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This year has been amazing, our crop of Clapp's Favourite Pears was very abundant, and now the Bartlett Pears are plentiful, all on the same tree as I have grafted both onto wild root stock.
We are now picking a very healthy and plentiful crop of Cortland and Empire Apples on different trees, and Northern Spy later, best crop in years.
Earlier the [we used to call them Harvest Apples ] again were very prolific and tasty, and they make great " Apple Sauce ".
No late frost this spring really helped the apples around here too. Trees I havnt seen apples on in quite a while have some this year. The good trees are loaded. Apple trees are the best for deer scrapes too, I'll have to set my cameras out soon over some
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This year was one of the dampest springs we have had in years, followed by hot temperatures as soon as June 21 or summer arrived. All of the trees have way more leaves this year than the last five years.
Trees at my camp are crazy loaded with apples. Most I have seen in 10+ years. This tree is a twisted old gnarly thing that looks like it had some lightning damage in the past and I have never seen apples on it before this year:
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It has a moderate amount of Granny Smith size apples - incredible that this old tree is bearing fruit this year.
All the trees up this way are loaded as well. One thing I have noticed however, is that the apples seem to be smaller than normal? Too dry of a summer perhaps?
Wife and I made 4 batches of crab apple jelly today! Attachment 38945
Lots of apples on an unpruned tree means they will be smaller. The tree only has so much resources for creating fruit, so when it produces a lot, they are smaller. On my pear tree at home, I pick off a lot of the fruit as soon as they begin to form. I'll have less pears - but they are bigger.
At deer camp I prefer them numerous and small. They stay on the tree longer and spread out the drop. Makes the good early season bow hunting last longer.Quote:
Originally Posted by werner.reiche
That makes sense? The trees I'm referring to are on the roadside and old farms in the area.Quote:
Originally Posted by werner.reiche
Very true!, this also pertains to apples.Quote:
Originally Posted by werner.reiche
People I know that have a 200 acre Orchard, used to have the largest Golden Delicious Apples around, their father was very diligent in picking off a lot of fruit of the branches [Golden Delicious] trees , and this allowed the remaining fruit to grow to a large size.
I have heard comments like "boy these are big " at the market where they were selling their fruit and also at the orchard when people arrived to buy fruit there.
The old adage "Good Fruit on Old Growth Will Not Grow " holds true. You must prune trees to get new growth which then produces good fruit.
Orchards and fruit trees are time and labour intensive.
I'm a huge fan of Crabapple jelly. One of my favorite Dolgo Crabapple trees is barren this year but another one I found is loaded like crazy this year. Wifey and I picked about 40lb in a half hour. That gave us six batches, 3 are canned and 3 batches of juice are in the freezer. Each batch takes me 90 minutes just to prepare as each small apple needs to be trimmed and cut before boiling. I went back on my own last Friday and got another 30lb in around 40 min, so enough for another 5 batches. Each batch provides over 8 cups of juice, so along with 6+cups of sugar we get up to 8 jars, depending on how many 500ml we use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushmoose
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