North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Deb,  We have heavy clay too, and I find that pears do MUCH better than apples.  There are a lot of pear varieties to choose from.  True, not as much variation in flavor, but with several vars you can get a fairly long season, and the late ones store well.  Pears that fall off early make excellent "apple" pies and are great for baking.  Pears can be dried like apples too.  Overall they are much less trouble than apples, require no sprays, don't get bugs or disease except for fireblight, which is not a big deal if you are careful to order resistant varieties.  If you'll scrounge up some rootstock, I can send you scionwood of a great local pear.  I know it must be known elsewhere, but can't find a name.  Somewhat similar to the Turnbull Pear, but texture is better.  It's apple shaped, goes from tart and perfect for cooking, to simultaneously crunchy and juicy when light green, then finally to bright yellow at which point it is quite insipid.  The important thing though is that at all stages it is the best pear ever for drying.  The dried slices stick in your teeth like gummy bears, none of that grittiness found in most dried pears.  My source, James Lassater, has 4 trees about 20 yrs old, the original trees were planted in 1903 and his were grafted from them.  They generally crop very heavily, I can generally pick pears for a good 6 wks from his trees in August and into Sept.  They get some FB, but have to be pretty res to even be alive here.  They are definitely the ugliest pear trees I have ever seen, with very long upright branches that load up with fruit and then spread out with the weight.  Very little limb breakage though, considering.  My tree has finally started bearing about 3 yrs after topgrafting onto a volunteer seedling, had 5 pears last year and is loaded this year.   Every time I have given someone a Lassater pear to eat, they have asked me to graft them a tree of it.  They are the ultimate crunchy southern pear, much better than any others.  Obviously they have a lot of oriental pear in them, but unlike the vars being sold in the last few decades, these have no russetting at all. 

    This tree has multiple grafts, but the Lassater pear actually cropped the year before the Pineapple pear.  I have a couple of Pineapples, and either they are precocious croppers or the two little ones are on hawthorn and maybe that's speeded them up.  (Someone at Lawson's mixed up the rootstocks I recieved).  Pineapple pear tends to overbear a bit and make smaller fruit, but if you pick them here in Sept and lay them in shallow boxes to ripen, they will drip down your elbow when you eat them. 

     You have a wider range of pear choices than we do, and I don't know much about the newer ones.  Whatever you do, don't get "Starking Delicious" aka Maxine.  It's a very nice spreading tree, pretty pears, no flavor.  I would choose the much maligned Kieffer over it any day.  At least Kieffer tastes good, and is as good a canner as any pear. 

    As for apples, it's a pity you don't like Romes.  If you can find any kind of list of bloom times, you might want to go for apples that bloom as late as Rome.  I developed my attitude toward variety selection through decades of picking apples off other people's trees, followed by a decade of planting apples and watching them languish in our extremely bad clay soil.  First the tree has to survive here.  If it's survived 30 years and it crops and the fruit is edible, it's a winner.  I don't order apple trees, period.  I graft what I find here.  I found a nice big Rome tree, and though it was nothing to jump up and down about, I noticed it cropped during that empty period between the early apples and the late ones.  Oh, that reminds me.  You need a Yellow Transparent.  Not Lodi, which loads up one year and gives nothing the next.  YT tends to be very reliable and decent sized fruit every year.  Great for cooking and ok for drying. 

    If your soil is low in fertility, plant a Winesap or one of it's offspring.  But if the soil is fertile, avoid them.  Supposedly they'll spend all their time growing instead of fruiting in good soil.  I have grafted both Stayman and Mammoth Blacktwig from local trees, and in our bad soil they are growing better than most of my apples.  Both are res to rust. 

    Also, I don't know if it's recommended for your area, but I think Hardy Cumberland is going to be a real winner for our area.  I see no rust on mine at all.  The secretary in Crossville TN told me they are great apples.  A GA breeding program had sent them some stock, they just grew there for 40 yrs before anyone seriously took notice of this one tree, and then named and released it.  I have had one fruit on my little tree, and it was quite good.  They told me that they can't claim it is "Disease Resistant" but that it sure doesn't have any troubles.  I like to hear that kind of thing, right from the horse's mouth. 

    I also agree with comments on the rootstocks.  Get your trees on MM111.  If you want, throw away some money on some little dwarf trees, plant them in good soil and don't expect them to live too long.  It will be good practice for you while you wait impatiently for the standards to crop.   Avoid 106, it gets collar rot.  I would also agree not to bother with apples you can buy in the stores.  You might be wise to call some commercial apple orchards in your area and find out not only what they are growing, but also what kind of apples the old people ask for.  Sometimes the commercial orchards have one or two of  these trees they have grafted out of curiosity, and they are the ideal people to give you an educated opinion on growth, form, production, disease resistance, flavor and possible quirks.  Like the old "Rusty Coat" that I kept hearing about and wanted to try, as I liked the russet apples I ate in England.  Finally tasted one and it was awful.  It was a guy with a commercial orchard who had it, said everyone hated it except his wife. I keep hoping that it was an inferior seedling and that one day I'll meet a "Rusty Coat" worth bragging about.  I also tasted some other russets belonging to a retired guy who never had gone commercial with the orchard he'd planted, he had bought modern and antique apples, and had collected a lot of local apples.  These were russets he had bought, I didn't like them either.  Probably would have made good hard cider though, a bit astringent.   Donna

>I tend to get really enthusiastic over catalog descriptions.  Before I rush off and buy inappropriate things, I thought I'd ask for some suggestions on apples to add to my little orchard.

>Conditions: SE Ohio in the Appalachian hills...zone 5 or 6 depending on what map you look at.  HEAVY clay soils.  Planting area is on a hillside that runs east (high) to west (low).  We get a good amount of rainfall most years and occassional late spring hard frosts.

  >I would prefer something dwarf or semi-dwarf.

>Store bought apples we like include Honeycrisp, Gala, Winesap, Cameo.  Want apples that are good for fresh eating or drying. Storage ability can be moderate.  We don't do cider or a lot of cooking with apples, but if we had one that made good sauce as well as fresh eating that would be fine. (BTW, not fond of Macintosh, Jonathan, Red Delicious, or Rome type apples).

Suggestions or ideas?