A Walk around the Back40

The Bliss taking so much of my time I haven't been taking my daily walks in the Back40.  Today I slipped away and here's what I saw.

 

The Chestnut Crab was one of the first apples to bloom and now the applets are growing.

 

 

This Bluebird hen was determined to protect her eggs.

 

 

A Hoover apple tree is one of my last to bloom thus escaping any late frosts.

 

 

I should have been cleaning my bird boxes out earlier. I'm still finding nesting mice in many of them.

 

 

With the unusually February the wood frogs laid their eggs early. Then came a very cold March. As a result I've seen only a few tadpoles in the vernal pond.

 

 

So far this year I have only one Tree Swallow nest. Usually I have 2 or 3 nesting pairs.

 

 

 

This Brown Thrasher has some kind of large bug for lunch.

 

 

Only one Chickadee nest this year. The mice have taken over many of my woodland boxes.

 

That's the end of my Back40 walk, hope you enjoyed it.

Bliss learning her name

Thirsty Bliss

Bliss drinking from our bubbling rock.

For the Love of Grafting

I started grafting apple trees just 4 years ago, when I retired.  Not knowing anyone who knew how to graft I relied on YouTube videos to learn the art. My first year I had over 50% of my grafts "take" and was pleased with the results. Those first trees are growing strongly in the Home Orchard, the Back40 Orchard, the Locust Field Orchard and Mam & Pap's Orchard. A few of them set fruit last year and I enjoyed the taste of the old heirloom varieties Myers Royal Limbertwig, Virginia Beauty, Aunt Rachel and Keener's Seedling. Right from the start I knew I didn't want to grow apples varieties that I could buy at the store or at the local orchards. It was the heirloom varieties that "peaked" my interest. Through internet searches I found orchards that sold scion wood of these old varieties. Big Horse Creek Farm, Hocking Hills Orchards, Maple Valley Orchards and John Bunker's Fedco website all provided scion for my grafting adventures. I also found on Facebook the North American Scion Exchange page and the NAFEX (North American Fruit Explorers) page where like minded people were trading scion freely. I now have over 200 trees of over 100 varieties "in the ground" and I'm seriously running out of prime places to plant here on my 66 acres. So now I'm entering into my next "phase" of grafting, selling trees in an attempt to keep these heirloom varieties alive. I took a dozen trees that I had wintered over to the Uniontown "animal swap" this spring and sold out in minutes. I also sold a few "deer apple" trees on Craiglist and other local internet sale sites. So hopefully I'll be able to keep enjoying this hobby that I love and introduce people to the taste of these old apple varieties that have survived for hundreds of years.

A New Member of the Pack

Meet Bliss the newest member of our Pack.

Grafting to Wild Apple Trees

Yesterday I "top worked" some wild apple trees that had not produced any fruit. I cut the trees back rather severely last spring to promote sucker growth and used the cleft grafting technique to graft to the new growth. I waited until the leaves had begun to open to improve my chances for success.

After wrapping with parafilm I added a couple of wraps of masking tape just to made the graft more secure and put a covering of toilet bowl wax on the tip of the scion to keep it from drying out.

 With the large established root system of the older apple trees and if my grafting is successful the scion should be producing apples in a few years, much faster than grafting to rootstock and waiting for the tree to develop.

The Grafting Season

Here on the homestead I'm well into my grafting season. The Tina left-handed grafting knife that I bought last year has been one of my best investments. I've now conquered the difficult (to me) whip and tongue graft and am using it on the appropriately sized scion and rootstock. I still use the cleft graft when the scion is smaller than the rootstock.

 

The Tina

 

The whip and tongue graft while not necessarily a better graft than a cleft graft is a "cleaner looking" graft, but is best used when the scion and rootstock are nearly the same diameter size. Here I am cutting the "tongue" on a whip and tongue graft.

 And the finished graft.

 

I'm excited about the rare Limbertwig scions I was able to obtain this spring. The Limbertwig family of apple trees originated in the southern Appalachian mountains. Grown from seeds on isolated homesteads in the 1800's they are noted for their unique taste and versatility as a fresh eating apple,  a fine cider apple and also good for making apple butter and drying. Many although not all of the varieties have a weeping growth habit from their slender limbs that bend down under the weight of their apple crop. At one time over 50 varieties of Limbertwigs were known but many have become extinct. I currently have 8 varieties growing in my orchards and was able to get scion of 10 more varieties this spring.

There must have been an interesting story behind the naming of this variety of Limbertwig.

 A bucket full of just grafted Limbertwigs

Anyone interested in learning more about the Limbertwig family of apples can read an interesting article on Ron Joyner's blog at www.bighorsecreekfarm.com