# Apple Trees and their management



## St Allie (Nov 6, 2009)

Tanglefoot on red balls hung from apple trees.. codling moth.. borer.. fireblight.. lichen..fertilising.. pruning..

anything and everything to do with apples.. 

If people are making cider and wines out of specific apples.. please name them and the ratios you are using also..

Some of us are still planting more trees.. all information gratefully received.

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 6, 2009)

*Apple varieties*

Sad but true, I have no idea what brand my apples are! 
Somewhere between a Johnathan and a Gravenstein from the looks and taste.


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## St Allie (Nov 6, 2009)

are they all the same apples?

Why can't you get them identified? take them to a local grower?.. or send photos to a few different nursey growers and see what they say?

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 6, 2009)

St Allie said:


> are they all the same apples?
> 
> Why can't you get them identified? take them to a local grower?.. or send photos to a few different nursey growers and see what they say?
> 
> Allie



Pretty sure they're Johnathans


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## St Allie (Nov 6, 2009)

I'm pretty sure that's an apple..


In the US. Your apples have different brand names to NZ.. If you can narrow it down to a brand name.. It will help the international members here. ( Aust/UK/NZ/USA etc)

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 6, 2009)

St Allie said:


> I'm pretty sure that's an apple..
> 
> 
> In the US. Your apples have different brand names to NZ.. If you can narrow it down to a brand name.. It will help the international members here. ( Aust/UK/NZ/USA etc)
> ...


Ah, ha.... Take your pick:


http://www.allaboutapples.com/varieties/index.htm

Or:


> Jonathan
> (Also known as: Philip Rick)
> Parentage / Origin: New York, 1862
> View list of Jonathan sport varieties
> ...


.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 6, 2009)

Okay...
Allie started this thread because, among other reasons, I mentioned elsewhere that I had solved my worm problem with "traps" instead of sprays.
Years and years ago, I'd heard about using fake apples to deter apple maggots. You get something round (I used rubber balls), and if it's not red, paint it red. There is a product called Tanglefoot around here. I'm sure there's something similar in other places. It's a sticky goo (Castor oil, Natural Gum Resins, and Vegetable Wax) the consistency of honey. Coat the fake apple with this and hang it in your trees. This year we went from an 80% loss, to 90% good apples. That was only three traps in 2 trees.
(Note: wear gloves! It takes mineral spirits to get it off your hands!)


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 6, 2009)

*Apple Jack*

Pardon the multiple postings. 
Pioneer's recipe for Apple Jack:
Take your hard apple cider and set it outside when the temperature is below freezing. The water content will freeze and what's left if almost pure apple flavored alcohol. After you rack off the Jack, if you're really thirsty, put the slush in a salad spinner and give it a twirl, or two to get those last drops.
Just don't smoke while you're enjoying this treat.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 7, 2009)

*In the beginning...*

Just thought I throw this in here, to keep the thread going. This is where my 8 bushels of apples came from.


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## whine4wine (Nov 11, 2009)

I had never heard of tanglefoot before.

After a little search on the net about it, I will definately be trying it next year.

It says to hang the "apples" at the end of blossom time, before all the petals fall. This sounds like a great idea. I'll be sure to try it next spring.

Thanks guys.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 11, 2009)

whine4wine said:


> I had never heard of tanglefoot before.
> 
> After a little search on the net about it, I will definately be trying it next year.
> 
> ...


I held this idea in reserve for over 20 years before I tried it. It appears to have worked like magic!


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## Mud (Nov 22, 2009)

I've got a couple of apples trees that were just planted last spring. There's 1 each of the following: a Golden Russet on mm.111, a Michelin on G.30, and a Dabinett on M.7. There's also 1 each bartlett and bosc pears. My intention is to make cider and perry mostly. Those aren't the best pear choices, but there's more lawn out there. Just gotta work around the plums and peaches.  

I have a spray schedule for apples that was provided by an orchardist. This stuff is regulated for good reason, so I'm not suggesting anyone use this. But it's interesting to see what is sprayed by commercial growers. Uh, wait...can't figure out how to upload the jpg...More on that later. 

-Mud


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## Mud (Nov 22, 2009)

OK...Read Wade's sticky on uploading pics...Here we go:


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 22, 2009)

One of the reasons we have a garden, and are adding to our fruit orchard, is to avoid all the pesticides and other chemicals used commercially. Hence my interest in using the fly traps described in my earlier posts.


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## St Allie (Nov 22, 2009)

my bosc has a lot of residual sorbates Mud.. you'll find you won't need to backsweeten at all. In fact it was too sweet for me.. but blend some perry into your cider to add sweetness .. about a litre perry to 4 litres cider.. is a good balance without over doing it.


another point about infected fruit.. fall cleanup is really important.. clean up under the trees any fallen infected fruit must be gotten rid of.. if you have cattle nearby.. throw it over the fence.. they'll eat the lot. rake all fallen leaves and burn them.

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 22, 2009)

Good points, Allie! My sons' least favorite chore in the fall is keeping the dropped apples picked up. My youngest asked, "Is this why they call it Fall?"
We give ours away to friends as deer treats, and feed a bunch to our chickens. The deer come and clean up the rest as winter progresses.
I don't burn the leaves. I use them for sheet composting the garden and greenhouse beds. I usually have too many other things to do, than tending to a smoldering pile of compacted leaves. Too much smoke, nasty smell, and dirty looks from the neighbors. 
 If you want a fine leaf mulch for potting, or flower beds, try a bunch of _*dry*_ leaves in a 30 gallon rubber garbage can with your weed eater (string trimmer). It's like a giant Cuisinart!


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## St Allie (Nov 22, 2009)

Old Philosopher said:


> I don't burn the leaves. I use them for sheet composting the garden and greenhouse beds. I usually have too many other things to do, than tending to a smoldering pile of compacted leaves. Too much smoke, nasty smell, and dirty looks from the neighbors.
> If you want a fine leaf mulch for potting, or flower beds, try a bunch of _*dry*_ leaves in a 30 gallon rubber garbage can with your weed eater (string trimmer). It's like a giant Cuisinart!



I was speaking of infected trees.

don't compost or mulch the leaves from the apple trees if there has been any sign of bugs...

Leaf roller caterpillar /codling moth will over-winter in these leaves.. and give you a nice dose of reinfection come springtime. If burning them is a problem with the neighbours.. dig a hole well away from your apple and pear trees and bury the leaves.

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 22, 2009)

Allie, my reading comprehension failed me. Fortunately, the only time I ever had to burn leaves was when I got a dose of fire blight on a flowering cherry. I spent hours tending the burn barrel, only to find out later that fire blight is so robust that even the smoke from burning leaves can carry the disease to other trees! Arrrghhh. I was lucky, nothing else got infected. Not too sure about the neighbors down wind of me, though. :<
I haven't had any problem, that I can trace, with regularly composting leaves because (I guess) the high temps in the compost heap. Sheet composting is more risky, I agree, because eggs, etc. just go dormant.
Bottom line for me though, is that I'd rather fight a new hatch of a few critters, than wondering if I washed all that malathion off my produce.


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## St Allie (Nov 22, 2009)

I'm really glad that we don't have fireblight here.

Aussie still won't accept our apples due to infected fruit tree stock being sent here from overseas once.. the stock was all destroyed and we never had a problem.. but the aussies still insist on using that incident as an excuse to prevent us shipping fruit to them..

grumbles .. mutters... and goes off to delete spambots...

Allie


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 22, 2009)

At one point, Washington State, because of their apple industry, wouldn't allow ANY fruit into the State, even if it was packed in you picnic basket!


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## GANGGREEN (Jan 1, 2010)

I started a small orchard a couple of years ago but, after a horrible spring last year, it hasn't produced a crop yet. The older trees will be 3 years old this spring and I'm hopeful that they'll set fruit. I have apples, pears, plums, sour cherries and a peach/nectarine or two. There are about 50 trees in the ground now but I'll plant two dozen more this spring and will probably top out at about 100 trees next spring.

I think that there are some government grants available for commercial organic farm operations around here and I'll probably check into it but I'm not interested in a lot of government rules/regulations that I have to follow and I'm not convinced that I want the bother of proving that I'm a commercial operation.

So far I mostly have varieties that are best suited for fresh eating, at least with the apples. I have Honeycrisp, Jonagold, Empire, Gala, Spartan, Northern Spy, Pristine and a probably a few others that I'm forgetting, mostly on G16 rootstocks. I also have Aurora, Bartlett, Collette, Harvest Queen and Seckel pears, Balaton and Surefire sour cherries and Longjohn, Greengage and Stanley plums along with Saturn peach and Fantasia nectarines.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 13, 2011)

I'm bumping this old thread for a couple reasons.
First, for the past 3 weeks I have obsessed with apples. They have controlled my life! They say trees alternate years with production, but this year both our trees went nuts! We ended up only picking about 3/4 of our crop, which yielded 3 and 1/2 33 gallon garbage cans full of unblemished apple. I don't think it was the Tanglefoot traps, but rather the weather. Virtually no pests!

I ended up giving away about 80 pounds of apples the local food bank, and the neighbor is picking the last 1/4 of the crop, which is still on the trees.

I've made 12 gallons of wine, 3 gallons of cider and have another 4 gallons of juice in the freezer for next Spring's wine. All this from TWO mature trees! I can't imagine having to deal with the crop from a larger orchard.
I still have another 80-90 pounds to turn into dried apple rings, pie filling (to be canned), and jelly.

So...my second reason for bumping this thread is to ask of anyone has a _*proven*_ method for storing fresh apples for an extended period of time? My first inclination is to layer them in straw in a garbage can and put them in my root cellar. I've tried layering them with newspaper in crates that allowed air to circulate, but that failed. I'm not about to wrap each one in tissue paper and stack them in apple crates. I'd be at it until Thanksgiving!

Any suggestions?


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 14, 2011)

I have 3 apple trees and also would like to know if there is any way to store the apples. But I doubt it's doable without a temperature controled warehouse so I plan to make cider/wine out of them.

Old Philosopher - What do you do to control codling moths? That seems to be the biggest problem with my apples and I hate the idea of chemical spraying the trees.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 14, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> I have 3 apple trees and also would like to know if there is any way to store the apples. But I doubt it's doable without a temperature controled warehouse so I plan to make cider/wine out of them.


My understanding is humidity is nearly as important as temperature. I can't control either in my half refurbished root cellar. I guess if we don't get any feedback here from experienced folks, I'll try the straw and report back as time goes on. If you come up with a good answer, please post. Good luck with your wine! With yeast nutrient and both Curvee and Montrachet yeast, my wine has been finishing in about a week!


> Old Philosopher - What do you do to control codling moths? That seems to be the biggest problem with my apples and I hate the idea of chemical spraying the trees.


I have found the traps work very well. I use bright red rubber balls (the size of apples) coated with Tanglefoot. Only 3 balls hung in the 2 trees cut my pest problems to 1/4 what it was. 
I heard that a bright red apple coated with honey will work also, although I've not tried it. The apples last less time than the balls and Tanglefoot.
Get the traps in your trees before the first blooms. I haven't had any evidence that I was trapping pollinators during the bloom.


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## grapeman (Nov 14, 2011)

The only real way of long term storage is to store in a very close to freezing temperature and even with that they will get punky after a couple months. Some apples store better than others. Large apple storages place them in Controlled Atmosphere storage (CA) where the amount of 02 is regulated by increasing other gas levels. This decreases the ethylene production which matures the apple and makes them age. Some varieties store better than others.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 14, 2011)

grapeman said:


> The only real way of long term storage is to store in a very close to freezing temperature and even with that they will get punky after a couple months. Some apples store better than others. Large apple storages place them in Controlled Atmosphere storage (CA) where the amount of 02 is regulated by increasing other gas levels. This decreases the ethylene production which matures the apple and makes them age. Some varieties store better than others.


Makes me wish I could by those "green bags" (that dispel ethylene) in 30 gallon sizes! Hahaha!


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 14, 2011)

Thanks. I'll give the tree tanglefoot and red balls idea a try this coming spring. I planted my golden delicious apple tree 20+ years ago and the yield is very good but wormy because I hate spraying them. My other 2 are a Jonathan and a red delicious that are just beginning to produce.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 14, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> Thanks. I'll give the tree tanglefoot and red balls idea a try this coming spring. I planted my golden delicious apple tree 20+ years ago and the yield is very good but wormy because I hate spraying them. My other 2 are a Jonathan and a red delicious that are just beginning to produce.


Both my trees are Johnathans. Out of 14 bushels harvested, we had less than 1.5 bushels of wormy apples. We don't spray for anything.


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 15, 2011)

I see that you can wrap material around the trunk of the tree and put the tanglefoot on that also to trap the critters as they make their way up the tree.


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 15, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> I see that you can wrap material around the trunk of the tree and put the tanglefoot on that also to trap the critters as they make their way up the tree.


IIRC, apple maggots/codling moths are airborne attackers. I know ringing the trees with Tanglefoot would get me scratched from my cats' Christmas list in a hurry!


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 17, 2011)

The painted red balls are supposed to look like apples to the moths? Just a thought but would plastic fake red apples work even better?


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 17, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> The painted red balls are supposed to look like apples to the moths? Just a thought but would plastic fake red apples work even better?


Yep! This is the time of year to buy an extra box of those 3" red apple Christmas tree ornaments!


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 17, 2011)

And green ones for my golden delicious tree?


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 17, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> And green ones for my golden delicious tree?


Hahaha! Now THAT'S funny! Never thought about that. But come to think of it, all apples are green to begin with, right? Besides, last time I checked, bugs were colorblind.


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 17, 2011)

What do you do with the red balls after moth catching season is over? Is the tanglefoot able to be cleaned off the balls or do you have to throw them away?


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## Old Philosopher (Nov 17, 2011)

Larryh86GT said:


> What do you do with the red balls after moth catching season is over? Is the tanglefoot able to be cleaned off the balls or do you have to throw them away?


They can be cleaned with solvent, or even hot soapy water (marginally effective). The coating of goo, and dead bugs usually makes them a candidate for the garbage can at my house. Not unlike a used fly trap! 
I got two years out of my first ones by leaving them in the tree and letting them weather, then just re-applying Tanglefoot over what junk was left.


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## Larryh86GT (Nov 17, 2011)

I've bought a 16 oz tub of the tanglefoot and am looking for the balls now. Thanks for your help. It would be nice not to have all wormy apples next year. 
Maybe I should get this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/24-Red-Chri...104?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item519ba6c5f0
Then I would only have to get one for the three trees.


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## Old Philosopher (Dec 14, 2011)

St Allie said:


> are they all the same apples?
> 
> Why can't you get them identified? take them to a local grower?.. or send photos to a few different nursey growers and see what they say?
> 
> Allie


After my apple marathon this fall, I'm really wanting to identify these old apple trees. I've come to the conclusion they are NOT Johnathan. 
I've taken leaves, branches and apples to two different nurseries, and received two different answers.  
It seems to be narrowed down to Gravenstein, McIntosh, or possibly Winesap.
I'm leaning toward Gravenstein myself.
Does anyone have some advice on a web link, book, or other source of a definitive key to identify a specific apple variety? Or are there just too many cross-varieties these days to even try?



BTW, what has become of St. Allie? She hasn't been on since last February??? She okay?


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## Angelina (Dec 14, 2011)

Here's a link that might help.

http://www.orangepippin.com/varietyindex.aspx


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## Old Philosopher (Dec 14, 2011)

Angelina said:


> Here's a link that might help.
> 
> http://www.orangepippin.com/varietyindex.aspx



Outstanding!!! While all the three I mentioned look pretty much alike, that site clinched it.
Medium sized
Cold tolerant
Late season
Flowering: mid-season
Flowering Groups: 3
Spur-bearer (!!)

They are Winesap, almost 100% sure of it.

Thank you so much!


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## Angelina (Dec 21, 2011)

Glad I could help


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