My Baldwin Apple tree isn't quite dead yet…

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Out in our hay pasture we have four and a half apple trees, left over from when the 230+ year old property originally had a thriving orchard.

The trees are;
A Mystery apple tree, it bears intensely sweet yellow apples with a slight rose wash and russeting around the stem, it might be a Tolman Sweet tree
Two and a half Baldwin apples (more on this later)
Mystery Tree 2.0, the youngest of the bunch, the apples taste like a mix of Baldwin and Mystery, more than likely it’s exactly that, one of the Mystery apples that grew from seed

The Baldwins consist of two separate large trees, and a halfhearted sliver of a tree no more than a few branches, it still bears fruit though, it’s just sad and weak

Last year, one of the large Baldwins got toppled halfway up the trunk in a windstorm, it looked like a mortal wound, I lost all the half ripened apples on that tree…

I was planning to cut it down this season, use it for firewood, perhaps a couple handgun grips, a gnarled old Gandalf-esque staff, I wasn’t going to let the wood go to waste…

So over the weekend, I went into the field to check on the trees

Mystery Tree 2.0; healthy
Mystery Tree 1.0; extremely healthy, especially for a 150-200 year old tree (guessing here, but it IS exceptionally old)
Baldwin 1; a weak sliver of a tree, but leafing out
Baldwin 2; standing tall and proud, vigorously healthy
Baldwin 3; fallen over about halfway up the trunk… And leafing out! Even a few Apple blooms opening!

It’s not quite dead…
It’s not even “mostly” dead
It’s alive, and fighting!

…and it’ll be a heck of a lot easier to harvest apples off it this season :wink:

This one has definitely earned the right to be cloned/grafted, it’s a fighter for sure!

Not sure if you’d see this level of hardiness from these modern designer apple trees, heritage heirloom organic trees are the way to go

I’ve also decided to start a “feral orchard” this or next year, I see a good half dozen or so abandoned roadside Apple trees that are prime for taking grafting cuttings from…

One in the woods behind work
One a half mile or so from work on the drive home, and at least three on one of the back roads next to home, all leaning over the road, all prime for grafting material

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Named after Loammi Baldwin who surveyed the route of the Middlesex Canal between Lowell and Cambridge, Mass.

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Here’s the link to thephotobucket page

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Let me try this again…

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I wonder if you can have the trees id’d by DNA or something.

StG

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One mystery tree in my yard produced small, hard, juicy, yummy red apples. A couple of mystery trees produced green apples that were so hard even the deer ignored them. A goodly number of the green apples stayed on the tree all winter. Stubborn buggers. Wish you luck with starting your mystery heirloom orchard. It’s amazing how much you can hack off an old apple tree and then see it produce new branches. I keep hoping to find someone selling Northern Spy, York, Rome, the real Cortland and MacIntosh but, alas, grocery store apples all taste the same.:frowning:

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All told, we have the following Apple trees, 8 in total
Mcintosh (50+ year old tree)
Cortland (50+)
Red Delicious (50+ and not the modern bland deep red RD, these are tiger striped with faint green lines, a true antique heirloom RD)
2.5 Baldwin trees (at least 100 years old)
Mystery Apple 1.0 (150-200 years old)
Mystery Apple 2.0 (25 years old, probably a cross between Baldwin and Mystery 1.0, a unique variety native to our farm only)

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MacTech, I wish I was closer, to help you harvest, and had land to plant seeds from whatever I took home. The wife’s preferred apple is Macoun.

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I’ve read a lot about apples this morning! I remember reading in one of my gardening books that old apple trees should be topped, eventually they get too old to bear fruit. (But if you have a 150-200 year old tree, I wonder… :dubious: )

I tried to find the section in the book, and couldn’t find it. I did find this website, and if you scroll down to page 4, I think the wind “dehorned” your tree. (There’s a sketch.)

Restoring old apple trees.

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One thing I forgot to add, if you’ve never tasted a “wild” or “feral” apple, it’s always a gamble, depending greatly upon the genetic mix of the parent trees, in my case, Mystery 2.0 is a bit of a letdown, it looks like that paragon of deliciousness that is Mystery 1.0, but its not, it’s more tart, and with a slight bitterness, it’s not bad per se, but as a fresh eating apple, it’s lacking something, it’d work great in baked goods or as a cider apple, but it’s not a snacking Apple

As far as heritage antique apples go, the flavor is light years better than the typical grocery store apple, that first bite into a Mystery starts with a subtle sweetness, that rapidly blooms into an intensely sweet honey flavor, with a pleasing crisp mouth feel and just enough juice to tickle the tongue, but not dribble messily down the chin

Darnit, now I want one of the Mystery apples!

Interestingly, from the research I’ve been doing on cloning/grafting onto donor rootstock, I’ve discovered that the donor rootstock can sometimes alter the genetics and flavor of the apples produced by the grafted stock, this might be an issue with Mystery 1.0, as I think the apples it produces are perfect as they are and I don’t want to take any chances with genetic drift or mutation, so I’ll be attempting a straight clone of this tree, the other trees in the orchard, especially Mystery 2.0? It’d be fun to see what changes grafting rootstock would impart to the new tree…

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And so begins another page in the saga of the Mystery Tree…

I took a cutting of one of the small new shoots from the MT, cut the branch at a 45 degree angle and brought it to a point, then came back up to the house and used the highly scientific procedure of planting the branch as deep as possible in a nice loamy and moist section of the lawn…

Hopefully the branch will take root and I’ll have another Mystery Tree in a few years…

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Oh, and I added a couple photos of the Mystery Tree’s Apple blossoms, they have sharper, more pointy-shaped petals than the other trees, a distinct pinkish blush, and the unopened buds have a shockingly bright magenta tint

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Do you get flocks of Cedar Waxwings when the apple trees are in bloom? They really do pass blossom petals to each other.

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I haven’t noticed any, but I haven’t really been looking

I found two more wild/feral Apple trees in the field, both in relatively poor shape compared to the Mystery tree, I’m also trying another bout of cloning, I just read about willow tree water as a rooting hormone, and we just happen to have a good sized willow in the field

So now I’m trying to root a Baldwin cutting as well

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Day 8 on the Mystery Twig, still going strong, no signs of wilting

Day 4, The Baldwin twigs are badly wilting and look like they’re dying

I’m going to take my Mantis tiller to the field behind the Mystery Twig and turn it over, plant a few more Mystery Twigs