I am in the research stage of planning the trees for our apple orchard. I have selected ambrosia, ergemont russet, golden russet, melrose, spartan, aurora golden gala, jonagold, shamrock and snowdrift/crabapple. I was wondering if you could let me know if this is a successful blend of trees that will crosspollinate. I am looking for an assortment of apples for eating fresh, dessert, cooking and cider. Also, apples that are suitable for growing on Mayne Island, BC. Our growing conditions are good. thank you for you input,
Hi Gakey: < I have selected ambrosia, ergemont russet, golden russet, melrose, spartan, aurora golden gala, jonagold, shamrock and snowdrift/crabapple. > As one that has set up orchards for people either for commercial or home gardening purposes, even developed a few Apple collections for people, I have been real hesitant to jump into this thread all because I know that there is so much information that needs to be explored upon and as a result there are many pertinent questions that need to be answered. I am not familiar with your area as far as soil type, prevailing wind direction, length of growing season, proposed irrigation systems, whether you plan to trellis these trees of not, what rootstock you plan to use, what nursery or nurseries you plan to buy your trees from, what kind of spacings you want for your trees and what pattern of spacings you plan to have, whether you want to mix and match dwarf and semi-dwarf forms of Apples or grow standards and do you plan on being an organic grower or not? Are these Apples for you, for your immediate family and friends or are you planning to start a business of growing fresh eating Apples, growing Apples for a processor or growing Apples just for selling Cider? How many trees do you want to have for each variety you have mentioned? What are your restrictions for pesticide usage for your location? What pests do you expect to be the most problematic for you in the future? What kind of bee activity do you feel you will have once these trees are old enough to blossom? If you expect minimal bee activity how do you propose to counter that? Not all of the questions above need to be worked on now but there are some rather pressing issues you must spend some serious thought time on right now. Still, I do not want to dissuade you in your desire to grow Apples. I've grown Apples for 40 years and am currently growing 200 acres of Fuji and Granny Smith Apples commercially. I think you are best served to ask around to the local people growing Apples and learn what they suggest you do based on what your long term plans are. If your market will be local you will have to analyze what your chances are of breaking into that market. If you are growing Apples as a home gardener with designs of perhaps selling some fresh market Apples at some point in time, then I think you are in much better shape doing that. It all comes down to do you have any real business plans for your Apples? I've seen foothill and mountain growers start up a small "you pick" business with as little as 20 trees of Arkansas Black and Ozark Gold Apples alone so I know it can be done. You have a lot of work to do, some running around getting answers and ideas from other people but I think your best answers will come from the local Apple growers where you are and from one particular neighboring island rather than possibly paying someone far away to help answer the questions for you and to perhaps set things up for you on paper. Still, you have to either do all of the work yourself or contract out someone else to do much of the planning and the physical work for you. Just a sidenote: If it was me I would include an Esopus Spitzenberg and a Cox's Orange Pippin. Good luck, Jim
Hi Gakey: I'll try to simplify an ambiguous answer to your initial question on your proposed varieties. At first they appear to work to pollinize each other but we have to separate out which ones are better pollinizers than the others and which ones will be the receptors of the pollinizing. Sounds simple doesn't it but the solution is by no means simple. A lot depends on how many of each Apple variety you want. Do you want a 12' spacing of trees all in two rows, 4 rows, 6 rows, 8 rows, what? What is your total area to work with for planting trees will be a major consideration when determining which varieties will go where when you want to plant for optimal orchard pollinization. We try to put our best pollinizers on the point whereby the usual wind direction starts from. The receptors are usually at the end of the orchard whereby the wind and pollen is carried to. There are square, diagonal and diamond, to name a few, patterns used to plant trees in an orchard, all based on spacings, area, number of rows that we want, wind direction and where we want our stronger pollinizers to be located. What you will want to do is figure out which of the varieties are your better pollinizers and devise a plan to utilize them to best pollinize your varieties that are more likely to be the receptors instead. You will have to go through each variety one by one and determine which variety will more likely pollinize another variety. The problem with several desired varieties means that we may have to have more than one strong pollinizer out of necessity to pollinize a group of receptor varieties. So, our number of trees may not be what we first thought we would purchase for planting. By knowing where each individual pollinizer tree will be planted we can then figure out where the receptors may have to go based on the size of the planting area, wind direction, tree spacings and to a lesser extent how we plan on watering the trees. Here is the whole problem in a nutshell. Either you figure out how you want these trees to be planted or you will have to pay someone to do it for you. For someone to find out what they will need to know will take a lot of time as there may not be anyone well versed in each and every variety you will want to plant to better determine the pattern of the trees to be planted. You will save yourself a lot of money by doing your "homework" on your own, rather than paying someone else to essentially do the same homework at your expense. Orchard set ups are much different than a home garden set up. As long as we know what we want, how we want to plant the trees, how many trees we want to plant, how many of each variety we want we can usually "wing it" and come up with a no real thought, spontaneous, remedy that can work for us but your area is much different than ours and the varieties of Apples are vastly different. All we need is a Red Delicious or a Granny Smith anywhere near our other Apples and the Fuji, Mutsu, Gordon, Pippin, Gala, Jonagold and others seem to fall into place for us like magic. For you that will not be the case based on the varieties you have chosen and the Apples that are prevalent in your area. For home gardening just pick out the varieties you want to grow and then ask someone that is growing Apples how they would plant them if those varieties were theirs. You may find some nice growers that will help you but you also may encounter people that may not be so nice. Learn and know your varieties and which ones are the more important ones to you. Plant the better pollinizers in spots that seem to you like they would better pollinize the receptors and go from there. If you can place your order from one nursery ask them how they would plant all of the trees by variety. A lot of times they will be more than glad to set up a planting plot plan for you but I am not so sure that will happen where you are located. Here yes, it can happen but I would not bet the farm on it where you are. Jim
Hi Gakey: A quick note: I may be the one having a problem with the term orchard as orchard to me means many trees, usually in increment sizes in acres. I better realize now that some "orchards" in British Columbia and neighboring areas are really not much larger in size than what many of our backyard growers are utilizing for home growing purposes here. I may very well be guilty of being overly presumptuous and the problem in semantics of the word orchard becomes solely mine. For a home garden the varieties you have picked out will be fine. The real questions are how many trees of each variety do you want to have and then how do you want to plant them accordingly based on their pollinizing factors, taking into consideration any possible space restrictions. I'll leave you alone now. Sorry for my being just a little over zealous in the two previous posts. Jim
