blueberries including plenty of mulch, acid-based additives/compost, and such, but the combination of poor-draining clay and it being heavily alkaline just didn’t agree with them. I gave up after 3 years of failures and moved on.

The honeysuckle was a volunteer, and I don’t really care if it’s not edible. We love the scent of the flowers and as long as it doesn’t choke out the berries I’m ok with them co-existing as a benefit to the wildlife. That thicket has hosted brown thrasher nests, baby bunnies, various other birds, and who knows what other wildlife in our time here, so it’s ok if it’s not all edible/productive plants in my mind. It still serves a purpose.

136

Baby Cakes! Ooh, that’s a variety I’ve been considering! Neato. :blush:

Ohhhh, yeah, poor-draining clay probably didn’t help. I’ve got well-draining sand, which is great, in theory, except that I get so little rain in summer, and could really use more water retention. (Laugh.)

Oh, that’s wonderful! I’m glad the honeysuckle is such a welcome part of your landscape! I love it when people make space for the wildlife on their land. :blush:

137

2 Things I am trying this year with my apple seeds:

  • In addition to starting them on a paper towel or perfect potting soil in the fridge, I am using regular dirt from my garden, motivated by this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZPjzIBquPM
  • Adding cinnamon to the seeds on my damp paper towel, as cinnamon has anti fungal and antibacterial properties (to prevent mold)
    Crossing my fingers that it works

Maarten

139

Neat! Those are great tips.

Since you regularly start grapes from seed, I’ve gotta ask. Have you grown any that are sweet and juicy and have zero astringency? I’ve found a lot of grapes have mild astrigency, and I don’t like that sensation. I’m interested in breeding a population of seeded grapes that have zero astringency.

141

Wow, I’m impressed! Both at the scale of your grape project, and by the fact that it sounds like you’re running a great plant nursery. Where do you like to sell plants?

143

I might have been hoarded some of the seeds of Steven Edholm (Skillcult) this year :slight_smile:

As for seed treatments - I sow a lot of my tree seeds outside in late fall in individual containers (pots if few seed and seed flats if many). If seeds are nuts, then make sure to protect against rodents (I just place bucket on top or similar). Then let the seed experience the cool season. Most perennial plants adapted to cold climates have some kind of seed dormancy that needs to be overcome by such stratification. That’s a physiological dormancy - I like to think of it as a biological clock. The seed simply needs to experience a certain amount of chilling hours. Some tree seeds have double dormancy and need to break down the hard seed coat that prevents the seed from soaking up water. The biological clock only begins ticking when the seed is moistened. To break down the seed coat - a physical dormancy - you either let microbes in the soil do the work (bury seed in pantyhose in the ground for a season) or manually chip the coat with a nail clipper or file. Hot water can also scarify the seed coat. Then sow the seed and let it go through stratification. Some seed just take a long time - I sometimes have seed sprouting 18 months after I’ve sown them.

2 Likes
145

One of my earliest memories is picking plums from my great grandmother’s plum tree and how delicious they were.

One of these days when I get more land, I am going to put some massive effort into plums and muscadines.

I even saw the other day a wine making starter kit for like $80 bucks. I was like, wow, I didn’t realize I could buy a wine making hobby in a box.

3 Likes
146

Fruit wine making is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down! (Speaking from experience… ) But it’s also a LOT of fun. I’m really hoping for a good crop of sandplums this year so I can start a big batch of sandplum wine. Because of badly timed frosts, we haven’t had a heavy crop in a while and my wine-making equipment has been sorely neglected.

2 Likes
147

I’ll get you started for $2.49. :blush: For your first wine making experience the easiest wine to make in N. America would be going and buying the frozen concentrate tubes from Walmart et al. of Welch’s Grape Juice (The 100% purpley-red “Concord” grapes ones; those are also classified as wine making grapes). Then a fresh sachet of bread yeast, some white sugar, water to reconstitute the concentrate. Then just a suitable container and some home made sanitizer from unscented bleach mixed with water. The ratio of bleach to water is so small it will still sanitize but will off gas into the atmosphere the chlorine and become inert; this is poured out when ready to fill with your liquid young wine mixture. Then fill your suitable container with the reconstituted grape juice mixed with sugar and sachet yeast. A cloth on top to keep the bugs out and let it sit a few weeks. Decant and serve immediately. If you like the beginners wine and have mastered the basic sanitary techniques to successfully make wine you can move up to more expensive ingredients that may have been wasted on a botched first go at making wine. The bread yeast will top out around 12% ABV before giving up and settling. The amount of white sugar is an amount balanced to feed the yeast through its 12% range and still leave a bit of residual sweetness in the finished wine. Without dedicated demijohns or carboys you can get by with just about anything. Glass is always best if worried about micro plastics, but plastic multi-liter juice bottles or large plastic tub of cheesy puffs etc., or large crocks can be repurposed for a beginners fermentation vessel.

For nice tasting home grown fruit, I always tend to make home made cordials, especially great in the heat of summer.

3 Likes
148

Nice, good point about using cheaper ingredients on first batch. I am bound to make a mistake at that time. It I had used fruit I raised myself and wasted that fruit, it would be a higher loss.

I am going to look into this, thanks.