To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] [NAFEX} Jonafree, scab res, how good are they?
Date: Sat, 14 May 2011 09:14:04 -0500
I have a friend here in Tenn who has a home orchard and really likes his 2
trees of Liberty. I liked the few I have eaten. I know he has a Granny
Smith, and ask about them every year. He says they get brown spots on them
and fall off the tree so they always pick and dry them. When we were in
Olympia WA last fall my son there was searching for scab resistant apples,
as he said that was the big disease problem they have to deal with. His
Fujis looked fine but his Granny Smiths, yuck, big brown rotten spots. I
yanked off anything I could reach that was deformed, small and especially
rotting. They had poor pollinating conditions that spring, hence the
deformities. What I'm coming around to here is that we went to an old
homesite where the best trees of the original 160 acre homestead orchard had
been duplicated. Presumably they are also scab resistant. The former owner
of the house had been very nice and told him all about it, and the son of
the current owner let us sample fruit and take budwood. The apples were all
good, even the incredibly sour one that his daughter liked. Anyone out that
way can find it with a little investigating, it was the home of George W.
Bush of the 1850's and the world's largest butternut tree is there. Donna