North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Bernie Nikolai <Nikolai@v-wave.com>]

Kevin, The trials are at (get ready) the "Alberta Crop Diversification
Centre North", a provincial government site that researches all crops and
flowers that have a potential to grow in central Alberta, especially
commercial crops.  The main rootstocks being tested are the V series from
Vineland, Ontario, which have Kerr applecrab (very hardy) as one parent.
However O3, Beautiful Arcade, some Malling rootstocks, and others are being
tested as well for comparison purposes.  The results won't be ready for a
few years.  The BA deaths are just preliminary data from this last winter.
A a matter of interest, 100% of the M9 rootstocks also died this winter in
the trials.  No surprise to anyone familiar with our winter climate,
especially in a winter with no snow.

Re Siberian Crab.  I think this rootstock gets a bum wrap.  90% plus of all
apple trees in Edmonton (thousands of them, one in every second backyard it
seems) are grafted on Siberian.  There is no problem with smaller than
normal apples or graft incompatibility that I am aware of.  Mind you, the
very hardy apples that grow here have a lot of "crab" in their recent
ancestry.  It may well be possible that our apples are fully compatible with
Siberian, but Golden Delicious, Gala, Fuji, and others more removed
genetically from crabs might have problems on Siberian with compatibility.
Siberian Crab obviously is a seedling rootstock, and every rootstock will be
slightly different.  It is very possible the odd Siberian Crab rootstock
might produce smaller apples or have compatibility problems with even hardy
apples.  However, from what I've seen, this would be the rare exception, not
the rule.  The only downside to Siberian that I've noticed is slower growth.
Specifically, in my climate, a 2 year old tree on Ranetka Crab (which I
understand is Siberian Crab x Dolgo Crab) is as large as a 3 year old tree
on Siberian.  Since Ranetka is also fully hardy here, I prefer to use
Ranetka over Siberian and get a bigger tree sooner.
Bernie

At 12:08 PM 6/1/01 -0000, you wrote:
>Thanks much Bernie, I thought BA was hardier than that, rats.
>Correction, I'd said that I heard that BA dwarfs by fifty percent, I 
>meant 35 percent, that is the mature tree being sixty five percent of 
>standard.
>Those Siberian crabs in the pots on the deck certainly I would expect 
>be dead on most anything else. Do you know of any drawbacks to 
>Siberian crab? Victoria said that it produces trees with smaller 
>fruit. Have you noticed this or heard of this? I intend to do a stint 
>in the library on this topic soon.
>Kevin
>Also, can you tell me more about those rootstock trials that you'd 
>mentioned? Was that at a university? I'd like to see the results if 
>there were more rootstocks in the trials. (I wonder if they have any 
>SJM rootstocks in those trials).
>Kevin
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