Pomona Winter 2019

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019

Grafting Hard to Graft Species

The Ties That Bind

The OH NO Column!

Growing Pawpaw From Seeds

The Future of Hardy Kiwi

Frost/Freeze Injury

The Story of the Apple

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 2

NAFEX Leadership

Eliza Greenman Vice-President (Acting President) Website:

http://elizapples.com

Facebook:

https://facebook.com/elizapples

egreenman@gmail.com

Justin Holt Secretary 61 Dandelion Dr. Leicester, NC 28748 828-545-6198

justinveazeyholt@gmail.com

Charles Wilson Treasurer Program Committee Chair 1375 Willowbranch Rd. Jacksonville, IL 62650

charleswilson5@aol.com

Clifford England Interest Groups Chair 2338 Hwy 2004 McKee, KY 40447 (606) 965-2228

nuttrees@prtcnet.org

Tom Celona (2020) Membership Chair 74 Hillside St. Asheville, NC 28801 401-374-8323

nafexmember@gmail.com

Jerry Lehman (2020) 7780 Persimmon St. Terre Haute IN 47802-4994 (812) 298-8733

JWLehmantree@Gmail.com

Barbara Rosholdt (2020) PO Box 7 Mineral, VA 23117

rosholdt@erols.com

Pomona Editor-in-chief (ROTATING) Orchard Visitation Committee Chair (VACANT)

Taylor Malone (2018) 1107 Claiborne St. Johnson City, TN 37601

malonets@goldmail.etsu.edu

Rhonda Britton (2020) Regional Extension Agent – Home Grounds Alabama Cooperative Extension System 819 Cook Avenue Huntsville, Al 35801 256-532-1578 256-690-8979 (cell)

Steven Murray (2018) 9557 Corpus Rd. Bakersfield, CA 93387

murraystevena2@gmail.com

Taylor Yowell (2018) 164 Trace Cove Dr. Madison, MS 39110 769-226-6700

tyowellyo@yahoo.com

Bill Grimes (2020) 66 Farragut Avenue San Francisco, CA 94112-4050 (415) 469-0966

wagrimes@sonic.net

Mark Wessel (2020) 7459 Camargo Road Cincinnati, OH 45243 (513) 638-9304

growyourown@earthlink.net

Allan Cosnow Corporate Agent 607 Longwood Ave. Glencoe, IL 60022 (847) 835-5278

buonafrutta@aol.com

Don Orkoskey Webmaster 3620 Elmhurst Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15212

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019

POMONA The Member-Written, Quarterly Journal of North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX) Vol. 12.1 Winter 2019 Gathering Editor: Barbara Rosholdt

Letters

Dear NAFEX | Eliza Greenman

A Letter from the Gathering Editor | Barbara Rosholdt

Organizational Announcements

2019 Annual Meeting and Conference | Barbara Rosholdt

North American Pawpaw Growers Assoc.

How To Submit Articles to Pomona

Farms

Living Energy (persimmon) Farm | Alexis Zeigler

Apples

The Story of the Apple | Agnes Philpot the Exotic Fruit Lady © Republished from the March & April Edition of Fruit Gardener, a publication of California Rare Fruit Growers

crfg.org

The Apple Hunters | Larry Stephenson

Kiwis

The Future of the Hardy Kiwi | Kiwi Bob

Pawpaw

Growing Pawpaw From Seed | Michael Judd

Frost/Freeze Injury | © Ronald L. Powell, PhD

Leaf Shot Holes | © Ronald L. Powell, PhD

Equipment & Techniques

The Ties That Bind (Wrap it Up, I’ll Take It.) | Larry Stephenson

From the Orchard slopes: Grafting the Hard-to-Graft Species | Cliff, Jonathan, and Kum Hui England

IS IPM Dead or is it just Sleeping? Put the “I” Back in IPM | Mike Biltonen, Know Your Roots, Ithaca, NY

Tree Healing – Naturally | Samuel Dodd, Indianapolis, IN

The OH NO! Column | Barbara Rosholdt

Hazelnuts

Hazelnut Status Report | John Kelsey

All Things NAFEX

Interest Groups

Thinking About Pomona

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 2

As a membership organization, we are in a time of transition and I wanted to take a moment to get you all up to speed on the changes happening within our organization. As of the 2018 Annual Meeting, our board is younger than it has been in years- perhaps ever- yet it is still balanced by a strong backbone of long-time mem-bers/fruit growers who are helping to guide us “young” folk into the next generation of NAFEX with their talent and time. There are blessings and chal-lenges that come with young blood entering into the organization, and we as an organization have been witness to both over the past year. For starters, as many of you know, the younger cohort of NAFEX board members are starting families, buying houses/farm land, saddled with student debt, and afflicted with the dichotomy of growing fruit/farming while also trying to earn a living wage. There are only so many hours in the day and with so much in transition, being present and engaged as a volunteer board mem-ber IS difficult. With these difficulties, it is only natu-ral and responsible for us to re-evaluate what work-loads we can handle to be happy and healthy individ-uals/community/family members. It has come to our recent attention that Tom Knaust, our President, has identified a need to step back from the duties of NAFEX in order to focus on his immediate surround-ings. With great respect and compassion, we the NAFEX board want to lift Tom up, wish him the best, and pay thanks to all the hard work he has put in over the years as Treasurer and President. What happens when a NAFEX board president steps aside? The Vice President becomes stand-in President until another President is identified. This means I, Eliza Greenman, will be filling in as President until we (the membership and the board) go through the work of identifying the next President to fill Tom’s shoes. Thankfully, there is much support from the board and we are collectively moving forward with exciting news: Over the past year, all 50 years of the POMONA ar-chives were scanned and turned into searchable PDFs. This will soon be up on our website and mem-bers will be able to access through logging in. Having our POMONA in searchable PDF form allows the user to search many volumes at once for a certain search term, like “Stubbs” Mulberry or “Kolomikta” hardy kiwi. Having the POMONA in this format al-lows someone to sift through 50 years of research and citizen science in an instant. Stay tuned to our Face-book page, the Spring 2019 Pomona, and our new blog for this announcement. New blog? Yes- on the front page of our NAFEX website, you will be able to see snippets of archived Pomona articles along with announcements, new submissions from members and friends of NAFEX. We are excited to offer this as a step towards having our organization engage more with a broader internet audience. As for our quarterly POMONA publication, the board has decided to revive a past format of having a rotat-ing gathering editor for every quarter. This both takes the pressure off the Editor-in-Chief and also breathes a variety of interests into the POMONA on a quarter-ly basis. In having volunteer rotating gathering edi-tors, we believe this will help to reduce the work load of the Editor-in-Chief, whose job was once to do eve-rything- gather and publish. Gina at Ciderwood Press did a great job as Editor-in-Chief for the 2018 Fall Pomona, but is unable to continue further. While we have the gathering editors lined up for 2019, we are now looking towards the future to hire a publishing editor and recruit volunteer gathering editors for 2020. If you or someone you know may be interested in putting together our quarterly Pomona publication, or would like to become a gathering editor for 2020, please let us know by contacting a board member or filling our contact form on

www.NAFEX.org

. Please take note of our annual meeting happening Ju-ly 28th-31st in Iowa City, Iowa. We are looking for-ward to seeing you there! Horticordially, Eliza Greenman, Acting President

Dear NAFEX,

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 3

From the Domestead: Letter from the Gathering Editor | Barbara Rosholdt

This is the time of year when everyone is busy, but much of it is not outside. If I must be outside to care for animals or plants, I will be there, at dawn, noon and dusk, appreciating the orchard, the garden, the birds, the woods, and the cold.

We have some cold-hardy Buckeye chickens, but when it snows, deeply, they simply can’t go. We were supposed to get 6” in early December, but apparently Nature did not get the memo and we got 14”.

Unfortunately, it started well after dawn and the (unsuspecting) Buckeyes were out, enjoying the day. They gradually drifted in to our camper trailer/coop (which we called the RV) before it got deep, and my husband, Erling, spent some time digging paths to the outside feed shelters. As dusk was falling, we went out to lock everyone in for the night.

When I got to the Buckeye coop, I counted beaks twice and confirmed three birds were missing! I looked for my half-blind chicken – no there she was, on her perch. I stepped outside. There was about 10” down and it was still coming. I looked around. No suspicious humps, no one hiding in designated bird shelter areas. No one in the orchard. Hmmmm. Worrying for my chickies, I started digging beside the RV and looked under. There they were, huddled at the back, snowed in and dug in for the night. I called and called. It was dark, they couldn’t see well, and they weren’t budging.

Erling started digging around the RV, moving the snow he’d just piled there so they could get out. I got the net down and tried to get them to move. We turned on all the lights in the garden and paths. No dice. We got long painting poles and flashlights and by lying on our stomachs and shining flashlights, tried to get them to move. Nope. At that point Erling said, “Let’s leave them. No predator would be out on such a night!” But in my mind’s eye I saw a hungry predator digging everywhere looking for my chickens. Then he sug-gested he would grab my ankles and have me crawl into the 12” space under the RV. “I’ll drag you out.” Uh-huh.

Finally, armed with long poles and a net, we shined the flashlights at the hens and prodded them directly from each end of the RV. At first, they weren’t moving. But persistence prevailed, and finally two ran out the side and jumped on the ramp leading to the waiting chicken coop door. The third hen ran out the front under the trailer tongue, then quailed at the amount of snow in front of her (it hadn’t been shoveled) and I made a grab. She made a leap and landed square in the deep snow. She tried to move, swim, anything, and looked like a truly stuck vehicle. I picked her up and put her in the coop. Whew.

We both looked truly abominable, soaked from crawling on the ground on our stomachs, while being snowed on, and we gratefully made our way back to our house. Hot chocolate!

It has been also a thrilling experience to be the Winter Gathering Editor for 2019! Glad to help NAFEX and I think the articles are super. Please enjoy them, and don’t forget to put your name in for being a Gathering Editor next year. There are still a few slots available.

Barbara Rosholdt

Louisa, Virginia

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 4

2019 NAFEX & NNGA JOINT CONFERENCE

AND ANNUAL MEETING

The Graduate Hotel 210 S Dubuque St Iowa City, IA 52240

Tentative Shedule

Sunday July 28

Board Meetings

Registration Welcome Dinner

Show and Tell

Monday July 29

Technical Sessions

Auction

Tuesday July 30

Technical Sessions

Conference Banquet

Wednesday July 31

Field Trip

Details to follow

Questions? Contact

Registration discount for all NAFEX, INGA, and NNGA members.

North American Pawpaw Growers Association (NAPGA) Spring Meeting

Hello Pawpaw Growers. Spring is almost here and the North Ameri-can Pawpaw Growers Association (NAPGA) is changing their spring meeting venue this year. Instead of having a keynote speaker, this year’s meeting will be focused on grafting. From 9am to 3pm we will have pawpaw grafting experts demonstrating multiple techniques for grafting Ohio’s State Native fruit trees. You can graft your own tree and take it home to plant, get your growing questions answered and get advice from the experts on pawpaw cultivation. This year’s workshop is co-sponsored by the Ohio Pawpaw Grower’s Association (OPGA), a state chapter of the NAPGA and the Ohio State University. To register for the workshop or to become a member, please contact Dr. Ron Powell at botrytis@fuse.net. Hope to see you at the workshop. May 18th from 9am to 3pm at the Wilmington Col-lege, Wilmington Ohio. Tony Russell NAPGA/OPGA Member Services

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 5

How to Submit Articles to Pomona

Please send your copy to the appropriate Gathering Editor by the deadlines below

Spring 2019 Gathering Editor: Micah Wiles

wilesmicah@gmail.com

March 11, 2019

Summer 2019 Gathering Editor: Justin Holt

justinveazeyholt@gmail.com

June 7th, 2019

Fall 2019 Gathering Editor: Mark Wessel

growyourown@earthlink.net

Sept. 9th, 2019

Winter 2020 Gathering Editor Adam Bigham

cidernursery@gmail.com

Dec. 7th, 2019

Please contact the Gathering Editor to arrange how best to submit your articles and accompanying photos. When you are referencing a specific variety of fruit, please bold the variety name. It helps the reader. If you items are too large to email a link to a dropbox can be provided. Please reduce image file sizes to 1 MB or less. If larger pictures are required please contact the Gathering Editor to discuss. Articles can be very short or long. Please submit articles in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format. Articles can also be accepted in.PDF or other formats if need be but Word Documents are preferred. Please submit image files saved as .JPG, .TIFF, .PNG, or .GIF.

How to Be a Gathering Editor for Pomona

If you are a NAFEX member in good standing, contact the Editor-in-chief, or the current Gathering Editor and request which edition(s) you would like to be Gathering Editor for. So far, Spring, Summer, and Fall 2020 are open. The great thing is you get to review content early, and even “encourage” content of your fa-vorite fruit or topic. I’ve found it’s a great way to meet fruit enthusiasts and find out really cool things about people – and fruit!

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 6

L iving Energy Farm is a food and energy self-sufficient (largely) community and technology development center in central Virginia. While there are countless pro-jects that aspire to being “sustainable” or “carbon neutral,” a defining characteristic of LEF is that we are trying to create a sustainable model that is cheap, simple and durable. Three-quarters of hu-manity lives on less than $5 a day. While the wealthy one-quarter usually just doesn’t think much about the greater mass of the less-wealthy, at LEF we are willing to bend our lifestyle to fit within a sober and comfortable renewable energy budget that could be enjoyed by most people. We get to take a hot shower or surf the net anytime we want, and our straw-bale community buildings stay delightfully comfortable powered on solar energy. Electricity fascinates Americans, and we have a “DC Mi-crogrid” that is unique on the planet. That’s what people get excited about. And what do the actual residents at LEF get excited about? Growing food on trees!

At this point, LEF is largely food self-sufficient. We grow most of our own grains, and grind all of our own flour. About 90% of our electricity use is “daylight drive.” That means high-voltage DC mo-tors that are wired straight to solar electric (PV) panels. Daylight drive runs our grain mill, and also our industrial scale food drier that diverts solar heat-ed air headed for our radiant slabs through a large solar food drier. Can you say “dried persimmons”?

We earn our living growing open pollinated seeds. We live primarily (not exclusively) on a plant-based diet. Once you get used to eating real food, that stuff that comes in boxes doesn’t taste like much. With our seed crops, sometimes we just plant more that we need for seed and eat the rest. With some crops, like corn, you can eat it or plant it, but not both. With other crops, like tomatoes or peppers, we get to save the vegetable portion to eat and still save the seeds. We bulk can tomatoes, and some fruit. We dry peppers, eggplant, okra, green beans, and fruit.

As any experienced orchardist knows, healthy, ma-ture fruit and nut trees can produce prodigious quan-tities of food. Sadly, the most commercially well-known fruits – apples, peaches, plums, and cherries – are poor self-sufficiency crops in the mid-Atlantic. In our hot humid air, the bugs and diseases reign. We have also faced the “polar vortex” in recent years. LEF is about midway between Richmond and Charlottesville in central Virginia. In either one of those towns, you can grow kaki persimmons, figs, pomegranates, and muscadines. At LEF, we had dozens of kakis in the first few years wiped out by bitter cold and late spring freezes. So we have shift-ed our focus a bit.

Our best food produc-ing trees are our per-simmons. We occa-sionally get lectured by “permaculturalists” who tell us the deer would not eat our crops if only we inter-planted more. I don’t think the deer are lis-tening. But the best kind of “permaculture” we have found is grafting wild rootstock. Per-simmons are the only tree that can survive in a hay field. Mow them to the ground three times a year, and they still keep popping up. Stop mowing, and there’s your orchard. At LEF – indeed, most anywhere on the east coast if you are paying attention – there are scads of little persimmon sprouts all over the once-were fields and roadsides. In spring, we pop the top on the little fellers and put on cultivated varieties. The results are truly amazing. One is watching for a time in late April to late May when the weather is warm but cloudy. We bark-graft lots of trees quick-ly. The growth rate is phenomenal, and there is no watering because we didn’t transplant anything! The biggest risk is that the grafts often grow so fast that a late summer thunderstorm may snap them off. Good to trim or splint them. Either way, you get a real tree as big as your arm in two or three years.

Living Energy (persimmon) Farm

Alexis Zeigler, livingenergyfarm.org

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 7

We have two children. Our oldest is named Ros-seyanka (goes by Rosa), and our younger is named Nikita (goes by Nika). Any persimmon fan will rec-ognize these at the first two Asian-American (virginiana x kaki) crosses. They are our favorite trees, and our favorite kids too! They produce prodi-gious quantities of very tasty food with no pruning, no tending at all really. The Nikita’s Gift comes in earlier, both earlier in the season and sooner after it is grafted. This year we harvested hundreds of pounds, and dried them. They didn’t last long. The two-legged possums are after those things like fruit crack. The Rosseyankas come in later, and take longer to produce after grafting. That said, when they do kick in, they are amazingly productive. There are a few more virginiana x kaki crosses around now, at least three of which are reputed to be cold-hardy in this area. We have brought in Kassan-dra, Zima Khurma, and Mikkusu in the last couple of years. We will see how well they do.

I have spent many years roaming the back woods and collecting wild persimmons. I have one 20-year-old seed grown tree that makes the most amazing persimmons you have ever eaten. It is my belief that the Native Americans bred persimmons, though I have no documentation of that. The diversity one sees in the wild — some of it that seems to serve edi-bility over reproduction, and that favors my theory. There are noticeable strains in the wild – some ear-ly, some late, some seedy, some nearly seedless. We have a number of American persimmon cultivars. As farmers focused on self-sufficiency of food, money, and energy (that’s a handful!), food rots on the ground in August and September simply because we can’t get to it. I have been disappointed to real-ize that the American cultivar persimmons have been bred from early-ripening strains. That is less useful to us, as we just can’t pick them and they rot quickly. The Rosseyankas on the other hand (we call them Rosa fruits), ripen late. Once the birds start to get into them in the field, we put them in bins in the shop from which we eat all winter and into the spring. Lovely.

Our second largest tree crop comes from our blight resistant pears. We have an assortment, including Seckle, Ayers, Potomac, Shenandoah, Harvest Queen, Harrow Sweet, Harrow Delight, and a few others. One of our favorites is our own variety we call Wintersweet. Very tough tree, very late ripen-ing, an excellent pear with a unique tart-sweet fla-vor. We tried to distribute them, but alas, we don’t have the time. If you can come to our farm, we still have a few in pots. They are delightful trees. Just as we wild-graft persimmons, we also do so with pears. Those silly flowering pears [ed. Note: Bradford pear] that are all over the place make excellent root-stock. (You can “top work” mature trees over the course of a few years, if you have one in your yard.) They seed themselves into forest and field all over. If you watch in the early spring, these invasive pears are often the first thing to flower, making lovely lit-tle white flowers. If these nativized trees happen to be along the edge of our road or yard, we cut the top in April and put on a cultivated pear. Just as with the persimmons, the growth rate is phenomenal. Persim-mons make their own orchard, spreading more and more saplings in an ever-widening circle. Instant orchard! Pears don’t do that, but taking over such vigorous trees and putting them to work for you is very rewarding.

Being southern by birth, muscadines hold a special place in my heart. That muscadine flavor is divine. We have now the Southern Home muscadine cross. Seems like it will not suffer from the cold, and we are hopeful our trellises will yield in the year com-ing.

For nuts, we have taken the advice of Mr. Molnar at Rutgers and planted Gene, Yamhill, and Slate fil-berts. We hope to establish these as a major food source in years to come. So far, we have some nuts, but not huge production just yet. They certainly are faster and more space efficient than pecans. We have some of those too, but that will take longer.

We have our hardy kiwis, Issai being by far the most reliable producer. They sometime get burned in the spring, and they like good dirt. But most years we get fruit. Just don’t over-do it. Us fruit addicts have our issues. Kiwis, Issai in particular, are acidic little buggers. Too many of those followed on by too many muscadines can burn your mouth. Not that such a thing would ever happen around here…

A surprise has been the fuzzy kiwis. They are cer-tainly heat-loving plants, and like the hardy kiwis, they like good dirt. Persimmons and muscadines will grow in beach sand, the Sahara, or on the rocky side of the moon, as far as I can tell. Not so kiwis – good dirt, not too wet, not too dry. The fuzzy kiwis have held up to the polar vortex, and if they do get knocked to the ground, come back pretty quickly. We grow lots in Charlottesville, and are cautiously optimistic that they will produce well at LEF proper. Once a vine is well established (we use Saanichton and Elmwood), the productivity is huge.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 8

We grow a smattering of apples and peaches. We call them applesauce trees. We usually mix the fruit with our pears (which are far more reliable in their production) and make pear-apple sauce. Cook the pears first or you will scorch it. The apples cook a lot more quickly. We also can quite a few peaches, even though the attrition rate is mind-boggling and the fruit is ugly. Canned peaches on pancakes – makes win-ter a little more tolerable.

Berries are a no-brainer. The blackberries are easiest because the varmints don’t eat the plants. Triple crown has been a great variety for us. We have a half dozen other varieties we are trying out. Blackberries pick much faster than other berries, and thus rate a bit better on our food self-sufficiency estimations. Raspberries are easy enough to grow, but the deer love them. We put them right next to the house, and still have to fence out the rabbits and the ducks (domestic – wild ducks are not that precocious). Rabbit eye blueberries are also super easy for us, assuming you have the good sense to build up a lot of organic mat-ter around the roots. We have been searching for a cross variety that would give us the early, sweeter northern-like blueberries while having some of the disease resistance of the rabbit eyes. O’Neal seems to hold the most promise in that regard. Very early, and so far, no disease problems.

Jujubes have been a great crop for us. For years, our relatives have bought us gifts of dried persimmons and dried jujubes from Asian markets. Not bad, usually. But now that we have our own commercial scale food drier, we just pop the jujubes in there, whole. The results are positively mouth-watering. Very tasty, in winter long after the glory of summer has passed. For years, I had encouraged people to plant Li variety as it is the most reliable producer of larger quantities of fruit. We have long known that if jujubes get too much rain at harvest time, the fruit will rot on the tree before you can pick it. With the torrential rains last year, we realized that the Li variety is especially weak in this regard. Our Li jujubes mostly rotted, all our other varieties were mostly fine. Those include Sherwood, Tigertooth, Sugar Cane (I think that’s my fa-vorite), Honey Jar, and Shanxi Li. We have some rootstock originally from Roger Meyer that makes de-lightful fruit. Late, sweet, tart, firm and moisture resistant, though with a somewhat larger seed. I suppose in years to come we will call them Meyer jujubes.

We have planted quite a few pawpaws, but have come to realize that they are of limited value as a self-sufficiency crop. They cause minor digestive upset in a lot of people. Not so much for me, but I can’t eat pounds and pounds of them the way I eat other fruit. For energy reasons, we don’t have chest freezers. If you do, you could preserve pawpaws. You cannot can pawpaws (unless you make them into jam), nor can you dry them. This means we cannot preserve them in any quantity. We eat some pawpaws, but sadly, many of our pawpaws just rot. We have no means to keep them. I don’t think we will plant more.

The “what and how” is straightforward enough. But there are much deeper levels to all of this. For me, God has always lived in the trees, not in a mansion in the sky. Our industrial society commodifies every-thing. In trying to explain the energy side of LEF, I have started talking about “junk energy.” We all know what junk food is. It is a bulk commodity, produced in quantity and sold in homogenized form. Junk food is tasty and addictive, and it poisons you slowly if you eat a lot of it. Junk energy is the same. For count-less years, ordinary farmers the world over have lived environmentally adapted lifestyles. Lacking fossil fuel, how could they do otherwise? In the tropics, well-ventilated houses are put on poles. In the harshest deserts, people move underground. Russian peasants used saplings to build double-wall houses and stuff them with straw. Native Americans built into the ground or with double-wall longhouses in cold areas. That’s community energy, where comfort and sensibility take precedence over bulk energy production. And now, a modern suburb in Miami, Maine, England or Australia is indistinguishable. They are all pow-ered by junk energy — bulk produced, homogenized, profitable, and wasteful. At LEF, we have a multi-path energy system that slowly weakens. It encourages conservation instead of waste and addiction. Com-munity energy, community food – connecting things back together again. And the persimmons? Well, they encourage addiction, but we are working on that. At least they teach people the virtue of staying put.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 9

W inter season is the sleeping of trees.

Casting slender shadows upon

white snow, there are

rabbit pellets, leaves and fungus below.

I, Myself, My Life

is in their shadows.

Yet — a glitter of light!

I am reflected from a soft, stern flake of cold.

For Spring’s damp, broadening shadows

I yearn; swaths of violets, working bees.

Still, now four more weeks of Winter;

and I, Myself, my life, pondering.

Pondering the sleeping trees.

– Adam Bigham

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 10

The apple as we know it was originally from the mountain forests of the Cau-cusus, where it still grows wild today; it is Malus sieversii. Initially bears, wild horses and other large animals eating the whole fruit spread it from its origins. Then traders and wanderers taking with them the better tasting apples and dis-carding their cores spread the fruit to the Middle East and eventually to Eu-rope. Through this simple selection pro-cess, the best tasting apples were kept, propagated and disseminated. The apple has five seed sacs, each containing one or more seeds. Every seed, the result of open pollination, is unique. Once germi-nated it will produce a new apple with its own characteristics. The late Bob Vieth, a past president of the California Rare Fruit Growers, would liken it to you and your siblings. No two of you are the same. While some fruit species grow true to seed (the self-pollinated peach, for example), not the apple. So over the thousands of years of random genetic recombination and human selec-tion (and likely nonhuman as well, since bears like tasty apples too), the wild ap-ple evolved into today’s cultivated apple, Malus domestica. Some believe you can grow an apple tree by simply sticking a piece of an apple branch into the ground, as you can with grapes, figs and pomegranate, but this is not the case. According to Juniper and Mabberley in their book The Story of The Apple, ap-ple cannot easily be propagated by cut-tings or air layering. The bitter phenolic, tannin, in the young bark protects new growth from browsing animals. As the bark is broken these same tannins seem to inhibit the development of adventi-tious roots that would grow from the base of a cutting. According to the au-thors only a very few apples can be propagated from cuttings. Apple trees have predominantly been grown either from seed or reproduced by grafting. The grafting process is a method of pre-cisely joining a compatible root system,

The Story of the Apple

“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.” — HENRY DAVID THOREAU

T he modern apple has a long and interesting past. It is not merely that big juicy, sweet, tart fruit we take for granted. Its history is as colorful and full of intrigue as anything we know. It was involved in religious persecution as well as in conquering the American West. It is as American as, well, apple pie. This story of the apple is largely based on fact. The parts that I could not verify I filled in with guesses that seemed to make sense.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 11

or rootstock, with a desirable vegetative bud or part of a one- or two-year old branch having two or more buds, called the scion cultivar or just scion. This pro-cess dates back thousands of years. In fact the Chinese wrote about grafting more than 5,000 years ago. The process takes advantage of the best qualities of rootstock, and then joining it with the scion from a tree bearing those qualities you want to propagate. This grafted tree will bear fruit the same as the parent tree but will now have the root qualities of the new rootstock, for example, a re-sistance to soil-borne diseases. In most fruits the new rootstock will not affect the taste or other characteristics of the fruit nor will the scion affect the roots. How this process works remains to this day one of nature’s secrets.

Alexander the Great, a student of Aris-totle’s, would gather plant material he found during his campaigns and send it to Theophrastus, the father of modern botany—and another of Aristotle’s stu-dents. On one such journey, somewhere in Asia Minor, he found the Spring Ap-ple, Malus pumila. When used as root-stock, Spring Apple has a dwarfing ef-fect on the grafted apple scion, yet al-lows it to develop a full crop. From Greece, the Spring Apple was exported to Rome and then to the entire Roman Empire. It later became known in Eu-rope as Paradise rootstock. Actually there were several Paradise rootstocks in Europe, probably all originating from the Spring Apple. Today they are known as the parents of rootstocks m7, m8, m9 (ix) and m10 (x), introduced in the early 20th century by the British research fa-cility in East Malling, England. These modern rootstocks have several quali-ties, such as producing semidwarf and in the case of m7 dwarf trees, exhibiting certain disease resistance and drought tolerance. By the 1st century ce (or ad) Roman writers mention several apple cultivars.* Europe had wild apples; the introduction of cultivated selections was new. According to the Romans, the best place to grow apples was Gaul, present-day Western Europe. Even today, France remains one of Europe’s top apple producers. The apple became a mainstay of the Romans’ table fruit. In all likelihood if we were to sit at a 3rd- or 4thcentury Roman dinner table, their apple would look very familiar to us. Nothing exciting happened to the apple for the next 1,000 years until the Middle Ages. In the 14th century germ warfare took a new twist with the introduction of the Bubonic Plague (Black Plague or the Plague). The invading Mongols, who carried the Plague from central Asia to the Crimean city of Kaffa, catapulted their dead into the city under siege, thus forcibly introducing the Plague to Eu-rope. It was so devastating that it com-pletely wiped out some European com-munities. The numbers can’t be accu-rately calculated but best guess is that 60 percent of Europe’s population died, causing a huge labor shortage from which it took almost 400 years for Eu-rope to recover. The dead were either buried or in many cases cremated, but unfortunately their clothing or bedding was not burned and was instead discard-ed into the local rivers. This, along with the continued dumping of human and animal waste into those waterways, made the water undrinkable. Even local well water became contaminated; there were many abandoned wells that also were often used as dumping areas. Civi-lization developed along the rivers be-cause of the easy access to drinkable water but the continued dumping of garbage, domestic animal and human waste along with industrial waste from early smelting and leather tanning, pol-luted many rivers and eventually ren-dered their waters undrinkable. By Ro-man times there was a need for clean water sources. To accomplish this the Romans built extensive aqueducts of stone throughout their empire. Unfortu-nately, by the 14th century, 1,500 years of neglect and, in many cases, scaveng-ing of stone blocks for local building, left the aqueducts unusable. Europe has more than a million lakes and ponds, many of which were used as dumps as well, although not all were made un-drinkable by such abuse. Water re-mained the main source of daily liquids; however, in much of Medieval Europe it was a common belief that drinking wa-ter caused the Plague. This was not as far-fetched as it might seem. The Plague would often spread sequentially from town to town along the rivers. Travelers carrying the disease probably spread it, and perhaps it was caused by flea-infested rats with Plague living along these garbagestrewn riverbanks. The combination of non-potable water and superstition created a dire need for a clean water substitute or filtering system. While we can get by on a poor diet we must have water to survive. There are many authoritative sources that describe the use of beer, ale and wine as substi-tutes for water, but few relating to the use of apple cider. Even books written about the apple generally only touch on apple cider use in the Middle Ages. There is a law of economics that says the low-cost producer will ultimately prevail. Case in point, where were the clothes you are wearing made? The an-swer to this question 50 years ago would have been the usa, and 50 years before that would have been New York City. Wine, in general use for thousands of years, is generally made from grapes. Starting in the 1300s Europe entered a

* Note: Varieties occur naturally, while culti-vated varieties are man-made, thus the shorter term “cultivars”. I use the terms cultivars and varieties interchangeably in this article.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 12

little ice age. As the climate cooled, grape growing enterprises migrated far-ther south. This made wine production and distribution, already labor-intensive endeavors, even more costly. So eventu-ally only the rich could afford to drink wine. While beer and ale were brewed locally, they required annual crops that had to be sown, tended and harvested plus a supply of firewood for boiling mash. So this too was a very labor-intensive undertaking and required some sophistication as well as know-how. En-ter the apple, whose juice is 80 to 85 percent water. The fruit was easy to juice; all they had to do was press it. Two stones would do the trick. The left-over apple pulp could then be used for domestic animal fodder. Apple trees grew everywhere, and other than during harvest time needed no other labor. Making cider, one of nature’s first ener-gy drinks, really didn’t require the best tasting apples or sophisticated equip-ment. Simply leaving apple juice ex-posed to wild airborne yeast would natu-rally produce cider. Until modern refrig-eration all cider had alcohol, and this kept it from being contaminated by oth-er microorganisms. The fermentation process also gives off carbon dioxide, resulting in carbonic acid, and the result-ing brew is free of human pathogens. This process is well known. Exactly how it happens remains a mystery to this day. Leaving the cider further exposed to air yields vinegar, which became a necessity for food preservation especially in warmer months when the cold cellar got too warm to store food. While apple trees and other fruit trees have their own diseases, these are not harmful to humans. On the other hand, human germs are not transmitted through the tree to the fruit even if irrigated with water that contains pathogens. By dilut-ing cider with contaminated water, germs are killed, making it relatively harmless to drink. Beer and wine will do the same. Excavations of ancient Egyp-tian graves indicate Scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency, as the cause of death in sev-eral of these sites. It was a major cause of death throughout history. During the Age of Discovery, from Columbus to the 18th century, it is estimated that more than two million European sailors died of Scurvy, yet at the same time land-bound Europeans didn’t seem to be affected by it. I believe one of the rea-sons was the extensive use of cider, both as a drink and to produce vinegar for preservation. The apple contains ascor-bic acid, vitamin C. That’s why a cut apple turns brown when exposed to air, the ascorbic acid affects the open flesh. This vitamin C is retained in cider and drinking it on a regular basis helped pre-vent Scurvy. An 8-oz. glass of cider has 20 percent of the vitamin C of a whole lime. Before modern banking, barter was the principal method of exchange and cider was commonly used as a me-dium of exchange. A day’s labor was paid in cider. This method of payment carried over to colonial America and continued into the 19th century. My guess is that the lack of sources describ-ing the importance of apple cider in the Middle Ages is because it was common-place. You don’t read much about clear, cloudless, Southern California summer skies, but there is a wealth of infor-mation and writings about 1816: “The Year Without Summer” that resulted from the eruption of Mt. Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, the largest erup-tion in 1,300 years, because that was unusual. There is no modern equivalent to the apple’s value to the Plague-infested Middle Ages. It meant survival and therefore apple farmers were the most successful farmers of the time. The early French Huguenot apple growers found that by grafting an apple onto a wild European crab apple or possibly French Paradise rootstock, they could produce a fully productive apple tree less than 20 feet in height. Grafting the apple scion onto a seedling rootstock or growing from seed, if unpruned, typical-ly grew to 40 feet, the height of a four-story building. Huge apple trees tend to develop a dense canopy whereby only the fruit at the upper and outer portions of the canopy is good; only puny fruit of poor quality and little value is produced in the light-deprived middle and bottom of the tree. Not only do large apple trees produce a limited amount of useable fruit; imagine, if you will, apple pickers having a buzz from their daily apple ci-der ration and climbing 40-foot ladders to pick the fruit. It must have been a sight to behold, as well as occasionally leaving the already tight labor force in even shorter supply. On the other hand fruit from an 18-foot, fully productive apple tree is easily harvested. The tree is also easier to prune, opening it to sun-light so that the resulting fruit produc-tion is more uniform throughout the tree. The apple’s green skin is capable of photosynthesis, so sunlight has a direct effect on the fruit’s sugar content. Ap-ples develop sugars within the fruit itself as well as receiving them from the tree. By grafting his trees, the Huguenot farmer could grow the same type of ap-ple in his orchard giving him the ad-vantage of harvesting and processing the fruit at onetime, an additional labor effi-ciency. All of this made the Huguenots the most successful and eventually the most hated farmers in France. Not to bore you with the political turmoil that ensued, let us just say that the French Catholic apple farmers were probably instrumental in the expulsion of the Protestant Huguenots. The Huguenots were persecuted and stripped of their rights by the French king, Louis XIV, the grandson of a Huguenot. They were initially forbidden to leave France but

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 13

those that were able to leave found homes in various Protestant countries, including Holland, Sweden, Germany, Prussia and especially England. Those apple farmers who immigrated to Eng-land at first found a warm reception but eventually became unwelcome and were again persecuted. I assume they picked up where they left off in France and soon were dominating the English apple market. Many of the Huguenots leaving the old countries settled in Massachu-setts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina. They were soon to be joined those French Huguenots who found themselves now unwelcome in England as well as France. In America, the Europeans not knowing any better, assumed the rivers were contaminated so they avoided drinking the water, rely-ing on apple cider as their main source of fluids. Apple cider was the number one beverage of the pre-Revolutionary War colonists and remained so until the late 1880s. It outsold every drink availa-ble and proportionally outsold today’s Coca-Cola® and all the other soft drinks combined. While the Catholics had their wine, Protestant colonists, some of whom may have been teetotalers, dis-covered by leaving their cider out on a freezing night and then discarding the ice that had formed, could get the alco-hol level to 60 proof: applejack. I’m sure it was a comfort to them for those long, cold, dark, dreary New England winter nights. While the history of the Hugue-not apple growers of the Americas is not well documented, several traces remain. The first apple nursery was in Queens, New York, and was owned by a Hugue-not. Ben Franklin’s favorite apple, the Newtown Pippin, was from an area set-tled by Huguenot apple growers, again in Flushing, New York, part of Queens. Many of today’s eastern apple producing areas were originally home to the early Huguenot settlers. Fast forward to Thomas Jefferson’s time and the west-ward expansion. As a condition to claiming land as your homestead, you had to remain on your new property for a number of years. As proof of your homestead status, you had to plant and maintain 50 pear or apple trees. If you abandoned your homestead the trees would die, thus giving proof of your abandonment. This requirement for planting 50 trees was later incorporated in the Homestead Act, enacted during Lincoln’s presidency, and this opened the western frontier for settlement. Sometime in the late 18th and early 19th centuries a nurseryman and enterprising land speculator, John Chapman came along. He had an uncanny ability to guess where the next area of expansion would be, took discarded seeds from cider mills and planted apple nurseries first in the Ohio valley, and then along the Mississippi River and on up into Canada. He’d partner with a young local boy to grow apple seedlings awaiting the new homesteaders. Once he established the nursery he would leave it with his partner and move on. He was able to undercut the prices of his competitors by growing seedlings, as opposed to the grafted apple trees that they offered. As most if not all of the fruit would be used in cider, the fruit borne on seedling trees, sometimes called “spitters,” was fine for cider making. Chapman, being a “man of the land” so to speak, befriend-ed the local people and those friend-ships allowed him to press ever west-ward. As the story goes he would sleep in the hollow of a tree with his compan-ion, a wolf he had rescued from a trap-per’s snare. You may have guessed by now who this man was: Johnny Apple-seed, who upon his death in 1845 left a sizeable fortune: 1,200 acres of prime land scattered across the western fron-tier. If you haven’t already read The Botany of Desire: a Plant’s-Eye View of the World, by Michael Pollan, please pick it up and read about his search for Johnny Appleseed and his discussion of apples. Arguably, there was nothing was more important to western expansion than the apple. It was a mechanism for survival, proof of property rights and the driving force for change. As the west was settled and the Johnny Appleseeds died off, the apple once again recreated itself. It was no longer needed for cider. We eventually learned how to filter the local water, and the growing temperance movement that initially excluded cider eventually turned on it too. With the industrialization of the country and the move away from the farm to the city, there wasn’t much call for cider. By the late 19th century, nurserymen realized that if one could develop an apple that tasted good and grew well, they could make lot money. The problem with that plan was that anyone could take a cut-ting from that choice apple tree and graft it onto a suitable rootstock as the Huguenots had done hundreds of years earlier, or as the Greeks and Romans did thousands of years before them, and there goes your ability to make money. Enter the Stark Brothers Nursery in the city of Louisiana, Missouri. One of the brothers became governor of that state. By trademarking the name of a new cul-tivar and heavily promoting it they could, and did, make a fortune. It wasn’t until 1930 that the government decided a plant should have the same protection as any other invention and be patenta-ble. The Stark Brothers’ existing apple trees, primarily the Ben Davis, were real-ly not very good, so in 1893 they started the First International Fruit Fair, a con-test to find the best tasting apple. The winner sold his rights to the tree to the Stark Brothers Nursery and they then propagated and sold it as a named culti-var. Many people entered the contest. The winner was an apple grower and

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 14

breeder, Jessie Hiatt from Peru, Madi-son County, Iowa. This may explain why Madison County is so recognizable to-day. Hiatt, as the story goes, found a volunteer seedling in his field. He had plowed it under several times but the darn thing wouldn’t die, so having pity on the little tree he allowed it to grow to maturity. The apple it produced was so good he entered it in the Stark Brothers’ contest and won. Unfortunately, the tags on his apples were lost and he didn’t claim his prize until he entered the con-test the following year. One of the brothers had a name in his pocket that he was going to use for the contest win-ner, a Delicious apple, and so the mod-ern Delicious apple came into being, later called the Red Delicious apple (allowing for a subsequent contest-winning apple several years later to be named the Yellow or Golden Delicious apple). As luck would have it, at about that time Washington State was looking for a new crop they could export to the east coast to compete with the Califor-nia navel orange. With the expansion of the railroad to Washington, the east coast was open for a new apple. It turned out that Washington was a place where the Delicious apple thrived and consistently produced apples with the characteristic conical shape. This is something that other regions could not do. The Washington tree fruit industry turned this to their marketing advantage and the highly conical Red Delicious became the iconic symbol of Washing-ton’s apple industry. They successfully equated, in consumers’ minds, conical apple shape with the highest quality. In truth, the Red Delicious apple thrives almost anywhere. It’s one tough apple. Due to its superior taste and the enor-mous advertising by the Stark Brothers and Washington’s apple industry it be-came the bestselling apple and remained so for more than 100 years. Only recent-ly has its popularity declined as new and arguably better tasting apples have come on the scene. Yet according to the Stark Brothers’ website, 60 percent of all modern apples have either one or both of the Delicious apples as a parent. In order for an apple to be marketable, it must look good, ship well, have a decent shelf life and be reasonably good tasting. The problem with the Delicious apple is that it hasn’t changed much in 100 years but the pests that attack it have mutated thousands of times, so much so that in order to produce unblemished fruit farmers believe they are forced to use more and more toxic chemicals to con-trol the pests. I’m sure the chemical in-dustry reinforces this belief. Biting into a Delicious Apple is like having a bowl of Dow chemicals for breakfast. The same can be said of other apples on the mar-ket today. According to an article in Mother Jones magazine, 92 percent of apples recently tested by theU.S. De-partment of Agriculture (usda) contain two or more pesticide residues. That goes for all apples on the supermarket shelf. The usda picked up traces of no fewer than 56 distinct pesticides on the apples it tested. However, the organic movement has proven that apples, in-cluding the Red Delicious apple, can be successfully grown pesticide-free. Mod-ern growers have found markets for new and different apples, slowly replacing the Delicious apple as the mainstay of grocery stores and supermarkets. We now can find several different kinds of apples offered for sale. Old apple-producing states such as New York have started to supply their metropolitan mar-kets with scores of differently named apples. Currently three universities have apple-breeding programs; arguably the most important is Cornell University the home of the U.S. Department of Agri-culture Apple Germplasm Repository. Over the past few years they along with other programs such as the University of Minnesota’s have introduced new types of apples for the fresh fruit mar-kets. Some of these new selections have won over customers whose only expo-sure to apples was the Delicious apple. Sadly many of the old East Coast apple growing areas produce such blemished apples that they must be sold to juice makers and never get to the fresh fruit market. I know a man who owns a property in Maryland that he bought from the original homestead family. He grows old cultivars but can’t market them as fresh fruit. All of the produc-tion goes to Mott’s® Apple Juice. By the end of the 19th century, there were about 8,000 apple cultivars. With the temperance movement of the later part of the century and into the first decades of the 20th century and the subsequent adoption in 1920 of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), many apple orchards were destroyed by either the temperance league or the government. Then in the 1930s, with the dust bowl of the depression era, farmers abandoning their land caused the loss of many more orchards. Cornell University claims to have the largest cultivar collection. Not long ago an Oregon home orchardist offered wood of 4,000 different apple scions. In 1905 the usda published Bul-letin 56, Nomenclature of the Apple, a Catalogue of the Known Varieties Re-ferred to in American Publications From 1804 to 1904. They listed approxi-mately 19,000 apple varieties and by eliminating duplicates and misspellings reduced the total to about 8,000. While some of those listed have been lost, dur-ing the last 100 years many new ones have been developed. Numerous ama-teur gardeners have taken up the search for long-lost heirloom apple trees. Apple trees can live for centuries; the tree Sir Isaac Newton sat under 400 years ago lives today, as does Jessie Hiatt’s original

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 15

tree. Weekend apple explorers are combing old apple growing areas looking for varieties previously de-scribed as lost. Every once in a while on a slow news day, a local newspa-per will cover a story about finding an old apple tree growing in someone’s yard or along an old road that was thought forgotten. The search goes on. With the Great Depression of the 1930s the apple became a symbol of the downtrodden and unemployed. When we think about that time, the image of a well-dressed unemployed businessman standing on a corner hawking apples for a nickel comes to mind. “It’s a poignant image-the stoic gentleman attempting to preserve a vestige of dignity for himself and his family” according to James McWilliams. In reality it was a minor side event to the troubles of the time. It was the brainchild of Joseph Sicker the chair-man of the Unemployed Relief Com-mittee of the International Apple Grow-ers Association. Soon it became too successful, the wholesale price of ap-ples went up and in some cases the corner price of apples rose to 50 cents each, the price of many of today’s ap-ples. Within a year New York City clamped down on the street corner apple vendors. While the image re-mains, the depression finally ended as did corner apple sales. No article about apples would be complete without a short discussion about chilling require-ments, or vernalization. Chill hours are defined as: the number of hours be-tween 32f and 45f reduced by the num-ber of hours above 60f degrees during the same period. Apple trees can actually ac-cumulate negative chill hours at tempera-tures below freezing. For apples to devel-op properly it is believed that they must have a certain number of chill hours. Tom Spellman, of Dave Wilson Nursery, is con-ducting a high-chill apple trial in Orange County, a low-chill area. In 2013 the com-pany planted 30 different high-chill culti-vars, each requiring over 500 chill hours in an area that may get as little as 50 chill hours each winter. By the third year after planting, all but one, Liberty, had flowered and fruited. If you have the opportunity, watch Tom’s video about this trial on YouTube. To me, most of the chilling hour limitation is nonsense. In 2011 I experi-mented in my yard in Malibu, not the best apple growing area in California, by grafting high chilling requirement apple scions onto newly planted apple trees. I’ve successfully grown many of the zone 7 apples that according to the charts need 600 or more chill hours. Sometime ago, Kevin Hauser of Kuffel Creek Nursery, gave a talk to the West Los Angeles Chapter of crfg about growing apples in Equatorial Africa. The African programs were so suc-cessful that the farmers produced enough apples to supply the local markets and were thinking about exporting them. The Israelis have developed several warm-area apples (low chilling requirement); the most important being the Anna apple de-veloped by Abba Stein at the Ein Shemer Kibbutz in Israel. With the initial planting and fruiting of Anna and now other warm-area apple cultivars at the equator, the concept of the apple being solely a tem-perate area fruit seems to be fading away. The apple, originating in Asia, did-n’t become a major Asian fruit until the 20th century. In the thousands of years Europe has been growing apples they have developed a few hundred varieties, while in a few hundred years America has developed thousands of varieties. The apple has truly become as “American as apple pie.”

www

pixabay

com

source

unavailable

source

unavailable

The Exotic Fruit Lady wishes to give special recognition to Prof. Kent Mullinix, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver, Canada, for his review and input to this material. Normally this space is devoted to a brief biograph or some sort of statement by an author about his or her favorite gardening activities or philosophy of life or some other topic. However, Agnes Philpot is a rather mysterious figure, and is welcome to maintain her anonymity if it pleases her to do so

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 16

In the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, some people (Lee Cal-houn, Joyce Neighbors, Henry Morton, Jim Lawson, Tom Burford, Richard Fahey, John Bunker, Jesse Thompson, Tom Brown, Jack Herring, and a few oth-ers) started looking around and wondering, “Where are all the old varieties of apples we used to have, the ones we grew up eating, the ones our grandparents grew?” Those apples had been mostly replaced by commercial varieties, the same eight or ten apples we see in the grocery store today, grown in the Northeast or Northwest US (and in South America). We all know what they are! It’s all most people have ever tasted! Those aren’t bad apples; they lend themselves well to commercial monoculture (as long as you have the right chemicals to spray on them); they’re gor-geous in appearance, store well for months, and ship without bruising. They’re “acceptable” apples. Still, they’re not the first and last choices in apples! Those apple explorers I mentioned, they grew up eating lo-cally-grown and better-tasting apples, especially those who were raised in the Appalachian Mountains – prime apple-growing country there, the birthplace of hundreds of varieties.

One hundred plus years ago, in the days before we had cheap mass transportation and big refrigerated ware-houses, people did not go without apples – they grew their own, all over the world. Seasonal, locally-adapted fruit, mostly planted from seeds or rootsprouts, were the norm. Folks planted a lot of seeds! Most seedlings turned out to be small, sour crabapples, suitable for cider, or “cooking apples,” but if you plant enough seeds, sooner or later you’ll get some that are good for fresh-eating, or store well, or dry easily, or bear early. People had different criteria for food in those days; they lived closer to the margins of starvation and pure survival than we do in today’s affluent society. Much of the fruit they grew would be considered “inferior” or “ugly” by today’s standards, but they all had one thing in common – those old ap-ples were SURVIVORS, the ones that bore the best fruit and had the most natural resistance to pests and diseases, culled by nature and generations of farmers. They were tough.

So …my “apple hunter” friends began to ask around. They talked with old people who had successfully grown apples. They talked with extension agents, uni-versity researchers, loggers, farmers, hunters, and peo-ple working in feed stores. And, yes, they found a few people who had heard of some of these old varieties and remembered them fondly and sometimes could tell the apple hunters where to find trees of these elu-sive fruits. The apple hunters drove down country roads in the springtime, when trees were blooming, noted the locations of likely old trees, and returned in summer or fall to evaluate the fruit. They spent long hours in county courthouses poring over tax records of land ownership, to track down the family names of those who had likely cultivated these apples, and spent time on the phone tracking leads. They placed ads in small-town newspapers and rural electric co-op news-letters, asking for information on lost apple varieties. They put on their hiking boots and traipsed around old homesteads and abandoned orchards. They started finding them, too! First one, then a few, then dozens, and finally hundreds of these old varieties, apple culti-vars that were hanging on the brink of oblivion, in some cases, represented by ONE surviving specimen, and that one usually aged.

An example: Harrison apples are prime cider apples, grown by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries, and highly prized for their juice. But – in the United States, from about 1880 to the modern day – cider consumption dropped to almost

The Apple Hunters

Larry Stephenson | Carroll County, Mississippi

larrystephenson60@att.net

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 17

nothing; we Americans simply stopped drinking cider. At one time, Europeans poked fun at us because we “drank” our apples instead of eating them. Apple cider was the American drink in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. When cider consumption fell, so did the cider varieties – the Harrison apple became extinct, effectively. Inspired by the notes of colonial cider makers, apple explorers searched for them for years, and in 1976 Paul Gidez found a tree in New Jersey that seemed to match the descriptions of Harrison (The tree was cut down the week after he took scionwood.) In 1989, apple hunter Tom Burford was able to match the fruit to the exact description of Harrison. Thanks to their efforts, Harrison apples are being grown again – you can buy these again, and ci-der that is made from them. Cider is making a come-back! The cider industry is growing in leaps and bounds! Stand back, beer companies!

The apple hunters took cuttings (scions) and dug up sprouts to plant in their own orchards. Many old ap-ples were grown from seed, and therefore, growing on their own roots, so root sprouts will bear the same type fruit as its parent. Most modern apples are propagated by grafting scions onto a different rootstock, cheaply and easily. Identifying these old apples was a problem – how to put a correct name on them? There were only a handful of people still alive who had seen those vari-eties! Common cultivation of many had stopped over one hundred years ago. Finding old nursery catalogs was a huge aid in this discovery – that’s a whole ‘nother field of collecting there, old nursery advertise-ments. Back in the day when most people farmed for a living, there were numerous local nurseries, doing a thriving trade in locally-adapted fruit trees. Fortunate-ly, they advertised their products just like we do today, in colored flyers with descriptions. Some of these old nursery catalogs are still lying about in collections and have proven to be a big boon to apple identifiers. An-other problem in putting a name on an apple: most had more than one name; they went under different names in different regions of the country. So, our apple ex-plorers had to do considerable detective work; when you locate an old apple, well, that’s when the real work begins!

Today you can actually purchase many varieties of these old heirloom apples, thanks to the efforts of the apple hunters. There are a number of small nurseries in the US that specialize in heritage apples, 300 or 400 different varieties. No, you won’t recognize the names, but do some research and read the descrip-tions; if you find some that are local to your area, try them!

Why bother with antique fruit, you may ask, when there exists a multitude of new and (supposedly) im-proved cultivars easily available? True, if you happen to live in Apple Country, you might possibly get high-er yields from modern apples – or, maybe not. Keep in mind, most any modern apple that has been deliberate-ly bred has been developed for marketability, rather than any other characteristic (like, good taste). They’re all going to be “pretty” apples – American consumers judge with their eyes, not with their mouths, unfortu-nately. Eat some ugly apples! Red Delicious is not the apple taste – it’s only one of multitudes; unfortunately, it is the standard by which we judge all apples. The Original Red Delicious, sometimes called Hawkeye Delicious, from Iowa, 1880, was considerably differ-ent than the modern Red Delicious. It wasn’t as pret-ty, was red and green striped, didn’t store as well and bruised more easily, but it was a fine tasting apple – well, delicious. A limb sport of Delicious was discov-ered in New Jersey in 1923, which had a deep, solid red color and a thicker skin that didn’t bruise easily (more suitable for commercial growers). All modern Red Delicious apples derive from that one limb, and it was renamed “Red Delicious” only then. (Yes, the Stark Brothers Nursery made a profit from it.) Fruit grown in your backyard, properly ripened (not picked according to the picking crew’s schedule) can surprise you.

Commercial growers will tell you it’s impossible to grow apples, or any other fruit, without spraying on a regular schedule for pests and disease. They also spray to thin fruit, or to control vigor, or to partially defoli-ate…yes, commercial orchards are managed by chem-ical means. Those old heirloom apples predated the Green Revolution, remember, and have some natural resistance to the critters that plague apples. If you want to try organic strategies, I think heirlooms would be a good choice.

If you’re interested in doing some fruit sleuthing your-self, a good place to start would be reading Lee Cal-

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 18

houn’s Old Southern Apples,(ISBN 978-1-60358-294-0). This is not just some dry catalog of apple varieties and descriptions; instead, it is a history of Appalachia and the Southern US; not only about apples but people, and their land, and the food they grew to feed their families. Rather than a list of apples, this is a series of rol-licking adventure tales – there is a story behind each apple name! Each one has its own unique history.

In Old Southern Apples, Lee Calhoun describes 450 antique strains of apples that have been rediscovered over the last few decades. But…in the final chapter of the book, he lists 800 other breeds that still remain lost to us – names only known by rumor, or listings in old catalogs, or mentioned in nineteenth-century fruit books. Some were not obscure varieties, but widely grown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, commercially. I wonder – did Mr. Lee intend for this last chapter to be a challenge to the rest of us? He and the other apple hunters found 450 – maybe it’s time for new apple hunters, a younger generation, to pick up that torch and run with it a while?

There’s another reason I like to fool with these old apples, something almost indefinable, yet deeply felt, and I find it hard to put into words. Humans are mortal creatures, with limited lifespans; we recognize that fact, and it doesn’t agree with us much. I guess we feel that if we must perish, someday, well, it is fitting and proper that we leave behind some sort of legacy, something worthwhile that will mark our time here on earth and benefit or inspire future generations. We build pyramids, monuments, statues, grand buildings and libraries, all kinds of memorials, to leave our mark on the world. An heirloom variety of fruit is a legacy too, a living thread that connects us with our past. When I bite into an apple whose lineage can be traced back several hundred years, it gives me a sense of…continuity, I suppose; what my ancestors grew and ate, now, so do I, and will feed my family with the same fruit. I like that.

Photo (

CC2

) Rafael Saldaña

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 19

In recent years many people have become aware that the green fleshed Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa) we buy in the grocery store has some inter-esting relatives. It is now fairly common to find yel-low fleshed Kiwifruit, often called Kiwi Gold (Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis) or by the trade-mark “Zespri Gold” in stores all year. The Hardy Ki-wi (Actinidia arguta) is much less common, only found in some stores for about 2-3 weeks a year.

Hardy Kiwis have been gaining popularity with Home Gardeners in many parts of the USA and Canada as well as many other countries due to their Winter cold-hardiness while dormant, relatively tame growing hab-its (compared to Kiwifruit), and their smooth skin which doesn’t need to be peeled! Although they can be used in any cooking recipes that call for Kiwifruit, most Hardy Kiwis are eaten fresh just like seedless grapes. Their short shelf-life makes them a great can-didate for “grazing” while working in your garden.

Most varieties of Hardy Kiwi produce fruit (actually berries) about the size of a jumbo Olive. Picking the Hardy Kiwi Berries is a bit of a task since they don’t all vine-ripen at the same time even within the same cluster, and they really need to be trimmed with stem intact to avoid injuring the berry or they won’t keep more than about a day without bruising or starting to spoil.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Hardy Kiwis were about the size of a small Apricot or even the size of the green fleshed Kiwifruit? They would be easier to pick in less time, easier to use in recipes especially where sliced Kiwis are called for, and best of all the skin would still be edible, no peeling required!

Well, interspecific Actinidia hybrids have already been created in several countries using Hardy Kiwis as one parent in the cross and either Kiwifruit or Kiwi Gold as the other parent. While the hybrid berries have often had the desired smooth skin and larger size than Hardy Kiwis, most of them have been rejected for Commercial fruit production due to the easily in-jured skin and short shelf life. But in the Home Gar-den, who really cares?

My first interspecific Actinidia hybrids occurred by accident in 1987 at Hansville Washington when sever-al of my Hardy Kiwi females bloomed for the first time but the only males that bloomed that year were Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa). The re-sultant seedling vines which I still have a few of are quite nice looking and have about an equal mix of traits from both of their parent species. They favor neither of their parents, but look half-way between both. Alas, they have never produced any fruit!

Future of the Hardy Kiwi (Actinidia arguta) | Kiwibob” Seattle, Washington, USA

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 20

The Genus Actinidia has several obstacles that limit natural interspecific hybridization. First, the 54 currently recognized species are dioecious (separate male and female plants) where the females produce the fruit and the males provide the pollen. In any given population of seedlings, about half will be males and half females, but with great variability only about 5 percent of the females will possess traits equal to or better than their female parent! Second, each Species has evolved with their own blossom times which vary in Seattle from the first two weeks of May for Arctic Beauty Kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta) to the first and second weeks of July for the white haired Actinidia eriantha. Some species do have overlapping blossom times where a male of one species can pollinate the female of another species if they are growing in close proximity.

Third and perhaps most important, the Genus Actinidia is polyploid, having species that are dominantly dip-loid (2 sets of chromosomes) like the Arctic Beauty Kiwi (Actinidia kolomikta),tetraploid (4 sets of chromo-somes) like most Hardy Kiwis and the species Actinidia melanandra, or hexaploid (6 sets of chromosomes) like Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa)!

Polyploidy is the biggest obstacle to getting that large fruit with the smooth skin. Crossing a diploid with a tetraploid usually produces triploid (3 sets of chromosomes) offspring which like Gravenstein or Jonagold Ap-ples cannot be used to pollinate other varieties so the triploid males will be sterile and the females won’t pro-duce viable seeds even if pollinated by a fertile male (with even ploidy). The same is true when crossing a tet-raploid with a hexaploid parent where the offspring will be pentaploid (5 sets of chromosomes), again an odd numbered ploidy. There is hope however as at least one large fruiting species, Kiwi Gold (Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis) has both diploid and tetraploid variants mostly depending on what part of their natural range in China the particular plant originates from.

So what is a Kiwifruit Enthusiast like me to do after growing Actinidia for 37 years? My latest project is to find tetraploid male varieties of Kiwi Gold (Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis) to cross with my best tetraploid Hardy Kiwi and Actinidia melanandra varieties creating first generation (F1) hybrid seedlings to cross again or back-cross until the desired result is achieved.

It will take a long time to get there but as one poster on a Fig Forum attributes to an old Chinese proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now”. The process has already started with Draft Tables listing known Kiwi Gold and Hardy Kiwi varieties and their ploidy level currently being de-veloped in conjunction with other Kiwifruit Enthusiasts and Researchers Worldwide. From these Tables we will identify varieties best suited to use as parents in the Hardy Kiwi Breeding Project, exchange seeds and sci-ons where allowed by applicable laws, and with a hefty dose of Blind Luck achieve that large smoothskinned Hybrid Kiwifruit.

If you are interested in participating in the Hardy Kiwi Breeding Project, or know of someone locally who has a mature male of Kiwi Gold (Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis), please contact me as noted on the Home Page of my website: http://kiwifruitsalsa.wordpress.com

Happy Growing,

“Kiwibob” Seattle, Washington, USA

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 21

The golden rule to growing a pawpaw tree from seed is to never let the seed dry out. So, when you have just finished the exquisite experience of eating a delicious pawpaw you place those seeds either right in the ground where you want to grow a tree or in a zip lock bag that gets put in the refrigerator. Dried out seeds will not germinate.

Be sure to clean all the flesh off the seeds before stor-ing. They will need at least 90 days of chilling, this is known as ‘stratifying’ the seed – a fancy word that just means you are mimicking what happens naturally to cold temperate seeds when overwintering outside. Storing them longer is fine as seed is usually collected during harvest season – late August thru early October – and then germinated in the spring, for me that’s six months in the refrigerator. Just keep an eye that they do not begin to get mold from being too damp.

*Adding a damp medium like sand to the bag can help maintain the needed moisture but if you have enough seeds in the bag, they need no extra medium. Many growers recommend sphagnum moss – but I struggle with the ecological impacts of its extraction.

Germinating the Seeds

It is easy to successfully grow pawpaws from seed. How long it takes for your pawpaw seeds to germinate is determined on the temperature of your soil medium. I use a small heating mat that controls the temperature of my soil medium at 85 degrees and my seeds germi-nate in fourteen days. That’s the fastest I know of. Planted outside in the ground it could take up to two months for germination to happen once soils begin to warm in the spring, and not send up a shoot until July or August. In a pot inside your home it could take one month. Regardless of method if your seeds are in good shape – stayed moist and cool – then germination rates for me have been in the 90 percent range.

I inherited my germination method from pawpaw grower legend Jim Davis of Deep Run Pawpaw Or-chard. Using just a single heating mat, a pair of turkey basting pans and a light weight seeding mix seeds will sprout in just fourteen days. Now, I germinate hun-dreds of seeds at a time for my nursery business but the same method works for even just a hand full of seeds.

What you need:

Small seedling heating mat

Digital control thermostat for heat mat

2 aluminum turkey basting pans

Lightweight seedling soil/potting mix

Be sure your mat has an adjustable thermometer and set it at 85 degrees, place an empty aluminum pan on the mat, moisten the seedling mix and layer 1 inch thick, place pawpaw seeds flat side by side, cover with an additional 1 inch of moistened mix, place seeds, etc, up to, three layers if you have the seed. Whether one or three layers make sure the seeds have an inch layer on top and cover with a turned upside-down pan as the lid, clamp shut. Seeds will germinate in approx-imately 14 days. Pick them out as soon as the root pokes out and pot up in 12+ inch deep pots* or direct-ly in the ground where they will be grown with the root radical facing down. Be aware that the root is very fragile and will break easily, best to plant while it’s just a tiny nub. I add in a sprinkling of mycorrhizal inoculant with each planted seed to assure good colo-nization, this small step adds a lot of long-term sup-port for both fertility and disease resistance.

Note that seeds do not need light be begin germina-tion. I start mine in a warm boiler room in complete darkness for up to two months before they are ready to shoot.

*Deep tree pots can be ordered from Stuewe & Sons.

More juicy details coming in my mini manual ‘For the Love of Pawpaws’ out this summer.

Note: Michael Judd is the author of ‘Edible Land-scaping with a Permaculture Twist’ and the upcoming ‘For the Love of Paw Paws’ A Mini Manual for Grow-ing and Caring for Paw Paws – From Seed to Table’

Growing Pawpaw From Seed | Michael Judd, Frederick, MD

www.ecologiadesign.com

For the Love of Paw Paws

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 22

Frost and/or Freeze injury. I have wanted to write an article on cold temperature inju-ry: frost, freezing temperatures or alternative freezing and thawing temperatures, but nev-er had a pressing reason to do so. However, this past year I received pictures from sever-al NAPGA members of frost/freeze injury on NA pawpaws and I observed several small NA pawpaw trees with frost cracks.

Usually we are worried about frost/freeze injury to the flowers. Plants can endure tem-peratures that range from 240F to 320 F for 30 minutes or less without injury. With the flowers of NA pawpaws maturing over sev-eral weeks, they are typically not all killed by a frost/freeze event.

The damage to the mature flowers and flower buds can be variable even if the critical temperatures are reached.

The reasons for the flower damage are varied:

Not all buds are equally sensitive

Not all trees are equally sensitive

Not all cultivars are equally sensitive

Factors impacting low temperature damage:

Flower development stage

Wind

Humidity

Cultivar

Tree vigor (health); low temp event

Weather prior to acclimation of plant

Rate of thawing – fast thawing may increase injury

There are two types of frost:

Advective. Advective freezes occur when a large mass of cold air moves into a rejoin area. The cold air may or may not be accompanied by clouds and winds that exceed 5 mph. Temperatures at the surface are below freezing and decrease with elevation. Little can be done to protect the trees from injury.

Radiational. Radiational frosts occur when heat that has been stored in the upper soil surfaces is radiated back into the atmosphere at night. The wind speeds are generally low and the temperatures near the ground surface falling to below freezing (inversion).

The speed and depth of the temperature drop can be influenced by the dew point. Dew point is the temperature at which moisture begins to condense. The rate of air temperature decrease due to radioactive losses can be fairly rapid until the air approaches the dew point temperature when water begins to condense on the colder

Frost/Freeze Injury | © Ronald L. Powell, PhD , Cincinnati, Ohio

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 23

plant tissues. The plant tissues are colder and are first to reach the dew point tempera-ture.

The more water vapor in the air, the higher the dew point. If the dew point is above freezing, then the temperature drop will be much slower. If the dew point is below the critical temperature then the temperature drop is faster. Low dew points also indicate dry air.

Good site selection is important in effective frost protection. Dark colored soils absorb a greater amount of heat during the daytime and potentially store more heat as do grav-elly soils.

Compacted bare but moist soil can store a greater amount of daytime solar radiation heat than a covered dry soil. The heat content of soils are affected greatly by the soil water content. On a daily basis, heat is trans-ferred into and out of the top one foot of soil. When the soil is wet, heat transfer and storage in the upper soil layer is better, as more heat is stored during daylight for release during the night. Heavier soils with more clay retain heat better than sandy soils. Sandy soils tend to be lighter in color and tend to reflect more sunlight ra-ther than absorb it in the form of heat.

When grass and/or weeds are present in a planting, sunlight is reflected from the surface and less energy is stored in the soil. Studies have shown that a tall, dense cover crop has the potential to reduce night time tem-peratures by up to 100 F but a closely mowed cover crop is usually only about 2⁰ F colder than bare soil. Thus, during the frost season, it may be best to keep the row middles closely mowed to increase potential daytime heat absorption and reduce nighttime heat loss. Vegetative mulches usually reduce the transfer of heat into the soil and make crops more freeze prone.

In summary, a bare undisturbed moist soil with no ground cover vegetation (sod) can release enough heat to raise the temperature 2 to 3 degrees in the plant canopy as compared to soil with sod. Frost and freeze injury is fairly common on North American pawpaws as indicated by the pictures that I received this spring in response to the frost/freeze inquiry. The injury is commonly seen on the foliage; however, you can be sure that flower buds were injured as well but since they are a dark purple, freeze injury is not easily visible.

Frost Cracks or Stem Splitting. Upon inspecting my North American pawpaw trees last spring, I discovered several trees with frost cracks (radial shakes). The frost cracks appear as shallow to deep longitudinal cracks in the trunk of trees or in my case, the main trunk and lateral stems. These trees were on the south west side of the stem because this area experiences the greatest temperature fluctuation. There is no universally accepted cause of frost cracks but all agree they are related to fluctuations of trunk tissues that can occur during severely cold weather. Some attribute frost cracks to a sudden drop in temperature that causes the outer layer of wood to contract more rapidly than the inner layer when water moves out of moist cell walls to form ice, resulting in a long vertical crack at weak points in the stem. These trees are in no immediate danger, and may live for sev-eral years. Frost cracks or stem splitting begins inside out from an earlier wound or branch stub and that frost only continued a crack started by an earlier injury. Once a frost crack appears on a tree, it is likely to appear annually.

Frost is just one of the causes of tree bark cracking. Tree bark cracking is also caused by a condition called

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 24

“sunscald.” In late winter or early spring, warm afternoon sun shining on the trunk can cause the tree tissue to break dormancy. When these warm sunny afternoons are followed by freez-ing nights or a cloud blocking the sun and the temperature drops quickly, the tissue dies. Strips of bark may peel off the tree.

Keep the crack clean to prevent infection and leave it open. The tree will attempt to heal itself by forming a callus along the crack. The crack will never seal! Once the wood fibers are split, they are split forever. The best practice is to maintain tree vigor through appropriate irriga-tion, fertilization, mulching, and pest manage-ment.

Several things can be done to reduce the inci-dence of frost cracks. Preventing tree wounds by protecting the trunks from mower injury and weed trimmer damage, removing branches with proper pruning cuts, and preventing injury to root systems will help to prevent frost cracks. Research has found that wounds or weakened areas due to branch or root death are the start of potential frost cracks.

Another solution is to consider planting the NA pawpaws near evergreens, existing structures or solid fences that will shade their trunks. The tree trunks could be wrapped with trunk guards that reflect sun-light may provide some protection against frost cracks. The guards should be white or light colored and ap-plied late fall and removed in the spring as soon as danger of frost has passed. The lower branches could also be left on the tree to shade and protect the trunk. However, the least expensive method of minimizing injury to the trunk is painting or spraying the trunks with a good exterior white paint diluted 50% with water.

Resources:

Mark Gleason, Dept. of Plant Pathology. “Frost Injury to Shade Trees.” June 9, 1995. Horticulture and Home Pest News.

Jackie Carroll. “What is Frost Crack: What to do for Cracking Tree Trunks?” Unknown source.

Bob Bricault. Michigan State University Extension. “Frost Crack in Trees.” March 12, 2014. (

http://www.msue.msu.edu

)

Rita L. Hummel & Marianne C. Ophardt. Washington State University Extension. “Environmental Injury: Frost Cracks.” WSU Extension Publication FS199E.

Penn State Fruit Times, April 24, 2007.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 25

I am going back into my class archives and dig out some notes from years of teaching entomology and plant pathology at several local institutions and talk about “shot holes”. Not that I am that big on shot hole but any hole in a leaf can present a dilemma to determine what caused the hole. I used a lesson on shot hole to introduce the plant pathology course to demon-strate to the students not to jump to any conclusions regarding what caused the hole or holes in a leaf.

Shot hole is defined as a “BB” (1/10 to 1/4”) size holes in leaves. Shot hole is a symptom of fungal and bacterial disease causing small spots that turn dark and eventually die. The dead material then falls out leaving holes in the leaves. They are usually caused by a disease but may be caused by an insect. Most of the following examples may or may not be found on Asimina triloba but may give you some help in identifying a “hole(s)” in your pawpaw leaf. I have made a list of possible causes of “holes.” Remember that Asimina triloba is not considered an important landscape plant and thus, research on the disease and insect pests of Asimina are limited.

Can you guess the causal agents?????

When the holes are discov-ered in the spring, it is best to think about what has hap-pened with spring weather because with nice round holes one could suspect frost or freeze injury. Or ovipositor injury or even feeding injury of piercing-sucking insects.

Observe the edges of the holes and see if the edges are brown, if so then the holes are old, if not then the holes are fresh. Remember that all of the cells necessary to form the leaf are already present in the bud. The leaves enlarge by cell expansion and not by cell division. So if the frost or freezing temperatures kill a cell or two as the leaf expands, the hole gets bigger, just like poking a hole in a balloon, as the balloon is stretched, the hole gets bigger. The holes caused by insects might be easier to identify if attention is paid to what insects are around before you see the holes.

A small magnifying glass or loop of at least 10x greatly help to see the leaf tissue. In this picture, the tissue is still present even though it has been attacked by a fungus and just collapsed, but is still there. The dark border is another clue that a fungus is the causal agent and not an insect. The next set of pictures (page 2) show leaves that were fed on by a chewing insect which removed the epidermis of the leaf and caused the underlying tissue to die.

Leaf Shot Holes | © Ronald L. Powell, PhD , Cincinnati, Ohio

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 26

1. Insect feeding

a. Earwigs

b. Japanese beetles

c. Flea beetles

d. Pear slugs

e. Small bag worms

f. Weevils

g. Inch worms

h. Canker worms i. Leaf cutter bee

Flea beetle injury

Rose injury by pear slugs

Leaf cutter bee

Japanese beetle

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 27

2. Ovipositor injury Leaf miners (Diptera) – The adult female flies puncture expanding leaves with their ovipositors in order to lay their eggs. These puncture wounds expand as the leaf reaches full size. The tiny holes can become 1/8 to 1/2-inch in diameter and numerous holes may be present in an affect-ed leaf.

3. Piercing/sucking insects such as aphids, leaf hoppers and plant and tree hoppers puncture the ex-panding buds/leaves with their piercing sucking mouth parts to remove the leaf liquids for food. These puncture wounds expand as the leaf reaches full size. The tiny holes can become 1/8 to 1/2-inch in di-ameter and numerous holes may be present in an affected leaf.

4. Viral infections

5. Frost or Freeze injury -individual cells are killed when leaves are small or in the bud stage

6. Fungal infections – necrotic tissue drops out

a. Phyllosticta sp. – Bordered leaf spot

As you can observe with these two pictures of Phyllosticta, the picture on the left shows the necrotic tissue that has dropped out and the picture on the right still has some dead tissue remaining in the necrotic lesions. How and when the necrotic tissue drops out is usually determined by when the leaf was infected.

7. Bacterial infections—necrotic tissue drops out

8. Copper spray injury

9. Slug or snail injury

English Laurel

Phyllosticta

Slug injury

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 28

So, you’re a new grafter, and you’ve made a satisfactory whip-and-tongue cut on a scion, made a matching one on a rootstock, stuck them together, and they fit pretty good – now what? How do you bind them together until they heal? What’s best? There is not actually a BEST way. There are innumerable ways, and LOTS of differ-ent bindings that will work.

PLASTIC TAPE – that’s the simplest and most straightforward answer. Most grafters nowadays use some form of plastic tape. The traditional grafting tape is called FLO-RAL TAPE, and it’s usually ½ inch wide and comes on a long roll. It’s usually green, but it’s also made in other colors. It’s cheap and easily available, $2 or $3 a roll. You may not find it at Walmart, but a few feed stores and nurseries carry it, and it is found at all nursery supply companies. Floral tape has many applications in orchards and the nursery trade, like tying up grapevines or tying a plant onto a support stake.

Floral tape is non-sticky on both sides and doesn’t stretch very much. One big ad-vantage of floral tape is that it’s stiff, and if your graft union doesn’t match just perfect-ly, you can pull it tight enough to draw the union together tightly. Tying off floral tape is one of the hardest parts of grafting for a novice, I guess. There is a trick to it, and at first it almost seems like you need three hands to keep it tight and tie it off properly. Here’s where experience and practice come in handy. First, cut off a piece, eight or ten inches long. Don’t try to use it attached to the roll; that’ll be awkward. Place one end of the strip below the graft and hold it in place with your thumb. Lap the tape over that, and over the graft. (I personally lap it over the top of the graft union, and then back again to the bottom, making two layers, though I think many would disagree with me.) Keep as much tension on the tape as you can, to bind the joint together tightly. At the top, move your thumb or forefinger to the top lap to hold the ten-sion, then tuck the end of the tape under the last loop to make a half-hitch and pull that as tight as you can. I usually make two or three half-hitches. A half-hitch ain’t much of a knot, but I’ve never had one come loose on a graft. It’ll hold fine. Voilà: a completed graft.

The disadvantage to floral tape is that it needs to be removed, cut off, after the graft has healed. If you don’t, it can constrict the limb at that spot, or at least make a big bulge in the stem. It can grow into the tree, which is undesirable. The time to remove it is in late summer or early fall; the union should be completely healed by then, and that will give the bark time to callus a bit before winter. I’ll admit, I myself do NOT remove it in a timely manner, but more frequently get around to it during my pruning, in mid-winter, when I’m doing a lot of work on my bare-limbed trees. I’m sure all of you will fully understand the concept of doing necessary tasks “as soon as I can get to it,” and “when I have time,” and “when it’s convenient.”

The Ties That Bind (Wrap it Up, I’ll Take It.) | Larry Stephenson, Carroll County, MS

larrystephenson60@att.net

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 29

There is a product called PARAFILM-M – this stuff is really handy for grafters. I believe Para-film-M was originally developed as a laboratory aid, to seal test tubes, like Saran Wrap, but grafters have discovered it works great for us, too. It’s a malleable, plastic-type material with a paper backing. It’s endlessly stretchable. You snip off a piece with scissors, remove the back-ing, and streeeetch it to any shape and length desired. I use it to seal scions. I stretch it as tight as I can over the scion, completely covering it. What this does is help to retain moisture in the scion, gives it a few extra days to “take.” You can stretch it so thin, I suppose until it’s only a few molecules thick, that the buds will break right through it. I guess a few million grafts have been made without the use of Parafilm but using it will definitely up your chance of suc-cess. Parafilm-M will rot away by itself in sun-light and weather, within a season.

I personally don’t like Parafilm-M for binding a graft union, only for sealing a scion or cutting. Parafilm can rot away TOO fast, sometimes before the graft has healed completely, and expose it to the elements. You could wrap it with something like a rubber band to keep it in place, but that’s adding an additional step.

I ADORE a product called BUDDY TAPE. Buddy Tape is very similar to Parafilm, but a slightly different com-position that doesn’t degrade as fast. It will break down after a year or so and doesn’t need to be removed, which is a big advantage. Buddy Tape will stretch enough not to stran-gle the limb/stem. Buddy Tape comes on a roll and is already perforated, 1” by 2 ¾” strips, that are IDEAL, very nearly perfect, for a typical graft on a 1/4” or so stick. It’s fast, convenient, and a big-time saver. Buddy Tape is EXPENSIVE, $35 to $45 per roll, plus shipping, but you can get 900+ grafts from a roll, so it’s economical in the long run. It’s made by the Aglis Corporation. I don’t think you’ll ever see it in stores, but it can be found at on-line at Amazon.com and some nursery supply websites. It’s well worth its high price, IF you’re doing a large number of grafts.

There have probably been more grafts made with black electrical tape than anything else in the last half centu-ry. It works fine, just make sure you remove it at the end of the growing season. Electrical tape is available in other colors; sky blue is a color that really stands out in a natural background of browns and greens, so if you’re top-working a bunch of scions onto an older tree, that’s a good color. I like electrical tape when binding a tiny bark graft to a much bigger stem, because it’s strong and sticks to itself. Freezer tape, paper masking tape, I suppose even Scotch or duct tape would work. I don’t care for paper masking tape much because it doesn’t stretch and breaks if you put much pressure on it. It is handy to cover a large pruning wound. Teflon pipe tape works well enough.

You can even make your own grafting tape by taking scissors and cutting strips, ½” wide, or whichever width you prefer, from plastic bags, like bread bags or freezer bags. They may be a little harder to tie off but work

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 30

OK.

Some grafters use rubber bands to bind a graft union. Cut the rubber band so it’s a long strip, and lap it over and over, just like floral tape. On the last lap, move your forefinger up to hold it in place, then make a loop over the end of your finger, and tuck the loose end of the rubber band under that. Tension will hold it in place very well. You stretch the loops as much as you can, of course, to get it tight. The elasticity of a rubber band makes for a nice snug binding. Rubber bands will degrade surprisingly fast in sunlight and weather. The small-er desktop bands may rot away TOO fast, within a month or so, maybe TOO early, so the larger postal-sized bands are better.

Rubber-banders usually coat the graft with substances like Trowbridge’s Grafting Wax, Treekote, or Doc Far-well’s Grafting Seal, liquid substances that can be brushed on and harden, but will stay flexible enough with age so as not to strangle the tree’s growth. Some grafters coat ALL their bindings with this stuff. I’m not sure I see the point in this, myself; it seems like an unnecessary step? If you’re using either plastic tape or rubber bands, the union WILL be airtight, and impervious to moisture, even without the sealant. It is not absolutely necessary to have an airtight seal; all that is needed is to hold the union together tightly and keep out bugs, dust, and rainwater. If this works for you and makes you happy, go ahead, use them; you can’t argue with suc-cess. I myself do not, and my grafts take just fine.

Treekote and Doc Farwell’s are good products and easy to use. I don’t use them much in grafting, but occa-sionally to cover a large pruning cut. Grafting wax has been used for hundreds of years to seal wounds and it STILL works, and lots of orchardists currently use it. I find wax a little inconvenient. Grafting wax must be heated to the right temperature; too hot, and it may scald the tree, or the hot wax may flow into the wound; too cold, and it won’t brush on easily, just a clumpy mess. It’s inconvenient keeping wax at the right temperature when you’re working in the field. (Don’t dare drip any on a fabric seat cover or carpet or long-haired dog; you’ll never hear the end of it.) If you’re determined to use wax, a cheap substitute for Trowbridge’s is a wax toilet seal ring, easily available at any hardware or plumbing supply store. It stays softer and more malleable than grafting wax and can easily be worked in your hands without heating (it’s sticky). On a cool day, let it sit on the dashboard of your truck and the sun will warm it sufficiently to use.

Personally, I feel like anything that I could do with grafting wax, I could do faster and much more convenient-ly with a little piece of Parafilm or Buddy Tape, easily carried in my pocket.

A good book to learn about grafting is R. J. Garner’s HANDBOOK FOR GRAFTERS, written in 1947. Most of that information is GOLDEN. But, in 1947, our modern plastics and silicon sealants hadn’t been invented yet, and even rubber bands weren’t as cheap or as common. Garner does devote a lot of space to discussion of various grafting sealants; mixtures of beeswax, gum arabic, tallow, paraffin, etc., and he describes binding grafts with different grades of twine, and strips of rubber cut from tire inner tubes… yeah, you can skip over that. Modern materials make that information irrelevant and obsolete. Those materials WILL still work, no doubt, but there’s just no reason to use them anymore. Don’t worry, when the Zombie Apocalypse comes and the plastic tape and Parafilm factories have to shut down, there’ll still be PLENTY of plastic wrappers lying around for us to use, enough for all our lifetimes.

You don’t NEED “special” tools and materials to successfully graft. Orchardists have been grafting for centu-ries, thousands of years, and quite successfully, too. They bound grafts with fiber twine, waxed string, horse hair, human hair, strips of rawhide, anything that came to hand, or stuck them together with thorns, and sealed them with beeswax, clay, or dung. Modern plastic wrappings are CONVENIENCES, not necessities. We’ve made a few improvements over the years in materials, but possibly not so much in techniques.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 31

This a compilation of material and grafting techniques that we use here on the farm:

Persimmon, Pecan and Walnut bleed with high sap flow so you have to have a very dry period to graft them – no rain or irrigation for 2 weeks before or after. There are methods of controlling the sap flow and bleeding the trees to prevent the flooding of the graft-ing areas or cut.

The method of Grafting does not matter, as long as you have cambium contact on rootstock to scionwood.

There are 3 factors you must control —

The temperatures must be about 80⁰ F +- 5⁰. For us that is late May into June thru July 25th. Tempera-tures must be in this range to grow callus tissue fast.

The trees have to be leafed out and growing. That is, rapid growth stage, under fertilization to within 3 weeks of grafting.

Low Moisture – you want the seedling rootstock to be as starved for water (dry) as possible for 2 to 3 weeks before and up to one week after to facilitate rapid callusing of the graft union .

For the graft:

Have some way to cover the graft union and the full length of the scion wood to prevent the scion wood from drying out, and to seal the graft union.

Plus we use rubber budding / Grafting strips

, to secure the graft and hold it in place during callusing.

I taught my son to graft using this method last year and he had about 85 to 90% success rate this past sum-mer as we use this method for everything

I have attached three videos for you to see. Watch them a few times and it should help you greatly.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/inu5dr822pteflu/2017-06-28%2020.12.14.mp4?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/h88ikg7eeocfrx2/2017-06-28%2020.09.02.mp4?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xzphrleql4jouwk/2017-06-29%2012.31.02.mp4?dl=0

Let me know what you think! This is the graft that My Grandfather taught me when I was very young and I have kept making it better over the years.

If you have any questions Just let me know.

Good growing

Cliff, Jonathan, and Kum Hui England

From the Orchard slopes: Grafting the Hard-to-Graft Species

Cliff, Jonathan, and Kum Hui England, England’s Orchard and Nursery McKee, Kentucky

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 32

IS IPM Dead or is it just Sleeping? Put the “I” Back in IPM | Mike Biltonen | Know Your Roots, Ithaca, NY

In the Beginning I started my farming career in 1984 at the end of my sophomore year at Vir-ginia Tech. I went to work for a large orchard in central Virginia where my first job was inspecting peach harvest crews all summer long. That first sum-mer I lumbered my way through 58 straight days of hot, humid conditions during a massive, 600 acre peach har-vest before heading back to college. I never looked back and have been in fruit production ever since. Maybe it was because I loved the out-doors and had a soft spot for environ-mental conservation, but I desired to understand and learn more about fruit production, pest management, pesti-cides, and the effect they had on the environment and our food. My real fas-cination with pest management, and IPM, would not come for a few years In 1992, I went to work at an orchard in Minnesota where I expanded my knowledge and use of IPM tools like pheromone trapping, degree days and

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 33

biofix models, scouting, spray schedules, material choices, etc. Granted there were a lot of changes, new tools, ideas and approaches – as well as consumer awareness – that pushed the use of IPM to new heights, there was also a lot of opportunity to move things forward. Even dabbling with the idea that grow-ing fruit organically was not too farfetched.

By 1999, I found myself back in New York working at a small orchard in the Hudson Valley. It was here that I collaborated with Red Tomato Marketing in the development of their first-ever Eco-Apple protocol – a protocol that required the use of many of the available IPM tools. NEWA came online, more recently RIM-pro, the use of weather stations, predicative models became more advanced (and accurate), and even the spray materials were considerably less toxic and more pest-specific. But, despite all of the advances and tools, and the obvious need for greater implementa-tion, IPM has failed to become a standard, comprehen-sive practice with growers – right now, it’s just a buzzword with little in the way of being fully integrat-ed into modern growing practices.

So where are we today?

Unfortunately, fear is the primary mechanism for how decisions are made in the tree fruit industry. And with good reason. In large part, any pest damage results in downgraded fruit and cosmetics is the unfortunate quality standard of how we measure success. A little scab, codling moth injury, plum curculio, apple mag-got – by themselves or together – are unacceptable. Anything that reduces yields or packout is unaccepta-ble. It’s a whole lot easier to put on that additional scab spray, even if the models say the threat of infec-tion is low, than to risk an infection you may have to fight all season long. Even if that spray turns out to be unnecessary – the cost savings vs the potential for lost revenue doesn’t make sense in today’s world. Who wants to save $200 when the risk is a $10,000 loss? So when it’s simply easier to just go out and spray every 5-7 days versus checking traps and monitoring models – and with less risk – is there even a place for IPM in today’s growing environment?

What is IPM?

“IPM is an ecosystem-based strategy that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage through a combination of techniques such as biological con-trol, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and use of resistant varieties.” Nowhere in this definition does it talk about spraying or pesticides. Yet, that is where we usually start when we discuss pest management. What do I need to spray, how much, and when? It’s unfortunate, but that’s reali-ty. What is IPM? Let’s start with what it is not:

IPM is not:

• Calendar spraying • Spraying what your neighbor’s spraying • Spraying whatever your chemical rep says (without justification) • Spraying based on what is being primarily shipped from a warehouse • Putting away your sprayer early to save a few dol-lars and then complaining about the codling moth damage later • Spraying because, well, it worked last year.

IPM is:

• Appropriately justified and applied pesticide appli-cations based on….. • Weather stations. Great for just knowing what the heck is going on, but you also need one for NEWA, RIMpro. One station per unique site is optimal. • Pheromone traps. These give critical information on population dynamics of numerous pests (needed for BioFix markers, population trends, etc.) and timing of pesticide applications. • Pest modeling. NEWA, RIMpro, Washington State’s Decision Aid System (DAS) aid in the need and timing of pesticide applications. • Biological control. Beneficial insects, plants, and microorganisms. These are the predators and parasites

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 34

and their habitat that help control many insects and diseases. These are front line defenses and help sup-port appropriate pesticide applications.

• Mating disruption. Similar to pheromone disrup-tion, but actually stymie mating which reduces subse-quent populations of pests including codling moth, OFM, dogwood borer. Reduce the need for expensive sprays. • Resistant varieties. If they can’t get it, they don’t need sprays for it. • Management of surrounding habitat. Removing plants that harbor damaging insects can be helpful in reducing pressure. Likewise, selecting or even plant-ing specific plants and trees can increase populations of predator and parasite populations, birds, and bats that combat damaging insect populations.

• Sanitation. This includes keeping the orchard clean of old infested bins, dead or dying trees, noxious weeds, and other potential sources of pest infesta-tions. • Management of plant stress. In these days of changing climate, we never know what the weather will be, how insect or diseases will react, and therefore we don’t know how susceptible trees are to pest at-tack. Managing simple things like water relations more precisely, tree fruit nutrition, physiology (e.g., pruning and thinning), reducing use of herbicides, and even site or varietal selections can reduce pest suscep-tibility by increasing plant health. • Soil health. Soil health is one of the best ways that growers can positively affect everything from plant health and nutrition to crop productivity and fruit quality, yet it continue to be given short shrift in ways that baffle me. We’re still focused on nutrition being about NPK, irrigation is still not a given for new or-chards, and there is little if any real considerations of what’s going on underground with fungal communi-ties and overall microbiological activity. These are the communication networks, the internet if you will, of the orchard. They are the orchard’s life support sys-tem.

Conventional Farming is Failing.

Late last year, I made a comment to small group of growers – none of whom who are in this room – that conventional farming was failing. And while I still believe that is true; the reality is that conventional farming simply can’t keep up with all the changes we are facing on a year in and year out basis. And it can’t keep up because conventional methods are simultane-ously damaging orchards and undercutting the support systems of our farms by creating orchards dependent on a heavy dose of synthetic inputs. Climate change, weather variability, invasive insects, disease pressures, export market demands, consumer demands, regulato-ry demands are all impacting the industry’s ability to achieve the high level goals it needs to remain viable. Its hard enough to keep up with all the changes, but we can’t continue to think that we can continue to just spray our way out of each situation. The need for com-prehensive adoption of integrated pest management has never been greater than right now. In the past few years, we’ve seen brown marmorated stinkbug, spotted wing drosophila, black stem borer, and now spotted lanternfly enter the scene. Even older insects like woolly apple aphid, apple mealy bug, and codling moth are emerging as major pest issues. This can be partially blamed on the loss of broad-spectrum insecticides, but reality is that their ability to survive better from year to year – with little competition – is increasing. In order to combat these problems with more than sprays, we need to take a proactive approach to build-ing healthy orchard ecosystems. The answers lie not just with basic IPM practices, but with a broader phil-osophical approach of regenerative orcharding. Regenerative farming is not a new concept per se, but it is new to our industry. To regenerate means to re-build. And to rebuild, we need to start with the soil and work our way up. By starting with the soil, we can create the foundation for healthy trees and orchards. And by creating healthy orchards we have the capacity to create ecosystems, rich, diverse multi-species or-chards that support a broad array of life that builds on itself allowing for more diverse interactions and in-creasing plant health. Regenerative farming is cycli-cal, not linear. Of course, healthier trees grow more and better fruit, but they also last longer, there is less decline, and theoretically fewer inputs over the long

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 35

term – in large part because you’re able to better leverage the full power of IPM techniques. Where do we go from here?

First and foremost, we need to shift our thinking from a pure spraying mentality to an ecosystem-based philos-ophy. We need to stop thinking in terms of an A+B=C approach and thinking of orchard practices as complex algorithms. In the early 90s, there were a number of researchers who worked on various expert systems to help growers make more effective pest management decisions using IPM. The IPM Institute of North America con-tinues to evolve the Eco-Apple protocol with an even broader approach that considers all farm operations as well as discrete farming practices. IPMi has even developed PRiME (Pest Risk Management Engine) as a way to evaluate the overall risks of a spray or sprays to the environment. Cornell’s Apple pollinator researchers have recently developed a program for choosing pesticides based on risks to pollinator species . In addition to the tools listed above, we – the industry – have all the tools we need to move from a strictly spray-based ap-proach for pest management to a broader holistic approach that considers all levels of the orchard business. Sudden Apple Decline is the perfect example of situation where we can’t spray our way out of a bad situation. Greater attention to preplant conditions, plant health, precision nutrition and irrigation, and soil health, howev-er, are the keys to reducing the potential impacts of SAD by increasing the resiliency of your orchards through development of diverse ecosystems. The use of the full range of IPM techniques allow this to happen. Ulti-mately, the result should be healthier orchards, greater productivity, better fruit, and reduced inputs. Let’s Put the I Back Into IPM!

We’re at a point where we need to be making better, broader, and more proactive pest management and or-chard health decisions than ever before. IPM is the consideration of the entire orchard and surrounding envi-ronment and not just productivity and cosmetics. Growers are pumping millions of dollars a year into new or-chards and yet are often leaving out some of the best, most cost-effective tools available to help with crop management and long-term productivity. Now, most of my interactions with growers quickly get boiled down to spray decisions – and I get that is part of the process – but we have more IPM technology and tools availa-ble to us than ever before to be able to make better decisions before ever getting to spray recommendations. Yet, from my perspective, IPM techniques are being used even less than ever before.

The evidence behind a regenerative, holistic approach to orchard management is only growing and is critical to long-term success. It would be a shame to miss this opportunity, because today, right now, we are at a crucial turning point in orchard management practices whether we like it or not. We need to put the “I” back in IPM.

Know Your Roots is a family business with a passion for and commitment to the planet. We help you get to know your land better and bring it to its full potential, so you can utilize its bounty.

Mike

Debbie

have over 50 years of combined experience and a strong desire to share their knowledge with others. Although, their passions overlap (hey, they are mar-ried), their focuses are quite different. Simply put –

Mike

cultivates and

Debbie

forages.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 36

All trees, plants etc. have life’s blood we call “resin”, same as human blood: without it to heal an injury, the tree, plants etc. will suffer illness and, if not healed, will die. As we know with any injury, without cleaning and proper care, it can lead to permanent damage. A tree with any injury requires heavy nutrition to heal itself and it may not have any energy left to produce its fruit to replicate itself which is very important for its life.

All trees have this resin (blood) some more, some less. Pine has the greatest amount that I know of, so I prefer pine for healing recipes. To get the resin, I swept the floor of a cabinet maker in his barn. I received walnut, cherry, but mostly pine sawdust. I didn’t separate any-thing between wood shavings and saw dust. Also, our local lumber company had sawdust vacuumed in a bin, so we could back a pickup under and take what they had. With persistence you can find resources. Fresh sawdust/chips are best and the fresh sawdust with its res-in is applied as a dressing on the tree that regrows the cambium layer, closes the wound, and heals the tree.

With a different method to heal a large cut off limb 14″ diameter and grow the cambium layer back, I have a rec-ipe for that. This will help even large trees with vehi-cle damage, it’s all about nutrition.

Recipe is made up of 3 equal parts:

Pine resin (start with ¼ of a box)

Linseed Oil

Stove Black Powder

Where to Find Ingredients

I had an apple orchard at my home. Everyone in the neighborhood knew of my orchard. I’m an Electronic Technician. At a home, 3 blocks from my home, work-ing on equipment, a man apparently knew me but I did-n’t know him. He asked about my orchard, and the con-versation got around to grafting and repairing damage from rabbits on young trees. I explained my methods to save them. Also I needed to heal a 14” cut on one of the older trees but could not find enough Pine resin. Then I find that he is a retired Pharmacist and he can get any-thing I needed and in quantity. Pine resin is packaged like a pound of butter, 4 quarters weighing more than a pound per box. Then I asked about Stove Black, that also he can supply, “How much do you need?” So, check with a Pharmacy.

Back to the Recipe:

In a pan on low, controlled heat, either with an extra plate between the pot and the heat or a double boiler, melt Pine Resin very slowly to about 100⁰ F*, dripping in Linseed Oil so resin stays like a liquid paste. I recom-mend using a thermometer.

Knowing during cooling resin will harden again; make many tests as it cools (reheating and putting more Lin-seed oil in if it is too hard). *Note that the temperature in the recipe is for Indiana. If you live further south you may need to use a slightly higher temperature, so that the result will be a soft paste that will not run if heated by the sun on a summer day on a tree cut at about a 45⁰ an-gle. Bear also in mind that pine resin is flammable. Do not overheat.

Now I add the Stove Pipe Black powder: Its importance is for collecting the sun to keep the resin paste in a semi-liquid state. It does not take much to turn the paste black. You can make the paste ahead of time, leave it in the pot. Make sure you never intend to use the pot for anything else!

Application.

Application is best done in the summer or late spring, when the warmth of the sun will keep the paste from hardening. Understand that the tree cambium fluid each year will form another layer called “Bark.” At the rim of this 14” cut the Bark is very thick and cannot grow any further to cover the Heartwood: so, the rim is bulging with Bark. However, that Bark is alive with resin.

Considering the injured area will not contain enough cambium fluid, it becomes dry and drier each year ex-posed: Painting it will not do any good, the paint may retain moisture causing it to rot faster.

I cut down a paint brush to make the bristles stiffer. With that brush I brushed the black paste onto the Heart-wood, overlapping the bark about 1.5” in every direc-tion. Each year there will be another cambium layer pro-tecting the tree’s heartwood naturally. One coat is all that’s needed.

I have healed a Maple tree damaged by a car, with the same recipe.

Tree Healing – Naturally | Samuel Dodd, Indianapolis, IN

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 37

Greg on February 7 at 8:50 PM:

Any old timers in here? I’d sure love to hear some of your hardest lessons learned in grafting/orcharding.

Harry: Don’t pile up mulch around your trees. I killed 20 dwarfs

Luke: How’d they die? Did the mulch keep it too wet?

Dave: voles

Harry: Collar rot. Ringed every single one.

Dennis: I am thinking of wrapping mine with hard-ware cloth with a 3 to 4 inch space.

Harry: I’ve done that on several of mine. Cut a strip of it and wrap it.

Hank: hardware cloth is a great way to go.

Cam: was the mulch touching the tree trunks?

Harry: of course. That’s why it killed them. Caused collar rot.

Harry: Now I use hardware cloth to keep the mulch off and the chewers at bay.

—————————

Brian: Quite a few years ago here in NE WI, a would-be apple orchardist sunk a lot of $$$$ into 200 bear-ing-size dwarf ‘Red Delicious’ and ‘Golden Delicious’ — the 1st winter, voles girdled and killed 167 of them!

Harry: his first mistake was the cultivars he chose.

Brian: I agree most heartily!

Hank: You said it not me! probably the best outcome for apple eaters in the area….

————————-

Scott: I pruned my first young trees with heading cuts — created a jungle and delayed fruiting up to NINE years – ha!

Josh Ward: how does that delay fruiting 9 years

George: Been there, done that too!

Scott: Josh, aggressive, winter pruning stimulates ag-gressive growth. If that persists, the tree stays in a state of “juvenile” development. Today, I prune to train very lightly until the tree starts to bear.

—————————-

Hal: Build a good fence! The year I started my or-chard I planted too early and froze the leaves off then a month later the deer got through my mediocre fence and trimmed them pretty hard. Then a couple years later the snow drifted over my 3 ½ foot chicken wire and the rabbits got in and destroyed about 25 trees in my nursery row. Build a better fence than you think you need!

Brian: I had a branch fall on a 4′ chicken wire fence that protected my potted apple grafts — a bunny then got in and destroyed over 90 different cvs.

Hal: oh man that’s devastating. Hopefully your were able to gather up all those varieties again. But what a setback

C.C.: Hal a good trick to keep rabbits away from young trees, I use pool noodles you can get 2or 3 from one noodle

2 Hal: good idea

———————————

J.M.: Lost 200 pear trees to voles one year. Did not see that until three feet of snow melted. Lost all my fig cuttings to peat moss that was too wet. Lost tags until I switched to PVC stake and metal tag for stock trees. Lost trees to deer when using plastic net cages. Forgot to keep the nursery license current and the shot gun loaded. Dave and I lost our nursery to wild bill after we built it but trusted him. Used fabric grafting tape and Alnarp apple rootstock

The OH NO! Column | Barbara Rosholdt

The Following is a thread on Facebook about “Hardest Lessons Learned in Grafting/Orcharding”. Harvested and edited by Barbara Rosholdt February

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 38

fifty years ago. Expect a loss every year. Some make it and some do not. Prune twice a year and do not forget to spray as need-ed and fertilize. Do not spare on wax and bud-ding rubber for cuttings. Keep all your receipts and a log book. Skip the grafting knife, unless you are budding, and use a fresh, clean utility knife.

John: Prune twice… Fall and winter?

Steve: Since there’s no growth between fall and winter, that would pretty much be the same pruning. Maybe dormant and summer?

Steve: J.M., some good advice there, but also advice that just leads to questions. Who is or was wild bill??

John: Always heard just late winter.

Steve: summer pruning is good when you need to slow down growth.

J.M.: August pruning, to shape and retard growth. Winter pruning, to shape but with an expected grow back, during January and Feb. A slight and judicious pruning during these times will help shape your or-chard but will also aid in the struggle against brown rot on Prunus.

J.M.: Wild Bill stole St Lawrence Nursery from his teacher, and then ran off with it after Dave, John and I built it into an entity, although on his property, and without legal papers. The three of us all got divorced and moved on, while Wild Bill found cheap labor.

Steve: I did not know that. How does Fred Ashworth fit into the story? He was using a different location as I recall.

Mike: sorry to hear that

J.M.: Bill tagged along with Fred the last year of Fred’s life. They did field grafting and sold Fred’s old, mature trees. His daughters had some of his finds that we used for seed source and Bill ended up with a piece of his land across from his house, where the ha-zelberts and second-generation chestnuts are. The original chestnuts were a clump of three Americans Fred found down by Watertown as were the hardy highbush blueberry that became part of the MN half-high blueberry project. One of my favorite series. Fred was a generous, bright self-taught man but some-times those traits are easy to take advantage of. The Northrup mulberry was planted by the mother of a friend and neighbor of mine. Both Fred and I discov-ered that 100+ year old tree but Bill chose to name it after her brother in law. I liked Stanley Northrup and worked with him, but it was his wife’s tree. Fred had an eye for important plants and the patience of a life-time. While I am not a huge fan of the Bicentennial black walnut, the majority of his finds were great. I do not consider Bicentennial a timber type walnut, mine being branched and bunchy, but so be it.

Steve: Thanks, Japheth.

———————

Steve: My favorite grafting advice: When making grafting cuts, use your thumb as a guide, not an anvil. Luckily, I heard this early on and didn’t have to learn it from experience.

J.M.: Just in case, use a sharp blade but wrap your thumb. Difficult to beat newspaper and tape. The al-ternative takes time to heal.

Steve: I’ve been grafting for close to 40 years and haven’t cut myself yet. (Now I’ve done it! This spring will be a blood bath.)

Steve: Disclaimer: I only average about 10 or 12 grafts per year, so I can afford to work slowly and carefully.

J.M.: After 50 years riding the knife, I still get caught in the moment of the first day, and so caution, and on a cold spring day, a grafting tool, can be a good friend.

Brian: Slip a rubber hose washer over the rootstock to protect your digits — if your knife slips, the rubber washer will be there for you!

———————–

Derek: Deer will not leave your trees alone because the woods are full of other stuff to eat.

——————-

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 39

Mike: Plant trees you will never sit in the shade.

Mike: One of my mentors passed a year ago. Taught me bees and trees. Planted until he was 80, I wish I could be half the man he was.

Mike: The first sign of a dying orchard, the man stops planting trees.

Molly: what are your first signs of dying orchard?

Mike: Molly when you stop planting!

Molly: lololololololol

——————

Derek: I have been grafting since 1983 and just turned 60. A couple of years ago I taught grafting to a guy in his 90’s! Never too old!

——————

Stephen: Does 63 count as old? Anyhow, we started growing and graftimg apples 30 years ago and got many things right and wrong. Wrote it up in a kindle e-book ‘Tales from an English Orchard’

Biggest mistake we made was planting trees too close together.

Bryan: I bought it, read it. Thank you!

Dave: I really enjoy and recommend your video se-ries Stephen. Thank you.

Keith: greetings Dr. Hayes, you’ve been a great inspi-ration for me to start my own Heirloom Orchard. Its been a real pleasure watching your YouTube videos over the years.

———————–

Dave: As a livestock producer one of the hardest les-sons for me to learn was an old adage “If you own livestock the day will come when you also own dead-stock.”

The same applies to growing plants of any descrip-tion.

The best advice I would give anyone starting out is build a fence around your orchard. Build Horse high and Hog tight. Do it first and do it right or you WILL pay the price.

Harry: helps to eat venison also lol.

Harry: My apple trees are in cages to the left.

Dave: I am so sick of venison…ate far too much of it over the years. Deer I can deal with but moose are destructive tanks. Here is a picture of one of my cages.

Harry: that’s some huge cages man. I know how much that —- costs.

Dave: That is only stucco wire so not too bad for cost. Around $70 per roll here and I get 3 cag-es per roll. They are mostly psychologi-cal warfare as the animals could just push through them but with the excep-tion of one moose they have all worked flawlessly.

Harry: ohhh. I bought actual galvanized welded wire. Like 300 bucks worth. Haven’t seen the stucco wire here. Guessing Lowes might have it

Hal: your playing with fire there. Growing apple trees and feeding deer sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. Good luck

Harry: been fine so far. They can’t reach anything. Only tree I’ve had hit was ones not in cages.

————————–

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 40

Naomi: We had goats when growing up. They had expensive taste. They ate down every saskatoon in the forest and then some. Deadstock everywhere.

Harry: wife wanted a couple goats. After seeing how they literally put anything in their mouth we decided no.

Naomi: Only once in my whole childhood did a goat eat something nature didn’t intend it to eat – a bucket of KFC grease was a go-to snack. But, they just ate every shrub on the property that had any value at all.

Harry: my buddies goat was chewing on some wood screws we were using. Had a mouth full

Naomi: Nice…. As a child, I never could understand that stereotype for goats.

——————–

Stephen: Pruning is to create the best conditions for the production of fruit. Some plants fruit on new wood and some on old wood. You must know this to benefit from pruning. If you don’t know this there is a high potential to do more damage than good. Different trees benefit from being pruned at different stages of their seasonal cycles. Some trees you will prune before bud break and others later in the season. Basically, all pomes can be pruned at the same time. All drupes can be pruned at the same time. All nuts can be pruned at the same time. Make sure you know which is which. By this I mean that you would prune an Almond tree when you prune the drupes, not when you prune the walnuts.

Stephen: Sorry, but this comment seems to have been posted to the wrong group somehow.

It may, however, be remotely relative to the OP above.

——————

Naomi: Label your trees better. There, I said it. 😉

——————-

Brian: An old UW-Madison Botany professor of mine once said — way back when — that “a plant will grow any @#$%^& place it wants to”.

So, in spite of our best wishes, fervent hopes, and ded-icated efforts, some things are just beyond our con-trol…but we still continue to dream, to try again and again, don’t we? But if, after a second or third attempt, a particular species or cultivar still fails to establish, it’s best to chalk it up to experience and move on. Decades ago, I tried grafting 22 different cvs. of Asian pears onto hardy understock: 20 of those grafts died back to the rootstock under extreme winter weather lows, while the last two held on for quite a few years, fruiting heavily year after year, but finally succumbed several winters ago here in USDA Z4 to a nasty spate of sub-zero temperatures that even killed two of my apple trees (both English cvs.: ‘Claygate Permain’ and ‘Worcester Permain’) .

Asian pears were simply not destined for me here in NE WI, so I now focus on my 49 cvs. of honeyberries/haskaps, 22 cvs. of blueberries, my remaining apples, hardy cherries, traditional pears, numerous juneber-ries/serviceberriesDave/saskatoons, etc., though I do continue experimenting, now with a few Goji berries, “hardy” kiwis, etc.

J.M.: Moving to NC, I gave up on tomatoes and pota-toes, which I used to grow fields of. Not worth the bother here. Everything else looks great. Just need to figure out this deer wasting [disease] problem.

—————–

: Keep the turf away from young trees. I neglected to mulch well around our North Star sour cherry and it got a fatal case of canker just inches above the ground. It moved fast. (Yes, I leave 2-inch clearance from mulch around each trunk otherwise.)

——————–

Bryan: Six-foot welded wire fence with zip ties and t-posts has keep deer out of a two-acre orchard which is near a creek that the deer use. Black walnut = ju-glone=dead apple and pear trees.

J.M.: I do love those posts. My deer would rip up that cheap Agway steel.

Bryan: so far so good.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 41

nut species worldwide. The smaller American hazel species, Corylus Americana, grows in eastern North America and is not a commercial species. C. Americana hosts the fungal disease Eastern Filbert Blight “EFB” to which it is immune. The commercial C. avellana species, however, is sensitive to the EFB. The only area of commercial ha-zelnut production in North America is in the Pacific Northwest, outside the native range of the EFB host, C. Ameri-cana.

Despite quarantines the EFB appeared in the northwest commercial region sometime in the mid 1900s and slowly began decimating commercial hazel orchards. Growers fought back with chemicals and an aggressive breeding program at Oregon State University.

https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/em9073/html

Tree breeding is a slow process and chemicals slowed the disease while researchers developed new resistant varie-ties. One resistant European variety (Gassaway) was discovered, which became the anchor of the OSU (sorry Buckeyes and Cowboys) breeding program. Several new varieties were tested and released by OSU, mostly with the Gassaway resistance gene. Western EFB infected orchards were, and continue to be, ripped out and replanted with new OSU’s releases. Also, OSU continues to develop new releases with further EFB resistance and other im-proved characteristics.

It doesn’t take a genius to light on the idea “If EFB is whipped, why not an eastern hazelnut industry?” Of course there were some minor obstacles like: no agricultural plan, no knowledge base, unknown pest and climate pres-sures, and no market infrastructure. Eastern hobbyist and nurseries began planting the OSU material and two ma-jor eastern breeding programs were started.

The Upper Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative is a breeding, a development, and an educational program.

https://www.midwesthazelnuts.org/

Besides the EFB “elephant-in-the-room”, the upper Midwest is a bit north of C. avellana’s comfort zone. The breeding approach was to start with a multitude of avellana/Americana hybrids. The program has about 150 cooperators in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa who have around 80,000 hybrid plants growing for evaluation. The plants are old enough for early production results, and a few promising prospects have

Hazelnut Status Report | John Kelsey

The European hazel Corylus avellana is the common hazel of Europe, western Asia, and is the commercial hazel-

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 42

been identified and are being clonal tested. Meanwhile agricultural and processing methods are being developed for the hybrid plants, which are smaller than their C. avellana parent.

A major breeding program was begun at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1996. Due to the con-tinuing quarantine, the western growing region only has one strain of the EFB fungus, while the East has several strains. OSU varieties depending on the Gassaway resistance gene are having mixed results in the East, depending on the locale and the variety. The Rutgers program began by collecting all strains of the EFB fungus to thoroughly expose new plants.

The Rutgers research farms abound with the C. Americana EFB host to present the highest EFB pressure. C. avellana material has been collected from earlier American researchers, Europe, and western Asia to be exposed at the Rutgers farms. The goal is to find other resistances and to achieve higher EFB resistance (and even full immunity) by means of multiple resistance genes. The Rutgers program has planted and EFB inoculated around 80,000 plants, mostly from hand pollinated crosses between promising C. avellana individuals. The Rut-gers variety evaluation process is meticulous and guarded. The best clonal material is out to cooperative growers for further exposure. When the Rutgers varieties are finally named and released, we can be assured of some very good cultivars for eastern growers.

http://agproducts.rutgers.edu/hazelnuts/

Concerning eastern markets, the Ferrero Rocher Company, who makes Nutella and those wonderful hazelnut chocolates, has built a factory in Ontario. With Ferrero Rocher’s encouragement, Ontario hazelnut growers have organized with the goal of supplying the Fer-rero Rocher demand.

http://www.ontariohazelnuts.com/

Also, an Ontario hazelnut research program is underway at Guelph University.

https://www.uoguelph.ca/oac/news/opportunity-grows-ontario-hazelnut-trees

The major breeding programs, along with the Arbor Day Foundation, work together with a cooperative atmosphere. There is a lot of grower interest in the best varieties, and the eastern breeding programs are unable to meet the de-mand their best plants. These are research sites, not commercial nurseries. Even at nurseries, traditional propaga-tion methods are too slow to meet the demand for clonal plants. They are always “sold out”. Tissue culture com-panies are being involved. Hopefully an adequate supply of the best cultivars will soon become available, and east-ern orchardist can begin learning the peculiarities of growing hazelnuts.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 43

***All Things NAFEX***

NAFEX Members’ Exchange: Seeds, Scions, Etc.

Regarding our Exchange Page: In these days of fast communication, I urge NAFEX members to check our Facebook page for many of your scion wood offers or searches. However, in these pages, NAFEX members are still invited to exchange scions, seeds, cuttings, supplies, and study materials. These ads are accepted as a service to our members for free, but NAFEX accepts no responsibility for the authenticity of information given. Most material is to be given for free or swapped, however, reasonable postage or a small ($1) fee may be requested by the advertiser.

Be sure to answer all of your emailed requests (even a quick “all gone” note is appreciated.) Members inquir-ing via post should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if they would like a response.

To list on the Exchange, email nafexmember@gmail.com and provide your listing, contact information (email preferred), terms (postage costs, small fee, free), and website address, if any. If you are offering multiple items, we can link to your listing on your web page, or publish the list in PDF format linked to your Exchange listing. The Member Exchange is NOT open to the public…only NAFEX members whose dues are current may list and use this area.

Larger ads are also available for Pomona. Ads offering fruit-related plant material, horticultural supplies, and publications are accepted from members and non-members. Paid ads are approximately one-half page for $50 or a full page for $85. Contact the Pomona Editor-in-Chief to place your advertisement. Payment is accepted by check, Paypal, or Google Checkout. Email the editor or nafexmember@gmail.com for assistance.

Fruit & Nut Interest and Regional Fruit Groups Clifford England 2338 Highway 2004 Mc Kee, KY 40447-8342 http://www.nuttrees.net/start.html nuttrees@prtcnet.org (606) 965-2228 or (606) 493-8239

I’m so glad for the opportunity to be the Interest Group Coordinator. I love to talk and enlighten fellow enthu-siasts in the participation of one of our most sacred freedoms of growing what we eat and providing for others.

I grew up on a small farm and spent a lot of time with my grandfather Blevins England in southeastern Ken-tucky on his 65 acres where he grew trees and farmed as a hobby. I remember like it was yesterday the joys of picking the fresh ripe fruit from the trees and the taste of happiness that such joy brings. Well, I’m 50ish now and to this day I still remember the lessons my grandfather taught me.

My grandfather’s teachings set me on a valuable path for the next 26 years. I traveled around the United States and the world in the military, spending time in 14 countries. Years later, I realized that what I learned and had been observing the entire time I was traveling was the desire to be semi-independent. Growing your own food helps you grow as a person and be closer to the earth.

I have been a member of NAFEX for going on 20 years and I love those evenings spent in the recliner in the winter months, reading the Pomona quarterly publications. I always look forward to the next Issue. All of you know that we grow as much in the winter months as we do in the summer months, except for the sweat. Just

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 44

the planning during the winter months is encouragement enough, I often think.

I welcome questions and I will be more than glad to take calls about any of the temperate zone fruits and nuts that we grow and/or that I have experience with. I will be delighted to put you in contact with the chairperson of a specialty group.

If I can be of any assistance in any way please feel free to contact me. I am eager to work with all the plant species and the regional fruit study groups: the ones that are active now and that will be active in the future.

Thank you.

Clifford

Here’s some ideas for Interest Group chairs or those considering volunteering. Any current chairs would be happy to let you know what they do for their groups, as well.

Interest Group Volunteer Info:

Fruit and Nut Interest Groups

Acorn Joe Hecksel, 7980 Bentley Hwy.,Eaton Rapids, MI 48827 acornsandchestnuts.blogspot.com

Amelanchier — Rick Sawatzky 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, S7N 5A8

Apple — Derek Mills, Hocking Hills Orchard, 14435 Nickel Plate Road, Logan, OH 43138

Apricot Bob Purvis, 1568 Hill Road, Homedale, ID 83628-3517 APRICOT SOURCES LIST

Canadian Sources — David Maxwell

Cherry — Rick Sawatzky, 51 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, S7N 5A8

Chestnut Joe Hecksel, 7980 Bentley Hwy.,Eaton Rapids, MI 48827.

Citrus:

HARDY — John Panzarella Dr. Alfred R. Loeblich III

Crataegus — Mayhaws, Hawthorns Travis Callahan, tandeecal.com/mayhaw.htm

Edible Dogwood — Cornus mas, Cornus officionalis, Cornus Kousa Chair: John Holzwart, (920)457-9290

Elderberries Paul Otten 19060 Manning Trail North, Marine on St. Croix, MN 45324

Eleagnaceae (Autumn Olive, Goumi, Sea Buckthorn): Hector Black, 170 Hidden Springs Lane, Cookeville, TN 38501.(931) 268-9889, 6 AM – 7 AM and after 6 PM central time.

Figs:

NORTHERN FIGS – Bassem Samaan, 2184 Drury Lane, Bethlehem, PA 18018, 610-653-6435 treesofjoy.com;

CONSULTANT—Dr. A. J. Bullard, 307 W. Henderson St., Mt. Olive, NC, 28365-1999. (919) 658-4424.

Fruit Trees for Public Spaces — Bill Whipple

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 45

Fruits for the Wild — David Osborn

Grafting and Budding ( chip budding and bark grafting ) Lester H. Davis,1644 Lokey Dr., Columbus, GA 31904 (706) 323- 0857. Best after 9:30 PM eastern time.

Grapes — Patrick Schumann, PO Box 40171, NM 87196-0171

Grapes, Muscadine — Trey Lewis

Honeybees — Ray Lackey, 1260 Walnut Ave., Bohemia NY 11716-2176. (631) 567-1936 between 8 – 10:30 PM; tianca.com/tianca2.html

Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos): Andy Wilson, Springtree Agroforestry Project, 268 Springtree Lane, Scottsville, VA 24590 (434) 286- 3466 (evenings are best) pvcc.edu/faculty/awilson/agroforestry

Jujube— Shengrui Yao, Ph.D., Assistant Professor/Fruit Specialist, Department of Plant and Environment Sci-enceAlcalde Agriculture Science Center, New Mexico State University, 371 County Road 40, P. O. Box 159, Alcalde, NM 87511, Phone: 505-852-4241

Kiwifruit (Vacant, Volunteer Now)

Melons (Vacant, Volunteer Now)

Mayhaw Travis Callahan tandeecal.com/mayhaw.htm

Mulberry:

SOUTHERN — A. J. Bullard, 307 W. Henderson St., Mt. Olive, NC 28365. (919) 658-4424.

Pawpaw — Blake Cothran healingrootsorganics.com

Peach and Nectarine Scott Smith, 1620 The Terraces, Baltimore, MD 21209

Pear:

SOUTHERN–Travis J. Callahan 11403 Wesley Road, Abbeville, LA 70510. (318) 893-9134; tandeecal.com/page10.htm;

NORTHERN —David Sliwa, 2682 Lannon Hill Rd., Decorah, IA 52101. (563) 382-3922.

WESTERN — Rachel Elkins, Pomology Farm Advisor, Lake & Mendocino Counties, University of California Cooperative Extension, 883 Lakeport Blvd., Lakeport, Ca 95453 & Joseph Postman

Persimmon,

AMERICAN– Jerry Lehman, 7780 Persimmon St. Terre Haute, IN 47802-4994. (812) 298-TREE

KAKI, (ASIAN) — David J. Lavergne 5430 Blvd. D’Isle, Jarreau, LA 70749-3119, (225) 627-5591

Permaculture — Co-Chairs:

Dave Boehnlein, Education Director, Bullock’s Permaculture Homestead PermaculturePortal.com, P.O. Box 343, Deer Harbor, WA 98243

Trevor Newman, 8150 Knox Rd. Clarkston, MI 48348, Phone: (248) 535-9419, thefruitnut.com and rootstofruits.biz.

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 46

Plum:

NORTHERN — John Bunker 167 Turner Mill Pond Rd., Palermo, ME 04354. Letters or email preferred.

SOUTHERN — David Ulmer, 7157 Camellia Lane, Sebastopol, CA 95472. Phone 707-824-1650

Pomengranate Tom Knaust

Potted Culture — Lee Reich 387 Springtown Rd., New Paltz, NY 12561. (914) 255-0417, early morning east-ern time best.

Quince — Joseph Postman

Ribes (Gooseberries, Currants, etc.) — Deb Schneider

Rhubarb Deb Schneider

Rubus (Raspberries, Blackberries) – Peter H. Tallman, 5690 Steeplechase Dr., Longmont, CO 80503. (303) 684-9404

NORTHERN — Jim Fruth

Short Season Perennial Fruits – Ron Martinez

Southern Fruits Consultant — Lloyd Williams, 205-665-4329

Strawberries Michael J Wellik, Middletown, DE 19709, Phone: 302-378-3633 blog.thestrawberrystore.com/

Rare & Unusual and Tropical Fruits Susan Davidson, Naturipe Farms LLC, (239) 552 4730, Mobile: (239) 249 9149

Walnut Jerry Lehman, 7780 Persimmon St., Terre Haute, IN 47802-4994. (812) 298-TREE

Winter Hardiness — William MacKentley, 325 State Hwy 345, Potsdam, NY 13676. (315) 265-6739; Phone calls preferred to letters.

Regional Interest Groups

Although NAFEX does not have regional or state chapters, we do encourage the development of local groups that have the same interests and goals. Here are some current groups:

Midwest Fruit Explorers (MidFEx): Chicago area active fruit growers.

Southern Fruit Fellowship (SFF): Covers the southeastern states.

Backyard Fruit Growers: Pennsylvania Group

Indiana Nut Growers Association

California Rare Fruit Growers

Holistic Orchard Network

Western Cascade Fruit Society

Seattle Tree Fruit Society

Buncombe (NC) Fruit and Nut Club

Thinking about Pomona

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 47

how do we bring our journal side of NAFEX into the 21st century?

NAFEX is us. You and me. Pomona is a member-written publication. Without you, we have nothing to say.

You are writing a letter to your fruit-growing friends when you submit to Pomona; you need not write a schol-arly article, though we welcome those.

Tell us what fruits and nuts you are growing, how they are doing in your locality, what special techniques you may have used to enhance your fruit’s success.

Here are some suggested categories, but feel free to submit something that would fall under a different heaing:

• Garden Mistakes, • Lessons Learned, • Eureka Moments, • Recent Successes, • Outstanding Varieties, • Pruning Tips, • Training Tips, • Grafting Tips • Getting to know your fellow fruit explorers—including yourself! Send us a sketch of you and your growing interests.

Ideally, each NAFEX member would submit something for publication at least once every year. Subject matter can be anything that deals with fruits and nuts, occasionally venturing a ways from the basics. Good subjects include description and evaluation of an unusual variety; new variations of a propagating technique; a progress report on an experimental breeding or testing program; new methods of fruit culture, training, or pest control. Articles frequently respond to something printed in a previous issue.

In addition to hearing your experiences, we need to know your ideas for updating our organization to make NAFEX as useful as possible. Please let us know what you think. This feedback process is in keeping with NAFEX’s Round Robin heritage. Please check your facts, as much as possible.

Back Cover Photo by

Jan Tik

POMONA Vol 12.1 Winter 2019 48

The paw-paw, also called the prairie banana, Hoosier banana or poor man’s banana, grows in the southeastern region of the United States. They are popular locally but are not widely available commercially. When ripe the paw-paw is actually more fragrant then a familiar yellow bananas when it is ripe.

]]>