Happy #treetuesday! Crabapple tree buds starting to leave out.
This post is about apple trees but first some fun pictures of this crabapple.
We bought our home last fall and were surprised to find a lone crabapple tree on the edge of an overgrown field. Either it was a volunteer tree or had been planted and forgotten. It is nearly 10 ft tall and was a bit of a mess. I pruned it up and it is healthy this spring. Now back to the apple trees.
I planted 6 apple trees last fall. They all have signs of coming out of dormacy but none are as far along as the crabapple tree. We are having alot of fun with this 🙂 My wife made some cute labels for each tree. We have a wide mix of trees. The Golden Russet is an heirloom apple with golden green appearance good for eating or cider.
Tolman Sweet is another heirloom apple thought to be one of the oldest American varieties. Its fruit is yellow and is good for baking.
Crimson Topaz is a modern variety, similar to Honey Crisp with good disease resistance.
Winecrisp is also a modern disease resistant variety. It has deep red almost purple fruit.
The Dayton is another modern variety similar to the Honeycrisp. Good for eating.
The Liberty is a modern, disease resistant Macoun cross. Macouns are my favorite eating apple. If you haven't tried one, you should seek one out. We wanted some hierloom varieties but also planted several modern varieties that will be more hardy. Hopefully easy to grow for us novices. You will notice each tree has a deer fence enclosure and some wire mesh on the trunk to discourage rodents from eating the bark. We bought all our trees from East Hill Tree Farm which is a local farm. We drive there for pick up and free advice 😁
This is an apple tree growing along the road in a swampy area. Apple trees grow very well in Vermont and were sometimes used as property boundary markers since they were easy and reliable. There are wild apple trees around that either were a part of an old orchard/farmsite or simply self-propogated.
We have been watching this tree to get an idea when to expect our trees to leave out. It is further along than our apple trees but not as far as our crabapple. I think our new trees are doing fine 🤞
We also brought a few more trees for spring planting. We are picking them up on Friday. Maybe a future post...