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| 1 pound chubs of ground beef at Walmart. 73% lean, 27% fat. |
Cull apple trees
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| Picture taken while mowing the grass. You can see the white "C" I sprayed with cheap, white primer. Also note that there are VERY few apples on these trees. |
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| This is "Empire". It is a cross of McIntosh and Red Delicious. I don't know how visible the dark red apples are, but there is a good number of them. Also note how healthy the leaves look. |
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| The tall, gangly tree in the foreground is "Melrose". It is a Jonathan X Red Delicious cross. Note the fruit load. |
Empire and Melrose trees are paying their rent. They are earning the right to live in their spots.
The Ozark Gold and Jerseymac, not so much.
If you don't raise your own beef you may have to give up eating it...
ReplyDeleteThe "beef" we are eating wears antlers and ignores fences.
DeleteLast week the "beef" I was eating was feasting in my garden.
DeleteMaybe revenge is an excellent sauce? It tasted wonderful like pork to my unknowing wife.
Why not graft instead of culling?
ReplyDeleteThe trunks show signs of decay.
DeletePrices are up everywhere on everything... And yes, gotta "earn" a place in the orchard!
ReplyDelete85/15 is as greasy as I will buy.
ReplyDeleteLove me an Empire apple!
ReplyDeleteIf you note the expiration date and show up the day before it runs out and Wally will grave it marked down almost 50%
ReplyDeleteAround here the soon outdated get snatched up pretty quickly by Walmart employee families. They're not well paid so its theirs.
DeleteERJ, I was at the local farm store today and they have a variety of apple trees on sale for $40.00 each. They are around 7 feet tall and in ~5 gallon pots. Taking a quick look I saw Gala, Red Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Fuji. All the trees looked healthy to my untrained eye. We are in the ~36.81 latitude zone here. Are they worth the money?
ReplyDeleteI have the necessary equipment to dig the holes and material to fence the critters out.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Of the four varieties, Honeycrisp is the least "grower-friendly" while Gala is the most grower-friendly.
DeleteOrnamental crabapples will pollinate regular apples if they are within 50 yards, so the "you need two varieties" trope is not absolute.
Of the other two, Red Delicious has three genes that give it partial immunity to scab. That is one reason why it was so popular with growers.
Fuji is harder to grow than Red Delicious but many people think the fruit is about 10x better. Fuji is very vigorous so you definately want dwarf or semi-dwarf trees and you want to be stingy with fertilizer.
Thank you Mr. Joe.
DeleteNeck
A couple years ago I bought a dwarf 5 variety apple on a whim. One branch was dead as the bark had been twisted at the base. Got a small discount for that. What I have left is Fuji, Red Delicious, Lodi, and Braeburn. Mostly I want the Fuji. We'll see about the Red Delicious. I think all the flavor has been bred out of that variety, as they definitely don't taste as good as in my childhood. The Lodi is probably going to get cut off. Large, soft, mealy, neither sweet nor tart. Ripened in mid August and fell on the ground. Not familiar with Braeburn, so we'll see. In the end I think it's going to be a one, two, or maybe (big maybe) three variety tree.
ReplyDeleteI was in Walmart yesterday, and they have all these beautiful barbecue grills at the check-out. I told the cashier that I could afford the barbecue, but not the meat to put on it....sheesh!
ReplyDelete