A Twofer: Douglas Fir Update and New Apple Tree

Today I am sharing two trees instead of one. One is an update on my previously posted bonsai, and the next one is my apple tree I am growing for fruit production.

Before

ID: 0010
Nickname: Christina
Type: Douglas Fir
Age: 4 years
Grown: yamadori (collected from my own yard)
Last repotting: late spring 2017
Wired: never

After

First update!

Look closely. It got a haircut. I mustered up some guts and trimmed the top, so it tails out less. The side branches also were trimmed to keep the tree more proportionate to the size of the pot. This is always a good idea, because a tree that grows top-heavy is prone to tip over the pot and everything when the squirrels play tricks on me. Since I was a little bit timid about trimming in the growing season, I decided to prune only new greenwood areas. No hardwood was harmed! Also I noticed new buds forming on the green growth, so I made sure to trim a centimeter or two past those buds so they can continue to swell over winter, and give new growth for next spring.

Another good rule of thumb I kept in mind is to never remove more than 1/3 of the tree for a full year. With conifers you have to be very careful with this rule because some varieties store all of their vigor and life in their needles in the growing season. In this case, I trimmed less than a 1/4 of the tree. No more than a single handful of small branches.

The photo above shows where this tree grows normally. Its nestled in a cloister between my grow bed of vegetables, the back yard fence, and a coniferous bush. Some kind of burning bush in the background got past border control and immigrated into our yard.

Special bonus:

ID: 0011
Nickname: Applejack
Type: Apple (Sweet 16 grafted onto M27 dwarf rootstock)
Age: first year (April 2017)
Grown: scion grafted on rootstock
Last repotting: late spring 2017
Wired: July 2017

Okay, first a silly story about myself, and then we'll talk about this amazing potted apple tree. Ready?

When I was a youngen', before I had partaken of the forbidden fruit of knowledge and sin, I was an extremely curious child. I was also mischievous and liked to prank adults. Worst of all I could talk my head off about all the things I was interested in, until it would drive a person bonkers. Some of the funny things I really liked were the color purple, Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, and My Little Pony. At the time I did not know these were girly things. Even today I find myself drawn towards interests that some might describe as feminine in nature. On the other hand, if somebody asked me my favorite color today, I would quickly insist, "Blue!", to assert my hetero maleness and avoid any further confusion. Even in high school another boy in the gym locker room used to call me names, favoring the dreaded "F" word I shall not mention here. That stung me so much at the time that I never again wanted anyone to confuse me as being anything other than a straight-laced male. If that meant I had to conform to more male social norms, then that was my choice in order to feel accepted.

My Litty Pony: Applejack
Photo from My Little Pony Wiki

Applejack was the name of a My Little Pony toy that I used to have. Like the name, I remember it smelled like Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal. Since the toy horse smelled like candy apples and it had pretty hair like a girl, as a pre-kindergarten boy, there was no reason for me to not want something that appealed to my animal senses. Most perfumes are quite sickening to me. Sweet fruits are alluring to me. So Applejack, a girly horse toy, helped spark my love for apples in a funny, girly kind of way.

The property my family used to live on had four dwarf apple trees in our yard when I was kid, but they were always overgrown, full of worms, not good producers, and the fruit it made was green and inedible. All my life, I always wanted to have a special tree with lots and lots of delicious fruit on it, but I was never allowed to grow anything in the yard even though we had a whole half acre of useless lawn and weeds.

Fast forward...

Last spring I finally got my tree. Two trees actually. I drove nearly an hour away to attend a Fruit Propagation Fair. If you have never been to one of these, please prepare yourself for culture shock. Imagine hundreds of adults packing into an event center with clip boards, and huddling up around tables to collect applewood scions. In other words, a Pokemon stadium for adults. You need to bring a sharpie and a roll of blue tape to label any scions your pick up, otherwise you will not be able to identify them later on. In the back of the large gymnasium a man sells rootstocks, but one does not simply purchase a rootstock for a tree. Oh no, no! You have to consult the panel of experts on the other wall to inquire about what type of rootstock to buy before you make a selection to ensure your tree will survive and bear fruit. Okay, so after that you buy the rootstock, and they put it in a sack with wet sawdust to keep the roots hydrated. Then you head to the other side of the building where you take a number and wait for a knife expert to help you graft the scion onto the rootstock. When they finish grafting your tree, and wrapping the wound in wax, you then have a frankentree. At the end of this I was more excited than a mad scientist raising the dead to plant my trees at home.

This tree is doing pretty good. The other one croaked in mid-July. I suspect that a small bite mark on the stem caused the tree to dry out from the top. Damn squirrel! Otherwise something was wrong with the soil or the drainage, because the leaves and branches dried up, and the roots were almost all gone or dead when I dug it out to find out the problem. I did the scratch test on the hardwood, and it looked pretty dead inside.

This tree not only survived, but the graft healed over well, and it pushed out two new branches on the scion, and it gave me a nice strong side branch under the scion. Next spring, I am interested in finding another variety to graft onto that branch. Northern Spy is going to be my pick for the next graft.

The only work I've really done on this tree is a light hand pruning to keep the side branches short enough so it does not steal too much strength from the grafted branch. The early spring leaves were also removed, as they were weak and died back as new leaves and branches were quickly replacing them. The wiring was done to prevent it from springing up as the new trunk. I want to keep this as a strong side branch. My plan is to keep this tree short and potted so it is easy to maintain without a ladder, and it can be moved if necessary.

Pinch!

Sorry I couldn't resist. Can you see the small change I made to the tree in this photo?

This tree has plenty of leaves, so I decided to remove the end growth on that branch again to force the tree to spend energy building up the buds at the leaf nodes. They will probably start swelling up with a hard shell as the tree gets closer to winter.

We're approaching Autumn now, and I am starting to research how to best prepare this tree to survive its first winter in this pot. Let me know if you have some ideas. My main concern is protecting the trunk from damage from from animals that forage for food in the snow.

Please post your advice for me below if you have ideas. Should I surround the trunk with the green screen material, like I used as the base? I also have a foam tubing material I found, used for insulating pipes, and that might help to insulate the trunk from the cold winds and also deter animals from chewing on it. Will that cause water damage to rot the tree if I wrap the trunk with material in our rainy, freezing winter?