North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Richard Moyer <ramoyer@gmail.com>]

Devin,
There is a range of disease resistance in crab apple leaves.  The few in
our area that keep healthy foliage all season long, these are the ones with
high quality, oft-perfect fruit late in the season.  Whose sweetness can go
way up.  Agreed some are quite high in tannins.
We pick these in bushel quantities, juice them for jellies/syrups.  Or
steam them and make crabapple sauces/butters, sometimes mixed with euro
pears or sweet apples.  Am eating crabapple butter for lunch now.

As for the early apples, some of these ripen before second and third
generations of certain insects, at least in our area of SW VA.

Why so few crab apples have curculio, apple maggot or coddling moth?  I
don't know. But we do observe it.

Thanks for thinking of this,
Richard Moyer
Our peaches at pink stage.


On Mon, Apr 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM, <nafex-request@lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:

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>    1.  crab apple disease resistance (Devin Smith)
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> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 14:39:45 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Devin Smith <dvidedevo@yahoo.com>
> To: "nafex@lists.ibiblio.org" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Subject: [nafex] crab apple disease resistance
> Message-ID:
>         <1396820385.39009.YahooMailNeo@web160606.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> A picture and caption I noticed at the recent Maine Tree Crop Alliance
> Scionwood
> Swap reminded me of an idea/question that has long been brewing in my
> mind about the seeming resistance of crab apples to all manner of bugs
> and insects. Perhaps its not surprising that bugs in particular would go
> for the big choice fruits given the chance. Still, it seems that there
> is some mystery to be uncovered here. It just doesn't seem that crab
> apple trees typically suffer from the onslaught of plague and pestilence
> here in the northeast. Maybe the fruits are just so small and numerous
> that the curculio riddled drops aren't noticeable? Still doesn't explain
> the blemish free fruit festooning every branch. I suppose high levels of
> tannins could be a factor. Still, it seems that some of the better eating
> crabs are quite often free of blemishes somehow. Whatever the explanation,
> are similar
> mysterious forces at work when it comes to summer apples. It seems that
> Transparent apples, for one, seem to suffer little if any damage. Has
> anyone else noticed this, and if so, how do you explain it? At the swap
> this year, I focused largely on getting some choice crab varieties in the
> hopes that these might prove quite a bit easier to grow. Any thoughts?.
> -Devin Smith
> Witness Oak Polycultures
> Rockingham, VT
>
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