Apples

As some of you will know from previous posts, Roche Fleurie is in a former meadow reverting to forest.  Most of the trees that have volunteered in that meadow are apple trees. These trees all come from seeds scattered by wild animals eating apples. They hybridize on their own, and all are edible. But most are too tart to be eaten raw, although the majority are good cooking apples. In fact, out of the lot some turn out to be quite tasty even raw. Here are a few pictures of some of these apples and what we use them for.

Unnamed apple variety

Grafting

The garden at Roche Fleurie is in the middle of a field reverting to forest. Many of the trees that get established on their own and are reclaiming the field are apple trees. However, in most cases, the apples they produce are not very good. Every spring, I try to graft tastier varieties of apples on these volunteer trees. There are many techniques used for grafting. Here is how I proceed.

"Wild" apple tree

Five Years in the Making

As I mentioned in a recent post, there are many "wild" apple trees around. When we started making the garden, one of these wild apple trees was growing in what was to be the vegetable garden. Instead of removing it, we decided to keep it as a rootstock and try to graft on it different varieties. Some of the grafts took and grew well, but we only had our first apples from the tree this year.