Growing Apples for hardwood

Was looking through the hardwood section at my local exotic hardwood store and saw they were selling apple for 20$ a board foot. Got me thinking if there was a rootstock or a variety of apple that we could grow in more of a hardwood timber setup rather than for pure apple production.

Does anyone know of an apple that essentially grows tall enough to make something like that viable?

Most of the seedling apple trees I have access to seem to send off to many suckers and water spouts to keep up on.

They would likely need to be planted with companion nurse trees, like some kind of conifer. The conifers keep them growing straight and upwards to the light. Once the tree is established you would thin out the faster growing conifers to give more room and light to the apple. Grown in typical fruit orchard conditions they will likely stay low and spread wider, as well as send up lots of water shoots and suckers as you describe.

As for the vigor of the trees and the size they reach, there is a HUGE range of genetic diversity from tiny dwarfing trees that won't grow to bigger than about 6', to the big traditional orchard trees. Eating apples are commonly grown on rootstocks that are suited to the local conditions, as well as the end goal of the grower. The rootstock controls the size of the final plant.

I have a range of apples of different sizes, but have started a project to grow on apples on full standard rootstocks. I have chosen M25 rootstock as it is known to do well in my soils and makes big trees. Maybe look and see what works local to you.

Interesting question, to which I don't have an answer, but it made me think about this thread discussing large apple trees.

Otherwise, does anyone know whether other pome species, like pear or quince, can be used for their wood? My impression is that they tend to grow taller and straighter than apples...

Oh, and welcome to Permies!

The interplanting of the apples with conifers is a great idea, hadn't thought about that. Was originally planning on over planting the apples into a tall spindle kind of spacing then thinning out as required. As my stool bed should be in full production next year.

And thank you for the link to the tall trees post, hadn't seen that one.

Hi Joshua,  Welcome to permies.

My grandfather used to turn pear, crabapple and quince into bowls and other smaller useful items for gran.

Great question, especially checking out sites that sell taller apple trees. I hadn't though of using these for lumber though.

Hopefully someone else can add more here as this is an interesting thread.

Apples do indeed grow tall.  There are apple forests in the part of the world where they originated.

Most of the variation in size and growth habit in commercial apples is due to the root stock.

You would want tough disease resistant varieties.

Monocropping apples has allowed maybe even enhanced the development of apple afflictions.  I don’t know if there are apple afflictions which affect the wood or rate of growth.

Have you thought of a polyculture of other timber hardwoods?  I don’t know if black walnut suppresses apple growth but that is another premium wood.  Apricot and cherry also provide premium hardwood.  I just have to add one more to my list of possible trees to grow, siberian elm.

So, let me say this idea of not monocropping is based on conjecture only.  And my list of possible trees is a list of beautiful premium hardwoods.  I know nothing about their compatibility in polyculture with apples.

I like the idea of growing some timber.  I might copy you!😊

Thekla McDaniels wrote:
Have you thought of a polyculture of other timber hardwoods?  I don’t know if black walnut suppresses apple growth but that is another premium wood.  

Black walnut does suppress apple trees. See https://gardenerspath.com/plants/landscape-trees/black-walnut-juglone-toxicity/ for an example and information on juglone-tolerant plants.

I live in orchard country and have since 59, when we moved there from the desert of Eastern Washington.

In the early days, trees grown for fruit could provide a lot of apple or cherry for projects, because the trees were much bigger than they are today. I remember marveling at the dwarf trees I saw being grown around places like Quincy, Washington.  They produced more fruit per acre, because they were able to plant them closer together.  Too, they were less labor intensive with regard to shoring up fruit ladden branches and for harvesting, because you no longer needed 14' ladders you, often, stood atop to get the upper apples.

SIDE NOTE: All orchard ladders are tripod like, because a tripod will not rock on uneven surfaces, like that four legged restaurant table.

Now, they string wire between poles at the ends of the rows and tie the branches of the dwarf trees to them, instead of using props made from 2x's or just small (around), fairly straight fir or pine trees.

Today, there isn't ever going to be much in the way of useable fruitwood, aside from for firewood and  small projects, like kitchen utensils, bowls and such.  Every year, one of the hundreds of orchards around me is pulling up all their trees to replace them with a more profitable variety. Subsequently, I, pretty much, always have a lot of cherry and apple to play with.  Even small pieces are pretty, for their grain.

The older species could be used, but they'd take a lot of grooming, as indicated by others.

Joshua Hotz wrote:Was looking through the hardwood section at my local exotic hardwood store and saw they were selling apple for 20$ a board foot.

That price shows that there is a market for apple wood but that it's in very limited supply. I've never seen any apple furniture, probably because it's hard to get suitable boards. As a woodworker, I know it's much easier to work with wood  that has fairly straight grain and no big knots.

How about planting with either a disease resistant standard rootstock with the variety grafted on, or rooting dormant 1 year twigs with hormone and bottom heat and growing them up and then coppicing on a rotation of whatever year count best optimizes fruit harvest and lumber yield? I have been able to market apple wood from pruning for clients as wood for barbecue and smoking meats & fish. Whaddya think? OR if you're younger than I and curious, just take seeds from your favorite apples, plant a hundred seeds, raise em' up, taste the results and keep the best and put the rest on timber/fuel coppice regime.

Kelly Craig wrote:SIDE NOTE: All orchard ladders are tripod like, because a tripod will not rock on uneven surfaces, like that four legged restaurant table.

Stability is one major benefit, and another is the ability to more easily position the single back leg between branches and get closer to the trunk than with a traditional ladder shape.

Generally, fruit trees bought from reputable sellers have already gone through a grafting process to insure the rootstock is ideal for the location it's being planted in.

A friend just planted about five or ten thousand trees, as he converts fields that had circles covering them to orchard, and replaced some older cherry trees.  That's a whole lot of grafting.

Then there was the time my buddy got the genius idea we shouldn't mow the little five acre orchard we had, because it was unnatural. The snow landed on the tall grass, which kept it off the ground and left great, insulated play areas for mice.

I tried to tell him the big boys, probably, didn't spend hundreds of thousands a year mowing thousands of acres of orchard just so they'd look pretty. That it was likely they had good reason for mowing, even if I didn't know what it was.

Come spring and with the snow all melted, we had 150 trees girdled by hungry mice.  

My buddy wanted to pull the tress and plant new. I reminded him, in addition to the relative costs, we'd have to wait five years to see real profit coming back from those trees. I told him I'd seen the girdle problem before and the orchardist had all the damage bridge grafted.

We bought 450 trees (three for each girdled tree) that were JUST the rootstock that played well with North Central Washington. A guy planted them and grafted them just above the damaged area.

We did not lose one tree, and they all produced just fine.  

This is an interesting idea. Thought dump:

If growing apples for lumber in a type of forest system, I'm not sure you will run into the same disease problems as you would apples in an orchard setting if you are maximizing diversity.

Red Gravenstein and Rambo are the two fastest growing commercial varieties we have on our property

Coppicing can create more quality lumber. I discovered how great apples coppice when nature coppiced one of our Medaille d'Ors on its own after a Tamarack fell on it.

Applewood blanks can be value added proposition at a farmers' market. Blanks can be used for turning, or small lumber for smaller projects. Gun stocks, bowls, spoons, cutting boards, spurdles, shrink pots, etc.

I would try probably plant lumber apples from the seeds of our Red Gravenstein. Rather than using rootstocks.

It would be a trick to get them to grow straight with minimal knots

It would be interesting to compare full size apples with crabapple trees

I guess one question would be does anyone know how much an apple tree grows in diameter in a year?

I have found a handful of apples that seem to be growing fairly straight for 30ish feet on a property I hunt, and I know I am allowed to take all the cuttings I want. So I might start an attempt with those

The coppicing idea is a good one. I have been doing this to a bunch of wild apple trees in that same property, though most of the reason for that was I needed to clean up some shooting lanes.

Looks like I'm going to have to cut into some of these trees and see if the suckers and water sprouts they have sent up will have any large effect on the quality of the wood. Worst comes to worst I end up with some smoking wood.

David Wieland wrote:

Joshua Hotz wrote:Was looking through the hardwood section at my local exotic hardwood store and saw they were selling apple for 20$ a board foot.

That price shows that there is a market for apple wood but that it's in very limited supply. I've never seen any apple furniture, probably because it's hard to get suitable boards. As a woodworker, I know it's much easier to work with wood  that has fairly straight grain and no big knots.

I agree which is where I could only really see this as a viable idea if I can get the trees to grow straight.

The idea of coppicing keeps coming up.  I had the idea the OP was interested in timber production.

A person might inadvertently coppice when harvesting timber, and enter a new realm of applewood production, but for board feet production I think the idea of a near closed canopy and single trunk per tree is going to best at producing usable lumber.  

Possibly when the trees are headed skyward, a person might thin the stand.  

Standard varieties of apple can be quite  tall.  

When I think about what a long term project this is, finding good varieties, researching most successful growing methods, it seems a wonderful gift to the future.

Joshua,

From 15 various old apple cultivars I grow, the fastest growing is Antonovka seedling. I would not use my measurements as a reference, because my growing conditions are very difficult, but I observed increase of diameter from 1 cm to 6 cm in 3 growing seasons. The other apples grew half of that in the same time period. Besides that Antonovka is one of the best tasting apples.

I wonder about crabapples.  There are plenty of seeds available!  They used to be food,  crabapple jelly, pickled crabapples, and crabapples in cider.  If they are closely enough related , the wood might be the same.

Seedlings on their own roots will develop a taproot.  From what I understand, grafted trees and trees from cuttings do not have the taproot, and the roots do not support as viable and robust or deep root system.

It’s worth some looking into!

Worth looking into, but fast may not equate to quality in applewood.  Poplar, for example, grows fast, but it is too soft for many uses.

This is somewhat random, but someone mentioned pear wood. It is used by glassblowers to make forms for shaping molten glass. Apparently the smooth grain makes it ideal for this.

Another traditional use for pear wood (for the same reasons) is making harpsichord jacks. I used to build harpsichords in what seems like a former life. Jacks are little wooden pieces that travel up and down when you press a key. Each one contains a little plectrum that plucks the string. They are usually around 1/2" x 1" x 4", and a harpsichord uses anywhere from 50-200 depending on how many strings it contains. So I wouldn't suggest planting acres and acres of new trees just to meet this demand. Anyway the up-and-down travel has to be absolutely smooth, so pear it is.

When pear is unavailable for harpsichord jacks, apple is a suitable substitute. (That's right, "apple jacks." But I'm serious here. And maybe back on topic.)

"Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, / Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss" (Sonnet 128)

Pear trees seem immune to black walnut juglone.
They are in my experience more robust than apple trees.
The wood seems to be valued as highly as that of the apple for smoking and woodworking.
My bunnies have always preferred it to all other healthy treats.

A woodlot with pear trees, sea berry and black walnuts could be a great place to raise pork.
A wood lot with pears trees, sea berry and arborvitae could be a great minimal intervention maximum profit set up.
Stump culture the arborvitae for Christmas trees, harvest sea berries by cutting their branches off and freezing them, releasing lots of nitrogen,market the pear prunings for smoking, and eventually harvest the pear trees for lumber.

We are often told to prune trees in the winter , but if you are trying to grow strait lumber, is that the best time of year?

As for pruning, I liked the idea noted above that the trees get interplanted among taller trees, maybe evergreens. (But maximize the light they receive)

I would also try planting them way thicker, closer together, than you want them.  If it’s seeds, they will germinate, the “strongest” will grow better one way or another, they will self identify.  If they are trying to get to the light, they will be straight and likely without many side branches.  You would want to thin them at some point, but still trying for the closed canopy formed by your timber.

When you prune, you throw away some of the tree’s effort.  I prune for shape in the winter and for size in the summer.

In the fall when the tree goes dormant, it sends all its sap under ground, in storage for next year.  All winter it remembers how big a tree it is/was.  In the spring it sends its life sap up to reinhabit the trunk and branches.  If you have removed a majority of wood mass it grows watersprouts and root suckers and what ever it can because it has a certain amount of sap to utilize.

In the summer, you can cut major branches off without the waterspouts etc, because you have removed that much sap with the branch.

That’s how I remember when and how much to prune.  

In the case of growing timber, which is going to be a major time investment, i would want the trees to grow as much as possible, and not deprive the trees of the products of their growth unless absolutely necessary.

So my original idea, which would be more work and the tree wouldn't have a tap root was to take cuttings off of the largest straightest growing wild apples I could find then graft them off to a semi standard or standard rootstock. Let the graft heal then bury the the graft union below ground level to enable the root growth of the original scion. Letting the cutting effectively be on its own rootstock if I can't find any suckers to harvest.

However the idea of seeds seems promising. Realistically I could see gathering all of the apples off of these wild trees then just planting as many seeds as I have. And culling the trees that branch out lower on the tree

The plot of land I am looking at has some mature trees on it but a fair amount of light is still reaching the ground. I guess it shall just be trial and error finding the right amount of light to give the trees to keep them growing but not making it ideal for them to sucker and waterspout.

Sounds like a plan!

Will you have enough seeds?  We have a few apple presses in the region because we have commercial apple orchards and cider makers. They probably press literally tons and tons of apples. I am thinking I might hit them up for seeds next fall.  I hope the seeds survive the pressing process!

Good luck to you on this project, Joshua.  I’m going to try something similar at my place!