APPLES

My apple rootstocks are grown in my own stool beds and are acclimated to our northeast seasons.  

GRAFTED APPLE TREES ARE PICK UP ONLY, order now to reserve for April pick up at the Ithaca Farmers Market.

Every home should have a couple apple trees, or twenty.   Besides producing huge amounts of good food, they become a part of the landscape, a living architecture that seems to evoke joy in humans.   The apple provides flowers and perfume in the spring and delicious fruit and cider in the fall! Apples are easy to grow, and they do not take long to start fruiting.   The challenges come because the whole tree tastes good to deer and insects, and to be successful you do need to protect them.   Luckily, there are many new and old varieties resistant to the common disease apple scab (a fungus which actually makes infected fruit sweeter, but ugly).  The Bud 9 rootstock we use is very hardy, dwarfing to 8-12', promotes early (2nd year) bearing, and has red leaves so suckers are easy to identify.  We space trees on it 5' apart 15' between rows, and they are about 10' tall.  It requires staking, or a trellis, or grown against a wall or fence.  Two varieties of apple are required to set a good crop - wild apples, crab apples, ornamental crab apples, and your neighbors apples all count!