Newbie Seeks Selection Help

[Mark_g]

Hello, we want to plant 6-8 semi-dwarf (or possibly some dwarf) apples trees this spring at our house near Monticello NY, elev 1100 ft. Site faces SSE, but is also partially shaded by established woods. Soil tends to be heavy and stony, but we can improve before planting.

Our priorities are: ornamental shape tree w/striking fruit, excellent flavor, not found at every farm stand, excellent cooking (must hold shape), eating/flavor/texture, reasonably long cold storage thru winter.

We would like hardy trees that bear fruit without a huge amount of maintenance, blight/bug & winter tolerant (last year a week at -11º), and a small assortment to offer early thru late harvest. We're reasonably experienced gardeners, though not with fruit-bearing trees.

The following are on our list -- open to other suggestions, but in the end, would like to refine the final list to no more than 4-5 varieties. I very much invite your comments and suggestions!

Blue Pearman
Duchess of Oldenburg
Garden Royal
Grimes Golden
Hubbardston Nonesuch
Ribston Pippin
Reinette Zabergau
Roxbury Russet
Smokehouse
Spartan

Thank you all, Mark

[plumfan]

Hi Mark!

What is your deer situation? Can you keep them from munching your trees down?

I would encourage you to plan on at least one each of Sundance and GoldRush. Especially the Goldrush -- it's keeping qualities are about a year in refrig if you take care to keep them from drying out. Sundance is a good keeper too, tastes lemony fresh off the tree aging over the winter to pineapple notes. My wifes fav! Both have excellent taste though. GoldRush probably makes the better cooker for pies. Both are immune to scab problems in case you don't want to spray chemicals all summer.

I have some of the kinds on your list, but they have not fruited for me yet, so I cannot speak to their taste, disease resistance, nor storability as grown by me. You might have to do your own measured research on such things!

Good luck, let me know if there is any more info I can supply.

[Mark_g]

Hi plumfan, thanks for the reply.

Yes, we have deer a plenty. I was planning to install an electric fence around the area.

My wife had a huge rose garden in one of our first houses, so she is familiar with spraying and pest control. But, since the property is adjacent to a trout stream, we'd like to keep use down.

She bakes a fantastic Tarte Tatin, that's why we are always experimenting with apples that will keep their shape when cooking, yet have outstanding sweetness. That's the reason for cooking qualities, at least for some of the planting.

I will look into Sundance & Goldrush--and thanks again!

--Mark

[plumfan]

I am really an enthusiast of that 5 foot tall welded wire 4x2 fencing that comes from the farmstore. I cut off around 3 feet worth, form into a cylinder, and set over the baby apple. Use a stake or fiberglass fencepost if you want to make it secure to the ground. Deer pretty much respect this system, especially when anchored with stakes. My deer don't feed higher than 5 feet, so it works really good!

You can just leave the cylinder on for long term too, as it prevents deer from exercising their antlers on the sapling come fall, when they are rutting.

I have had trees "gored" by deer, and it aint a pretty site!

[hlgorton]

I have a question about plumfan's deer exclosures. It sounds like they will be about a foot in diameter. What do you do with the tree branches? Do they stick out? If so, don't the deer munch them off? Or do you squeeze them inside the cylinder of fencing?

Thanks for your help.

[tkuntz]

Not sure how plumfan does it, but I use similar fencing (I call it hog fence, squares are about 6"x6"). I make a larger circle than plumfan, about six to eight feet of fence. Because the circle is large, I can lift it up over the tree if I need access for the first few years. Usually once the tree is in its fifth or sixth leaf, the fence can be removed perminately because the tree is large enough to withstand some browsing. The bucks usually leave the trees alone at this point as well.
I would not recommend keeping the limbs within the cage because they will be trained to stay in that form forever if left that way for a few months. Let them go through or over fence. Also be careful about limbs rubbing on the wire. Can cause enough damage to kill the limb.

Another option is to build a low cost fence around your whole orchard. I am doing this now on orchards up to 25 acres in size. It involves using 10' tall black poly fence. Best price I've found is at gemplers.com. Need to put a 10' post every 10-12' (2' in ground). Or attach to existing trees. Flare poly fence towards outside on ground. Tie fence to posts with electrical zip ties. Fence height is 8', deer cannot tell how tall it is because they see two dimensional. You can put up an 80' square block for less than $500. This is a rough overview. I can give more details if anyone is interested.

[plumfan]

Around my garden and apple nursery I use mostly the 7 foot tall black poly netting, attached with nylon string to 10 foot metal fence posts every 20 feet or so. I haven't had deer ever penetrate this setup!

For individual trees sometimes I use discarded 39 inch or 48 inch field fencing, usually its holes are around 4 x 4 or 6 x 6 inches square. I'll cut off around 13 feet with my small boltcutters and form it into a nice large hoop that goes around an apple tree. Works pretty good, especially if staked in place so deer cannot move them around!

The 4 x 2 galvanized fencing, I conserve on it cuz it is more expensive than used fencing, and I use around 30 inches of that formed into a cylinder. If you would buy the 4 foot tall variety of this, you can just keep the treelet clean of branches for the first 4 feet, then anything above that you can let branch out. My deer feet on leaves up to about 5 feet, and no higher.

Hope that helps.

[hlgorton]

Thanks to Plumfan and tkuntz for the fencing information.