ok, an update on those two wild apple trees

well those of you who are familiar with my story, this spring when apples were in bloom i found two wild apple trees on our property..one small one by our pond that was growing out of the center of an alder clump..very hard to get to..and another back in our woods where Ron used to throw apples to feed the deer years ago when he was hunting.

well the one in the back woods was pretty good size..kinda hard to get to and had a lot of dead branches on it and wild cherry trees growing up around and through it..

i didn't have time or inkling to prune it up or clean around it this year yet..but hope to next year..or this fall.

i did today pull some of the dead branches down and away from it..but in our woods everything is very primitive and messy..

well today i checked out the apples that are ripening on both trees..the larger one in the woods has smaller green applesw with a red blush just starting to show..they are tart and crisp and are not quite ripe yet..so i'm figuring they are likely a fall apple..and will ahve a while till they are ready..i picked ojnly one and tasted it and it wasn't ripe.

then i checked out the one that is leaning over our pond growing out of the  alder shrubs..the apples on it were a yellowish green and a flattened slightly shape.

they had a mottled skin which appeared to be quite spotty..so i wasn't expecting a lot from them..althought the apples looked good other than the spots.

well ..i pulled down a laf dozen or so and brought them to the house..got a knife and peeled one and was surprised that teh spots didn't go into the flesh of the apples but were just superficial..which was a sweet surprise..the flesh was nice and clean and unblemished..they did have a good size core though so that meant less flesh..i tasted one and i thought..wow..this is one of the seetest apples i have ever tasted in my life..the texture was dry and a bit toward the corky side..which means they probably are more a cooking apple rather than a fresh eating apple..not juicy..but the flavor was very got..

i have NO IDEA what either apple area..the appearance of the yellowish green ones was more similar to the appearance of a transparent..but they don't taste or bite like a transparent, they aren't soft, but not really firm and crisp..kinda inbetween..the color isn't exactly the same..and they are a bit mnore yellow and smaller and shaped different than a granny smith..i have NO IDEA what kind of apple they are..but i know i like them..so that is a good thing..

next year hope to clean up around that apple tree too and see how muych we are able to do to make both of these trees more productive..this one is very young..i really want to work with it to get it productive..it is too close to the pond to spray it..actually it hangs out over the edge of the pond..which even makes picking dangerous..but Ron says he will try to use a curved tine cultivator to reach outand pick the apples for me..nice ofhim..there are some branches that are growing toward shore..so i'll try to prune the tree to encourage apple branches that will lean toward the shore rather than out over the water..which should make future apple  pickingeasier.

\well i feel good about these two trees..still a ocuple weeks for adefinate conclusion on the far back woods one..i'll letyouknow

sorry about the crappy typing..but for some reason the forum has been really messing with me lately..it gets to where i can't see what i type and bounces around and causes me some real headaches..don't know if it is just my computer or if other people are having trouble with the message part of the forms as i have when typing

I don't know about the typing. sometimes (today) my puter just decides it doesn't want to do anything so I am on my dh laptop. often i will be typing on it and will bump something on this itty bitty (by my standards) keyboard and my post will dissapear, post itself, start running up and down the page etc..... how the heck do people type on phones!!!

thats great about the apple trees.

Brenda,

This is some of the best information I have ever read about apples.  Thanks so much for sharing it.  What I pull from this is that it can be very worthwhile to grow apples from seed.

As for the computer - I would have to guess it is your computer.  I know I haven't changed anything here for months and it seems silky smooth to me.  If you wanna talk more about it, we can take it up in the "tinkering" forum.

Well Ron went out and braved the tree in the shrub, he actually  attempted to climb it and pull branches up to him and he picked me a canvas grocery bag full of apples ..i will work with them today to freeze or cook with them as i see fit..

this is a small tree and it is its first apple crop..ron was totally thrilled with them..we looked them up on the antique apple site online and they were closest to Reinette Du Canada a 1771 export from France..although that is listed as a late apple..it was very close in appearance and description..knowing that it probably wasn't any particular variety as it was from seed, and probably a bastard, at least we found something SIMILAR to compare it to.

we will still be waiting on the tart cripsy little things on the tree in the woods..will keep you up on those..

yes Paul, the huge tree we have in our back yard was from seed as well and the huge transparent next door was also from seed..they both were simply loaded with apples..the transparent have been picked and made into sauce or put up (our neighbors let us have some to put in freezer)..the ones in our back  yard won't ripen now for about another week..they are green and red..haven't identified them over the years yet..too many similar..they are a crispy tart apple..wihth a mix of green and red on the skin when ripe.

so yes, there are 4 apple trees from seed to tell you about.

when we had  our housefire we had two small apple trees from seed in our field..one was a maiden blush and the otehr not sure..but when they did the work to remove the house and bring in the other..they destroyed them

Brenda:

If I understand you correctly, these apples were grown from seed, which means they are new to the world.

You have produced two entirely new varieties.  You can name them.  If other people like them, you can sell scions at whatever the market will bear: for now, you're the only source of this genetic material.

Any notion of what variety of apple Ron might have eaten on that hunting trip?  The chances of edible apples from a given seed are said to be low, but maybe for some varieties not quite as low.

that is probably true that they may bear little genetic relationship to their parents..and i have no idea what apples they were..

my FIL was a huge apple lover..and he would go to the orchards and pick up the drops ..use the worst for cider and give us bushels of the others..Rons favorite were maiden blush..and we did have a sport of a maiden blush core grow and bear apples before our house fire..and it was delicious..we sorely miss it.

fil planted a core of a transparent in his front yard..and it is bearing "transparent" apples..they may not be pure bred..but they appear exactly the same as any other transparent..and it was from seed..and it bears huge amounts of near perfect apples every 2 or 3 years..it tends to rest between years...

we have a huge tree out back that was from some thrown out apple..it is a very prolific bearer every year or two as well..genearlly we go for one or two years with little or no crop and then we'll get a year like this one where it is totally loaded with apples that will overwhelm us this week..

as i said this spring we found the two babies..

the one by the pond that we harvested yesterday..with the nice green sweet sweet apples..they were not pretty..couldn't sell them in a store..but they were perfect INSIDE..and arenow in my frrzer and our stomaches..the one out in the woods well itdoesn't have as many apples on it as it owuld if it got some sunshine i'm sure..i'll haul hubby back there..maybe  tonight and point it out to him..and then we'll see what they ripen into.

eating the apple from the yard tree now and it is lovely..tart and maybe a tad  underripe..so i'llb e picking apples this week and filling the fhe freezer with them..any one know if you can can apple pie filling..im not needing applesauce....but my frrezer will be full of apples soon..oh well..we all love apple pie and crisp.

did a separate thread with photos, here is a photo of the one in the woods..really needs a lot of work around it..

there are trees crowding it..i f you look close you can see at least one apple on the right side by the trunk of the tree leaning in....bright green apple

Pie filling cans just fine.  Apples also dry OK on screens, cut thin and with a little citrus juice on them to keep their color.  That would make texture problems less relevant, and AFAIK the higher sugar content would make these keep better than dried tart apples.

yeah i used to dry apples all the time..we both really like dried apples..as wet as our area has been i haven't even thought of drying anything but herbs and medicinals so far this year though..we do have a dryer that plugs in but i hate to use electricity, our bills are high enough..we also have screens that we can dry on in wintertime over our wood stoves..but they won't work on our fireplace or boiler..we used to dry over our woodstoves in our old house before housefire..and we have a woodstove in the garage addition that we removed from the old house..but  right now can't use it..too much of a mess in the addition..needs cleaning..also very dusty in there..i haven't had time to work in the garage all year.

i will consider drying a few of the tart ones though..as that would sweeten them up some..

my problem here is time..and weather ...still have to get 80 cord of wood in the shed and the shed isn't finished..so..well we are running behind..31 degrees yesterday and 33 this morning..we know fall is close at hand.

Have you ever thought of grafting a limb from a named varitety onto one of these trees?  Would be cheap enough practice and if it works that limb will produce for you.  How cool to have a tree that one half pollinates the other half??

It is so nice to hear others have problems with computers, for years i had terrible problems, i think the computer used to mix up my corrections and how things were before i corrected them apart from it seeming that people made commentaries, it was a nightmare and i just corrected and corrected again, and felt mad it was all so odd. Agri rose macaskie. 

Brenda Groth wrote:

this spring when apples were in bloom i found two wild apple trees on our property.. another back in our woods where Ron used to throw apples to feed the deer years ago when he was hunting.

How many years ago?  From when to when did he hunt there?

We have been married and lived on this property for 38 years..he hunted deer and rabbits the first several years we were married..so from like 1971 until probably early 1980's..

if we wanted to hunt deer now..we wouldn't have to go into the woods..they are up in our lawn all year long..we provide natural feed areas for them all over our property..in the summer their favorite food is the minature hollyhocks we plant (they like the regular hollyhocks too but not quite as well)..they will eat these over the usual normally bothered by deer plants ..they leave my hostas alone that are right under the apple tree.

we are moving a bunch of the seed tops of the miniature hollyhocks to an area in a clearing by our woods this year..hopefully one  day they will be able to munch on them back there rather than in our yard..although we really have no aversion to them being in our yard other than they do remove a branch or two of our baby trees sometimes.

Here are a couple different wild apples that I've harvested.  I used them for drying.

looney that first batch looks a lot like the ones i got off that first tree..similar in color, size and shape and even the mottling of the flesh..are those really sweet and dry?

the other two trees are more similar to your second  batch there..red maybe with a little green left on them when ripe, tarter and firmer juicier flesh