Grafting Skinny Scion Wood, Tips for Success

Skinny scions happen. Maybe you get some scions through trading, you open the package. and there are some very scrawny little sticks in there. Or, you find a very old tree somewhere that is completely overgrown and just puts on very short, small weak growth. Or, you encounter a tiny twiggy variety of apple, It could be a species crab apple, or maybe some variety that just naturally has very thin shoots, like Pendragon. These things are all likely to happen to you if you graft for very long. I try to send out decent sized scion wood when I sell it, but some varieties just have weak growth and better a skinny Pendragon scion than no Pendragon scion right?

I personally use a lot of skinny scions. I get them in trades and I also sell or trade off most of my best and largest scion wood and use the little stuff for my own grafting. This year I auctioned off all the best scions of my new crab apple, Cherub, and I have a bunch of tiny sticks that I grafted to make a few trees, to produce more scion wood going forward. Here I will discuss methods for grafting very small scions, and tricks to increase success.

By skinny I mean 1/8 inch and smaller at the base where the graft is made. Really 1/8 isn’t too terribly small, but the smaller they get, the less resources the stick has to survive on through that vulnerable period before the graft heals. Scions are prone to drying out until that healing takes place, and they can begin receiving life supporting moisture and nutrients from the stock. It doesn’t take much to dry out a small diameter short stick. tip cuts also dry out faster. They have thinner, less waxy, less developed bark, allowing the scions to dehydrate easily.

Scions may also dry out even before they are put on the tree, during storage or transportation. It never hurts to clip a little off the end of the scion to expose fresh wood, and then soak the butts in water in the refrigerator overnight to plump the little guys up before grafting. So give those little guys a drink to be sure they are well hydrated before grafting.

Before we get into grafting skinny scions, another option is to just graft older wood. While the conventional approach is to graft wood from the previous years growth when dormant grafting, I’ve grafted wood that is at least 4 years old and had it take fine. So, for instance if you find an old overgrown tree and the largest growth from the previous year is tiny short twigs, you could cut back into slightly fatter wood from the year before, and use that thicker, older portion to make the graft. Leaving the tip of younger wood intact as well, where the vigorous active buds are.

Skinny scions of March Hedge, a hedgerow apple that I discovered. There is not a lot here to work with if I were only using last year’s growth. But you can graft onto the previous years growth, which is usually considerably larger in diameter, and leave the tips on to grow out. Often, the tips have the most vigorous vegetative buds, but if you can find good buds on two year old wood, you can just use that as well. Often in two year old wood you’ll have buds that are either fruiting buds, or tending in that direction, but those buds can still grow into shoots. Sometimes they are hesitant to do so, but they usually will.

A graft made with scion wood that was at least 3, probably 4, maybe 5 years old and rather large in diameter.

Same graft as above after one year’s growth. The yellow painted parts are all the original graft wood, complete with fruit buds. The branch set a few weak fruits the year of grafting, but they didn’t mature. Conventional practice would not favor such an approach to grafting, being more about young, vigorous wood, but the possibilities are actually much broader than most think.

CUTTING TECHNIQUES

Skinny scions really bend away from the knife, because they lack rigidity. The cutting technique I use the most to prepare scions involves using the thumb to support the cut, by pushing up on the scion with the thumb from beneath, right under the blade. The thumb follows the knife for the entire cut, so the cut is stabilized and supported and the scion can’t get away. This technique works for long slope cuts, whichever type of graft is being made. You can see it here in this video https://youtu.be/B32nKvZMzFY?t=243 I highly recommend watching that whole video, but that link is time stamped to the relevant part.

What I didn’t show in that video, is making tongue cuts on skinny scions for whip and tongue grafts. Basically, I lay the scion right along my forefinger for support. I often use this position for any tongue cuts, but especially with very small scion wood. Again, the support keeps the wood stable preventing it from bending away from the knife. You can see that here- https://youtu.be/aKV6gPmzeDU?t=591 It can be delicate work, but tongues can be cut in very small wood. The trick to cutting tongues is to slide the knife along, so that it is slicing, rather than just pushing forward on the kinfe.

WHICH GRAFT?

So, what types of grafts can we, or should be make with those skinny, hard to handle, easily desiccated scions? Which graft you chose will be partly determined by the size of the stock and scion you are working with. We don’t always have a choice what we are grafting, or what we are grafting it onto, so I’m going to suggest some basic options for different situations, though there are certainly more.

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IF THE SCION AND STOCK ARE THE SAME SIZE

Use either a whip and tongue (more advanced/challenging) or cleft graft. If the stock and scion are the same size, and the graft is clean, either of these configurations should get near full contact of the cambium layers of stock and scion all the way around the circumference of the cuts. With practice and a sharp knife, whip and tongue is very doable on small scions. Cleft grafts are easier though. Watch this video for how to make those grafts.

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IF THE STOCK AND SCION ARE FAIRLY DIFFERENT

If the stock is larger, but not large enough to comfortably do a rind graft under the bark, I use either a cleft graft, a side whip and tongue, or lay the smaller scion along the larger one, something like a side lap or scarf joint in wood working.

If using a cleft graft, It is usually better to put in two scions, one on each side of the split, assuming you have enough scion wood, and enough room in the split. You can even put in a scion of something different on the other side, and plan to cut it off after a year or two. Using two scions is good insurance against failure for one thing, but it also usually heals the cleft and top of the stock cut much faster. I like to think of the cambium as the very thin layer between the bark and wood, so I will assess the thickness of the bark on the stock and scion. If the bark on the scion is much skinnier, I’ll scoot it slightly deeper into the cut to achieve better alignment.

If using a whip and tongue, you can make a small cut on the outside of the stock, removing just a small strip of bark and cutting barely into the wood. If the cut is too big/wide, the cambium of the scion will have to be shifted off to one side, so that the cambium layer of at least one side of the scion is aligned with the stocks’s cambium.

There is an easy way I’ve come up with to determine the depth of the stock cut in whip and tongue grafting when the stock and scion are different sizes.… Cut the scion’s slope cut first, and look at the cut. Make the stock cut so that the width of the wood showing on the stock and scion are the same. Ignore the bark and just go with the width of bare wood showing on both. If anything, the stock cut can show less wood, but I prefer to just shoot for the same wood width on both. It is okay if they don’t match perfectly all the way around, which they won’t. It’s also okay if 1/8 inch or so of the cut on the scion overhangs the end of the stock, but seal the cut surfaces up if you can.

An easy way to judge the cut width on a large stock for whip and tongue grafting is to make the width of cut wood showing on the stock and scion the same. You might note that the cut on the scion will overhang the end of the stock a little when this graft is fitted. That is fine, just seal the overhanging cut.

A “side whip and tongue” graft, after one season’s healing and growth. The scion is catching up in size with the stock and the end cut on the stock will be healed by the end of the next season. I use this graft more and more on mismatched wood.

A graft I’ve been using more and more is like a lap, or scarf joint. The small scion sits on the outside of the larger stock. If you want to keep it simple, you can just make a long strip cut on each of them and tie them together. A fancier version is shown in the photo, with angled cuts at the top and bottom of both stock and scion to lock the scion in place a little bit. Either way, the important part is good cambial contact, as with all grafts. If you can achieve that, it doesn’t matter too much what the graft looks like.

I’ve been using this lap, or scarf, joint graft a lot when the scion and stock are somewhat mismatched. It is pretty easy to make, it can be made long for lots of cambial contact and a stable joint when wrapped, and it matches most of the way around. It’s a good clean graft. More advanced than a cleft graft, less advanced than a whip and tongue, but maybe better in some ways than an offset whip and tongue. I just used this graft, or variants of it, far more than any other to set out 90 new seedlings onto a single 8 foot tall dwarf foundation tree. Cut the scion first, making the top cut at an angle. Cut the stock off at a slight angle (not too much) and strip off enough bark to show the same amount of cut wood as shows on the scion. If you finish the lower angled cut on the stock by splitting it a couple of millimeters, the stock will sometimes slide in the split and lock in place.

It may look odd to have a very small scion sitting on the outside edge of a 3/8 inch stock, but this is a very good method. It makes a pretty clean graft and has plenty of potential for good cambial contact. I rarely do cleft grafts anymore, preferring to do this side whip and tongue when stock and scion are mismatched. Unless they are very mismatched, in which case…

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IF THE STOCK AND SCION ARE VERY DIFFERENT SIZES

If the stock and scion are very different in size, use a rind graft, AKA bark graft. These are easy grafts and very reliable, as long as the bark is slipping enough. Watch this video, to learn how to make bark grafts.

If the stock is very large, put several scions around the edge. If it is more in the small range, I’ll almost always put in two scions if I can. Using more than one scion offers some insurance, and it heals the stock faster. Sometimes the stock will die down on one side if there is nothing growing there. So on something like a 2 inch stock, I’ll put in 2 or 3 scions spaced around the edge. When the cut face of the stock is mostly healed over, cut off the extra grafts, leaving the strongest. You may also severely prune back the growth of extra shoots during summer, winter or both to stunt them, and favor growth of the chosen one.

Two Cherub scions under 1/8 inch, grafted one on either side of an established root stock. Multiple scions used in rind grafting offer insurance against failure, faster healing and reduced chances of stock die back on the un-grafted side. Why didn’t I coat these scions like I usually do to prevent drying? I have no idea, must have just spaced it out. I was probably thinking about girls, or apples, probably apples. I just checked them and at least a week after grafting, they still look plump and fine. When the weather is warm, the union may begin healing quickly and the scions can start receiving moisture from the stock. As long as moisture in balances moisture out, we’re all good.

Two small black Strawberry scions were grafted into this 1/2 inch stub. After one year of growth, I cut off the extra one, which will heal over rapidly. sometimes if you have a small scion on one side of a stub graft like this, the other side of the stub may start to die back. The extra scion gives it a reason to stay alive and heals the cut over more quickly.

Bark graft of scions under 1/8 inch into a small stub. These grafts can work great for small wood, and they are easy to make.

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SEALING

I generally seal the ends of all raw wood or cut bark that is left showing after any of these grafts are wrapped. My go to is Doc Farwell’s Grafting seal, the yellow stuff. But they seem to no longer sell it in quarts though, and a gallon is 75.00 or more. I am currently using Doc Farwell’s Heal and Seal, which seems to just be a blue/green version of the grafting seal. Aside from the color, I don’t see any functional difference, though I prefer the yellow, because it is easy to spot remnants of paint on the old graft unions years down the road.

PREVENTING DESICCATION

Assuming you’ve made decent cambial contact between the scion and stock, now it’s a waiting game. Will the graft heal before the scion dries out and dies? We want to keep that moisture in. First, lets look at the causes of desiccation…

Exposed cut wood or bark.

Heat

Wind

Sprouting buds or leaf surface

Low humidity

Shade will help with all of those problems. You want the graft to be warm enough to heal, but assuming it’s grafting season, you probably don’t need it taking sun baths. On a nursery bed, I’ll usually put in some 3 foot stakes, tack small finish nails into the stake tops and hang shade cloth over the whole bed, including draping down the South and West sides if the cloth is long enough. For single small, very short trees, I’ll take a small fir branch and stick the butt end in the ground on the south end, so that it leans toward the tree, and shades the scion like a fan for a few weeks. Some people use tinfoil wrapped loosely around the scion and graft, others use a paper bag

A well shaded nursery bed of new seedlings on bud 9. Shade is for graft establishment. Once growth is underway and grafts are healed, it is removed. Note that some of these scions are over 2 feet long, but they still had a very high success rate. No doubt the shade helped!

For insurance, it never seems to hurt to seal the entire scion. I use doc farwells grafting seal or heal and seal, to paint the whole scion surface and all cuts. Many people use parafilm, a very thin plastic film coated with wax, to wrap the entire scion, buds and all. I just got some to try this year. It is very popular and the common assertion is that buds usually break through it on their own, so it can be wrapped and left in place until it falls off.

A bud mummified in grafting paint. it will bust right through there when it’s ready to grow. In the meantime, though this coating is not 100% prevention from drying out, it does seem to help a lot.

Wind can dry scions out extra fast. If it is frequently windy, take extra precautions.

IF SCIONS ARE SPROUTING

In the unfortunate event that your scions have buds on them that are showing green and pushing out, you face the possibility that some leaf surface will be exposed before the graft is healed. Any leaf or shoot growth can dry the scions out quickly as the new leaves loose water. If this is the case, you can look the scion over carefully and remove most of the buds, leaving just the most dormant. Leave the scion long so it has more resources. Often the most dormant buds are the small ones near the base. Then employ all the other methods above as well until the graft seems healed. Usually when you see healthy, rapid, sustained growth on the scion, you’ve got a healed graft and the scion is getting what it needs. Dealing with sprouting scions is the subject of the next blog post, because like skinny scions, sprouting scions are just a reality you will eventually have to deal with.

This bud was pushing out and showing green already, which you can see through the paint. Some buds on this scion were worse than this one. If some buds are pushing on a scion, I will usually leave the most dormant two or three and remove the rest before sealing the entire scion. I just checked, and 6 days after this was taken this shoot has sprouted through the coating and is showing leaf tips. It will most likely survive.

It is not always fun to work with skinny scions, but they often turn out just fine, and I have been told by some that they even prefer very small scions for rind grafts. Best of luck. Happy grafting!

What is This Apple Breeding Project Really About? & New Varieties Video

Black Strawberry, what it looks like in person on the tree is pretty much like this. You can see why apples like this have names like Black Oxford. Even the calyx is super dark.

Here is a video I shot about the four apples that I’m sending out this year to be grafted by orchardists. With any luck, other’s will be equally impressed with them and they will be propagated and proliferate. The real measures of success are if they are found worthy of propagation and multiply and/or if they are used to breed other new interesting, improved varieties.

On the surface, this project to breed new apples might be viewed as simply just that, an effort to make some good new apple varieties. But it’s really about much more than that as I discuss in the first part of this rather long apple rant/nerd out session.

Apple Seedling Scions of New Varieties Available!, Details

A collection of seedling apples from 2019

This year I’m sending several apple varieties out into the world to be tested and grown by you all. Aside from my seedling bite me which has been available for a while, these are pretty much the first new seedlings I’m sending out. That is exciting! I have more promising and worthwhile apples than just these few, but nothing goes out until it has a name, and some apples I just want to grow, observe and eat more before I send them out or name them. This project has always had a larger group focus in mind, beyond my small efforts here. Therefore, unless I get lucky enough to grow something worth patenting, I would prefer to get new varieties out so that anyone can be part of testing and vetting them. That has always been the plan.

Some of these are probably most suited to further breeding, so those should get out to other breeders asap. One of them is going to be primarily suited to cider making. I’m not much of a cider maker, so the best way to test and vet cider apples, is to get them into the hands of cideristas, and I’m sure there are plenty who would like to trial them. Others I just find very promising, and I’m pretty sure I will want to grow them personally for home use, so out they go. It doesn’t make sense for me to sit on them trying to test them in my one climate. lets get them out and growing from Alaska to Florida, and eventually to other countries.

One ostensible and obvious reason for breeding apples is to create new apples. But that is just one facet. It is also largely about two other things, citizen involvement in breeding and selection, and fostering an altruistic, open source, paradigm that serves plants, people and the plant/people relationship. My observations lead me to think that there are two basic types of plant people. People who are generous and support diversity and community and people who primarily serve themselves to hoard and control; in a nutshell, “how can I help” v.s. “what can I get”. Clearly there is a large gray area in between, but I think the far greater majority of plant people tend in the former direction. I just want to encourage that tendency, by making scions, seeds and pollen available, including my new varieties and their pollen for breeding.

It was suggested by a patron that I consider auctioning off the scions of my new varieties. I think that is a great idea and we are going to give it a try this year. That way I don’t have to price them and it’s a good way for folks to support my work in plant breeding and other pursuits. These varieties are intentionally released in the public domain and once out there, anyone is free to share them, trade them, or even sell them. I encourage their broad dissemination, so please share and trade them out. I think in an ideal world, I would get some funds flowing back this way from propagation and scion sales, but that is another topic for another time. I hope to write up a proposal at some point for a digital community that interfaces small scale and amateur breeders with small scale and home growers, and all in between, while providing a user built data base on the varieties and their performance. Sounds cool right!?

For now, we’ll let demand play out naturally in a bidding format. Auctions will be on ebay this year, just because it is easy and most people already have an ebay account. Details and a list of all auctions and ending times at the end of this post.

Below are descriptions of the apples and what I know so far.

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CHERUB (WICKSON X RUBAIYAT 13/2)

When it gets enough light to color up well, Cherub really stands out on the tree with it’s rich red skin, and red stem.

Cherub is a chubby, irregular, little pink fleshed sugar bomb of a crab apple. I say chubby because it’s appearance is squat and plump. That morphology was part of the inspiration for the name, chosen from several options by my patrons. Cherub’s deep red skin stands out on the tree when well ripened. It is not solid red, but the parts that receive light turn a rich red color. The season seems to be late fall, but it also appears to be an extended season, so I haven’t decided where the peak falls. The flesh varies from mottled pink to solid pink, developing as it ripens. The sugar level has measured as high as 24 percent, one of the sweeter apples in my trials so far.

It has some of it’s crab apple seed parent Wickson’s rich, malty and almost umame like flavor, as well as some of it’s red fleshed pollen parent Rubaiyat’s berry like red flavors. Neither is always in enormous abundance, but both contribute to the unique flavor profile. I would say the flavors are a little bit of an odd combination, but I think that is part of the intrigue. I remember thinking long ago before making any Wickson x Red flesh crosses, that Wickson mixed with red fleshed apples might make an odd flavor combo. I guess I was right, but the flavor is at least as intriguing as it is confusing.

I think if this apple has a fault in the eating department, it is over-politeness, quite possibly due to relatively low acidity. And they only become less sharp and more insanely sweet as the season progresses. Late in the season, the flavor deepens as the red flesh color really sets in. It also becomes deliciously aromatic. Anyone sniffing a good ripe specimen if this apple, would want to bite it. I’m really looking forward to having a lot of these to eat so I can get more familiar with them.

Cute, chubby Cherubs!

My notes say Cherub is not highly scab susceptible, I’ve not grown observed and taken notes enough to really say for sure though and it does get at least some scab. It had some black staining on the trunk, which could be fireblight, but the tree seems to have lived with it fine, or even outgrown it. The original tree appears lanky and spreading in a way that crabs sometimes are, though it’s parent Wickson is not. Until it is grown more and in different conditions, growth habit can’t be assessed with any real confidence. My guess though is that it is likely to be a smaller tree tending to spread and grow some downward branches with wide crotch angles. High productivity will keep it small and bend the limbs downward. The growth will probably support lots of spurs, with relatively low vigor. We will see.

It is worth noting that Cherub was the first apple seedling of it’s class year of 2013 to fruit at only 4 years from seed. It has set fruit the two following years as well. So another prediction is that it’s going to be precocious, producing early after grafting and somewhat reliably thereafter.

I’m continually trying to decide whether I’m too biased toward the quality of my apples, or too hard on them. One day I realized this was one of the best few crabs I’ve ever tasted, in the same general pool as wickson, chestnut and trailman. Um, like that’s a big deal mkay. I think there are better crabs to come and relatively soon, but I also think this is likely to find a welcome place in any apple or crab collection, or on any frankentree for the foreseeable future.

In terms of breeding, here we have a very interesting, very sweet apple, with one very red fleshed parent and one scab resistant parent with unique flavor traits. I’m already making crosses using this apple and I think it has high promise for generating some REALLY interesting offspring, especially if crossed with other wickson x red fleshed apple crosses! I just planted seeds pollinated this spring of, Black Strawberry x Cherub, Pink Parfait x Cherub and BITE ME! x Cherub. For crying out loud, something good has to come of those! :D

Video tasting here: https://youtu.be/0goZspLQa74

And here: https://youtu.be/f2q4VlYiJEo?t=750

Blog Post Introducing Cherub: http://skillcult.com/blog/2020/12/3/introducing-a-new-crab-apple-variety-cherub

Cherub in a collection of new seedling apples, showing flesh color, which varies from solid pink to mottled pink and white. Flesh color is dependent on ripeness, genetics and weather, and can be quite variable.

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FLAXEN: Grenadine x Gold Rush

I love this name and its very fitting for an almost glowing yellow apple often with a tow colored beautiful splashy crown of russeting on it’s pretty head. And a flaxen beauty she is. This is a healthy, lass of an apple with demure flavor and character. In some ways it is fairly pedestrian, but it just works. The flavor is fairly rich, not complex or overly abundant, but without flaws of any kind. It tends toward the Golden Delicious flavor line, and bears some similarities to it’s pollen parent Gold Rush, but much less intense or complex. There is one special flavor component in Flaxen of citrus, more specifically lemon. It is quite noticeable at times and absent at others, but never very strong so far. I don’t think that the lemon flavor will every be consistent enough to be relied on, otherwise this would probably have a name involving lemon.

Flaxen produced some fine, comely apples in the worst apple year I can remember for both quantity and quality.

The flesh is very firm and crunchy, almost hard, though not woody or fibrous. There is a hint of pink flesh late in the season. It appears to get almost no scab here, which resistance it gets from it’s pollen parent Gold Rush. I have seen it sunburn, but we get that a lot here. It looks very much like the mild sunburn I see on Gold Rush. It didn’t take me long to decide that in it’s fall season, I want a branch of these enjoyable, scab free, and very probably reliable apples to munch on. I suspect it will make quite a good pie too, and be suitable for other processing.

The parent tree is in rough shape, so I don’t know much about the growth habits. I doubt it will prove to be a very good keeper, but I have not tried picking it early for storage. The season really isn’t right for that anyway. I did note that it produced a lot in it’s first year and produced again it’s second year. This past season it produced plump, beautiful apples in the worst apple year I’ve ever had for both quality and quantity.

I suspect that Flaxen will prove to be a steadfast and reliable friend, weathering the seasons to express it’s health and life giving vitality year in and year out. Lets find out!

Video tasting here: https://youtu.be/9EKc2azN1vY

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SUGARWOOD

Red stem, peculiar pleated bottom, clean complexion, wood-like flesh and high sugar are some early hallmarks of the diminutive Sugarwood

This is an odd little Grenadine x Wickson cross that won’t be useful for much other than juice/cider/processing or animal feed. That’s because the flesh is quite woody for lack of a better word. It has a texture that is both hard, but also seems to release it’s juice easily. Apples that turn to sauce when you crush them up for pressing are a real pain when it comes to extracting the juice with any kind of old school press. The pulp squishes out everywhere, clogs screens or sacking, takes a longer, gradual squeeze, and yields murky juice. I think it will be found that this apple, even when very ripe, will release it’s juice easily enough, and that it will run clear from the press. I can tell that just from eating it and squishing some juice out of it. At least I think I can! Time will tell.

Like I said, glossy, clean complexion. Do you exfoliate bro? Someday there may be hundreds of Sugarwood trees, with masses of these ping pong sized sugar factories, hanging steadfastly to the tree until dead ripe. I’m predicting precocious, productive trees and juice that runs easily from the flesh with an uncommonly high clarity. Comparing to Wickson I think the following things are probable- more fruit flavor, probably as high or higher in sugar, higher tannin, better pressing, better hanging, less cracking, more durable in handling, better storing.

The flavor is fairly rich, though I don’t think I can describe it in any way other than just fruity. I can taste that it is a Wickson relative, but it doesn’t have a ton of Wickson flavor. It is definitely more fruity. It inhereted Wickson's high sugar gene, testing up to 28%. That might be the highest sugar apple I’ve tested here, or at least equivalent to anything else. I would not be surprised if it edges out Wickson in the sugar department, under the same conditions. I remember it having a decent bit of tannin and it is not un-acidic, but then my notes say it is neither, so it may just be a matter of year, season or ripeness. Either way, it is probably more of a blending apple than a single varietal cider apple. It seems a good apple for making juice for processing, as a source of sugar for instance, to make apple butter, apple syrup and cider jelly.

Another useful trait is that it seems to ripen over a long season and hangs pretty well. I’ve seen some fall off, but more than likely those were dislodged by birds, or maybe high winds. Only further growing experience will reveal how reliable and useful this trait is, but I suspect that it will hold well either on the tree, or off the tree while ripening for the press; and it won’t turn to mush in the mean time. That trait is going to prove valuable, whether hanging it in to december, or picking in late fall and ripening in a shed to convert all the sugars. In this. video, I’m tasting it in late Nov. and it’s still a bit starchy. https://youtu.be/BEXTqAhK2sg?t=177 My notes say it was still crisp and juicy out of refrigerated storage in the first week of february. I’m sending a scion to my friend Eliza Greenman, along with other good hanging apples, to try in her hog tree pigs-and-apples system. It hangs late until very ripe, and has a super high sugar content. Bring on the pigs!

The original trial row tree is upright and self supporting. My notes say the apples had some scab, but that it is resistant. I’ve seen it’s parent Wickson pretty much scab free here in a bad scab year, so that is not surprising. It’s too early to say for sure, but it is certainly not a scab magnet.

All things considered, it seems worth testing out further. Though it shows no red flesh, the leaves show a bright orange in the fall, and the stems are also red. So the red fleshed genes from Grenadine are lurking in there and given it’s other probable virtues, Sugarwood might make a good breeder to cross into other red fleshed lines, in pursuit of improved red fleshed cider apples.

Another video tasting: https://youtu.be/pbaklnXXcoA?t=308

Instagram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5tZk0uHHGV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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BLACK STRAWBERRY Grenadine x King David

This new apple is strikingly dark skinned, with white speckling. Between the appearance and the intensely fruity flavor smacking of strawberry, the name is very fitting. Black Strawberry is a gorgeous apple, which can have an amazing, complex flavor. But it also comes with some flaws a well, mostly from it’s seed parent Grenadine. I think that given the current condition of red fleshed apples, Black Strawberry will have a place in the orchard due to novelty and because the flavor is so compelling that it can over ride some of it’s faults for the time being. But it is really an evolutionary step in creating better red fleshed apples. My suspicion since I started breeding these red fleshed apples, is that the red flesh is most often going to come with other less desirable genetics that in most cases will probably require generations to breed out, while retaining what we want. This apple seems to have inherited some of Grenadines negative traits, namely scab susceptibility and poor flesh texture. We’ll have to see as it matures and produces over more years, but I think it will probably be an improvement on grenadine in some important ways, and probably not inferior in any.

So, it gets a name, and I hope it gets into the hands of amateur breeders out there to sow it’s genes. I also suspected from the beginning that if I ganged up a very dark red skinned apple with a red fleshed apple, there would be some synergy there. I think there is with this King David x Grenadine cross and that this kind of combination is worth pursuing. I have a second KD x red fleshed apple cross that is also very dark skinned and very red inside. Neither it, nor Black Strawberry had any significant red flesh this year, but it was super weird year and many red fleshed apples reddened up poorly or late due to weather conditions. So, your mileage may vary, but I’m sure the flavor of this apple will blow a few minds.

Bottom line is that this is not the superlative red fleshed dessert apple that we all want, but it’s a major step in the right direction and shows some of what is lurking in the flavorful genes of Grenadine, which does not taste like strawberries. And I’m quite sure I want to eat a lot more of them until something better comes along. It should be crossed with other, more refined red fleshed tending apples, like William’s pride, Pink Parfait, Pink Pearl, Rome Beauty and cherub. And also with anything that has berry flavors, especially strawberry, like Pink Parfait. Guess what cross I’m this year.

Blog post here: http://skillcult.com/blog/2019/12/6/introducing-black-strawberry-a-new-seedling-apple

Video tastings here: https://youtu.be/f2q4VlYiJEo?t=35

and here: https://youtu.be/pbaklnXXcoA?t=34

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So those are the 4 apples I’m releasing officially this year. I have not been able to think of a good way to auction them off, so I’m going to do it this way. I will take pictures of each scion and list it separately in an ebay auction. These auctions will end 3 minutes apart, one after the other on a Sunday Afternoon/Evening. Is that a good way to do it? I don’t know, it’s going to be chaos lol, but it should be memorable :D The auctions will only be 3 days long, starting Thursday evening the 18th of Feb 2021 at 5:00pm Pacific Time (8:00 pm Eastern) They will all end Sunday the 21st at the same times.

Below are links to every auction with starting and ending times. All scions will start at 5.00, which is more than mine usually are, but a pretty average scion price elsewhere. My patrons will get a % discount on the closing price that is equal to their monthly pledge, starting at the 3.00 dollar level (3%) and up to 25.00 level (25%) But you have to let me know after the auction closes and request an invoice through ebay. I can’t keep track of all my patron names. I won’t send scions outside of the U.S.

I have these numbers of each:

Cherub 12

Flaxen 3

Sugarwood 10

Black Strawberry 18

Good luck and happy bidding.

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BLACK STRAWBERRY AUCTIONS

#1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090753723 ends Sunday 5:00 pm PDT

#2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905361387 ends Sunday 5:02 pm PDT

#3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905363502 ends Sunday 5:04 pm PDT

#4 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905364703 ends Sunday 5:06 pm PDT

#5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905365487 ends Sunday 5:08 pm PDT

#6 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090765411 ends Sunday 5:10 pm PDT

#7 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905375919 ends Sunday 5:12 pm PDT

#8 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090772735 ends Sunday 5:14 pm PDT

#9 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090773462 ends Sunday 5:16 pm PDT

#10 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905378919 ends Sunday 5:18 pm PDT

#11https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090776838 ends Sunday 5:20pm PDT

#12 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090777634 ends Sunday 5:22 pm PDT

#13 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905381316 ends Sunday 5:24 pm PDT

#14 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090779552 ends Sunday 5:26 pm PDT

#15 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905383026 ends Sunday 5:28 pm PDT

#16 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090781611 ends Sunday 5:030 pm PDT

#17 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090782637 ends Sunday 5:32 pm PDT

#18 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090783763 ends Sunday 5:34 pm PDT

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SUGARWOOD AUCTIONS

#1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905394125 ends Sunday 5:36 pm PDT

#2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090792425 ends Sunday 5:38 pm PDT

#3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090793453 ends Sunday 5:40 pm PDT

#4 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090794211 ends Sunday 5:42 pm PDT

#5 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905400506 ends Sunday 5:44 pm PDT

#6 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090795189 ends Sunday 5:46 pm PDT

#7 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905401465 ends Sunday 5:48 pm PDT

#8 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905402100 ends Sunday 5:50 pm PDT

#9 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090796876 ends Sunday 5:52 pm PDT

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FLAXEN AUCTIONS

#1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090804343 ends Sunday 5:54 pm PDT

#2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090805222 ends Sunday 5:56 pm PDT

#3 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090806883 ends Sunday 5:58 pm PDT58

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CHERUB AUCTIONS

#1 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905418020 ends Sunday 6:00 pm PDT

#2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905421326 ends Sunday 6:02 pm PDT

#3 there is no #3

#4 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090816729 ends Sunday 6:04 pm PDT

#5 there is no #5

#6 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905423055 ends Sunday 6:06 pm PDT

#7 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090818765 ends Sunday 6:08 pm PDT

#8 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905424034 ends Sunday 6:10 pm PDT

#9 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090820281 ends Sunday 6:12 pm PDT

#10 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905425597 ends Sunday 6:14 pm PDT

#11 https://www.ebay.com/itm/254905426450 ends Sunday 6:16 pm PDT

#12 https://www.ebay.com/itm/265090824244 ends Sunday 6:18 pm PDT

Free Willow Basketry and Cultivation Books Available

I just made 5 old out of print books available in the FREE STUFF section of the site. A lot of you might not even know that page exists. I use it to house collections of out of copyright books that I’ve ferreted out over the years, while doing digital research on various topics that I dabble in. I hope to find some more basketry books in the future to add to that collection. In the mean time, I wanted to publish these, because for the second year now, I’m offering basket willow cuttings in the webstore and these publications have useful information on planting and cultivation.

Basket willow is very easy to start and to cultivate. The short story is that you find some damp ground, with year round moisture, poke holes with a rod, stick the cuttings in with a couple of inches exposed, and they grow. Once established, you cut all of the shoots off every year for weaving and they grow back the following season. But of course there is some nuance involved and the important question of how far/close to plant them. These old publications discuss that question and other subjects related to basket willow cultivation and harvest.

It is my opinion that most homesteads in good willow growing country ought to have at least a small patch of basket willow if good ground is available. They prefer to have damp feet and sunny leaves, and may do well on ground that is a little too low or flooded in the wet season for most other crops. The rods are not only useful for basketry, but also for use in the garden and just seem to come in handy here and there. They make great cat toys with a feather stuck on the end. I’ve used them a lot to hang apples or meat for drying and bacon for smoking. I’ve made bean trellises with them and used them as plant stakes and who knows what else.

Basket willow cultivars are selected for flexibility and toughness, color, lack of branches on first year’s growth, and maybe most importantly for a long even taper. In otherwords, the rod should not go from very fat at one end, and rapidly to very skinny at the other. Growing under crowded conditions helps insure long, branchless shoots with good taper.

Apples rings drying on basket willow shoots in the front of the car (the best food dehydrator you already have!). I keep a bundle of these on hand all the time. If they get funky or dirty, I can just toss them in the woodstove and gram more. Excellent for skewering jerky to dry as well.

I have two types available, Green Dicks is an English variety with smaller than average rods. If planting a patch now, I would likely plant at least 2/3rds of that variety or a similar sized one, as I like the average shoot size, for average baskets. The larger variety I’ve lost the name of, but it is large, with bark that reddens in the sun, and it’s big enough for heavy duty baskets. If I were ever making a dog bed, a room screen, or some bushel baskets for agriculture this one produces those sized rods. Of course the larger butt ends of the rods can also be cut off and used at any diameter, so it is still all purpose in that sense. It should also be large enough to be used for making living fences and other living structures.

Weaving with medium sized rods. This was in 2008 and aside from a handle replacement, 13 years on and this basket is still totally functional, having seen a lot of very hard use and no babying. That durability is due to reasonably competent weaving and high quality basket willow from my friends willow farm in Oregon.

Willows multiply fast, and cuttings as small as 8 inch in length can be stuck directly in the gournd to propagate new plants. A small number of cuttings can be turned into a full patch in a few years time. All in all, basket willow is a pretty good deal, and aside from cutting every year consistently once established (though even that is not absolutely necessary) they generally require little to no care.

Check out the books here, fully downloadable.

All Willows are propagated from simple cuttings, which are extremely easy to root. They are rooted in place where they are to grow, but sticking into a hole made with a metal rod.

Scions and Seeds are Coming March 1st

Scions and seeds will be available March 1st in the webstore. I was planning on releasing them Feb 15th, but I’ve pushed the date back so I can get more product done before launch. If you need to do some planning, the scions listed in the webstore now from last year are mostly the same stuff I will have this year too. I will also have some scion wood of a few of my seedling apples available, but I have not figured out how to handle that yet. It will likely be auctioned off as there are limited quantities and a lot of interested parties. I just don’t know how or where yet, but will be figuring that out in the next week or so and let you all know. I will have at least Sugarwood, Cherub and Black Strawberry, but probably others as well.

I have some intentionally cross pollinated apple seed and some open pollinated. Unfortunately, most of a big batch of seed, including a lot of BITE ME! crosses that I made, were hauled off by mice one night while drying on the counter. It was also just a bad apple year, so I don’t have as many seeds as usual. I have a lot more basket willow cuttings this year than last year however.

I still have some vegetable seed too. I’m particularly interested in Zapotec tomato this coming season, as it seemed to display as much late blight resistance last season as the two resistant varieties I grew. i hope to plant several zapotec plants mixed with susceptible varieties to get better information on relative performance and resistance. I’m hoping it wasn’t just a fluke. If it continues to show resistance, I’ll be very happy. It’s hard to find resistant varieties, let alone one that I already love. Check Zapotec out here…

I also hope to get a new batch of awls made by the first. I ran across some beautiful spalted maple for handles which I’ve started turning up on the lathe.

Spalted Big Leaf Maple destined for awl handles. basically it’s attacked by fungus leaving various shades of discoloration and black lines.

As usual, patrons will get early access to the store for a day or two before sales open to the public. Watch for a notification from patreon on the 27th or 28th for a password link for access.

Introducing A New Crab Apple Variety, Cherub

When I say crab apple, a lot of people will think of something for cooking at most, or more likely for the birds to eat. Well, I’m sure the birds will love my new crab apple, but there is nothing crabby about it. In fact, Cherub is an exceedingly polite dessert apple. Lets dig in to the specifics.

Wickson is the seed parent and the red fleshed Rubaiyat is the pollen parent. Both parents were brought into the world by visionary plant breeder Albert Etter in the first half of the 20th century. The pollination was made in spring of 2013. The seeds were planted in the winter and grown out for the summer of 2014 into saplings. In spring 2015, they were grafted onto dwarfing rootstocks and planted out to await fruiting in the trial rows.

2015 seedlings grafted to dwarfing stocks and planted in the trial rows to await fruiting..

The first and only of those 2013 seedlings to produce fruit in 2018, was Cherub. So right off, it gets points for being precocious. In fact, Precocious was one of the 3 run off names that I had the good folks that support me on Patreon choose from. It is also worth noting that it has fruited the two years since as well, so it is very likely going to get points for regular bearing.

Cherub, small, chubby and irregular

The apple is small, though not all that small for a crab. The skin, when it colors up in the sunlight is like it’s parents, striped with light to dark reds, layered over yellows. When it reddens up well, it is quite attractive hanging on the tree. The outline is lumpy and irregular, and the somewhat chubby appearance is one of the reasons that I hit on the name Cherub. The cherubs of the old classic paintings, and of modern folk art, are typically chubby and pink.

The flesh color varies from somewhat mottled pink and white, to dark pink all the way through. This flesh coloration will vary from season to season and fruit to fruit.

A cut Cherub in a collection of other seedlings from my breeding project. The flesh color seems to vary a lot, but that is fairly typical of red fleshed apples.

Culturally, it appears to be a small tree. It is hard to tell for sure with only a single parent tree, but so far, it is rangy and small. The tree got what appeared to be fireblight on the trunk early in it’s life, with black running sap from sores in the bark. It has survived without intervention though, continuing to grow and fruit. I’m not sure it is fireblight, but I suspect it is. My notes seem to indicate that scab susceptibility is light to medium.

The season for this apple is probably long, with more flavor developing later on. I have picked it as early as mid October and as late as December. it’s too early yet to say when is best and that will vary from climate to climate anyway.

It has flavors from both of it’s parents, but not always in great abundance. It has some mixed fruit and berry flavors from Rubaiyat. It also has a small, but significant, measure of the rich, deep, malty goodness of Wickson. Wickson lends richness and depth and rubaiyat lends higher fruit notes. The two together make a slightly odd, but compelling and interesting palette of flavors.

Sugar is through the roof. It was the third highest reading of the year in 2019 at 24%. It is all the sweeter tasting because it is also low in acid. It can be sweet to the point of being cloying due to this combination of low acid and high sugar. It should be good for processing into cider jelly, cider syrup, juice, hard cider and apple butter, at least when paring is not required.

Out of the crab apples I’ve been able to grow and taste, this is probably the third best, with the other two being Wickson and Chestnut Crab. But it’s hard to really rank them, because they are all quite a bit different. The fourth would be Trailman. There are still a lot of crab apples I haven’t tasted, but I would guess that if one were to spend a few years ferreting out and growing the very best small apples with crab genes, I’d be surprised if it did not rank in the top dozen, and more likely the top half dozen. I think crab apples as good as cherub, and better, are coming in the near future, either from my orchards or other’s. For now, this apple can compete in the pool. It also shows what is possible by injecting new flavors into our crabs.

Cherub was an inspired cross of two parents with exceptional traits of one kind and another. As is often the case, it shows obvious traits of both parents, extreme sugar and malty richness from Wickson and red flesh, fruity/berry flavors and coloration from Rubaiyat. I have been somewhat lukewarm on this apple actually, because, with all it’s exceptionally good characteristics, I tend to feel that something is missing in the eating of it. It may very well be as simple as the low acid, which coupled with exceptional sweetness can make it seem a bit cloying at times. Or maybe it’s that one or other of the flavors is just not quite up front enough. Then one day I realized that I’ve been enthusiastically breeding with it already, crossing it onto various other apples, and that it competes with the best crabs I’ve eaten, those that inspired me to breed with crabs in the first place! This led to an epiphany that I am indeed a picky little bitch and totally spoiled! The apples I’m hoping to breed I can already taste in my mind, and they are lofty imaginings. Those may come to fruition in the future, but it is definitely time to name this little nugget of sweet goodness and send her off into the big world to multiply and perhaps produce some delicious and hopefully superior offspring in someones orchard.

So here it is, the aptly named Cherub; a fruit of ridiculous Sweetness, chubby, pink fleshed and deliciously different. If it turns out to be as good as I think it is, I think it’s worth pausing a second to consider the ramifications of producing such a promising crab apple in a small population of seedlings. What then is to come in the future? I will restrain myself from going off on a tangent about the potential there is in breeding with crabs, both for home growers and the public market. I’ve already gone there before and will at some point make the point even more emphatically.

Scions will be available this year, but in very limited quantities since I only have a few from the original tree. They will likely be sold in some kind of auction to raise money for my breeding and orchard projects.

Most Intense Flavor Yet, Taste Testing Seedling Apples Nov 2020

Here is a recent video where I’m going through the apple seedling trial rows taste testing fruits. It has been a very weak apple year. We paid for the epic crops last year with the trees taking a year off. It was also a bad drought year, which no one is talking about with all the other bad news. I’m hoping for a good rain this year, even if it means flooding. Too much water is better than not enough (he says from the mountain). If there is a fruit that can adapt to a changing climate, it’s probably apples due to the very high genetic variability and ability to grow and fruit from the tropics to siberia. Already, what you can grow often ends up being what will grow and fruit well in your climate, instead of which apples you actually decided you wanted to grow and eat. Another great argument for planting MORE APPLE SEEDS!

Aaaaanyways, this year saw the most intensely flavored apple out of the trial rows yet, Grenadine x Lady Williams 2011 #7 It is also at least equal quantitatively in flavor to any apple I’ve ever tasted. I think I’ve identified some of the flavors, but it is a mixed bag. One thing I love is when apples have these sort of artificial fruit candy flavors. I think this one has the relatively common watermelon candy flavor, but also with purple grape and probably more. Eating it tastes very familiar, as in childhood memories familiar. I think the reason I can’t exactly nail it is that it’s probably like taking several jolly rancher candies of different flavors and melting them together. But the feeling of familiarity is as strong and relevant as the actual flavor. It’s sort of like those smells that take you back to grandma’s houses or school and that may be more relevant than the actual smell. That happened to me the other day when I got an espresso maker at the thrift store and the smell of the plastic water reservoir took me back to camping in my grandparents travel trailer, drinking and eating from plastic bowls and cups and the smell of the water from the onboard plastic water tank. Well this flavor is like being back at the corner store as a kid spending a few cents on hard candies.

Other than the remarkable and strong flavors, this apple is not much of an eater. It has a good measure of tannin, the texture is not particularly fun and the skin is thick. It is definitely more in the cider making class. The acidity seems adequate to make good tasting cider, although I’m not enough of a cider maker to know if it’s good enough to consistently produce smooth sailing results without blending or adjusting. Though it has a red fleshed parent, there is no hint of red flesh, and not likely to be any in the future. I’m starting to suspect though that the red fleshed grenadine, which is a flavor standout among blood apples, is hiding much more in it’s bag of flavor genes than just berries.

But to have an apple taste good and have those flavors survive fermentation are two different things. Methodology can certainly make a difference, but some flavors are fleeting in cider production, and some are lasting. My prediction, if I will be so bold, is that these intense and delicious flavors will be able to survive fermentation and make some amazing tasting ciders. It may be quite some time until light is shed on the accuracy of that prediction. The tree has to be propagated more, and eventually come to bear enough to do a significant amount of experimentation. I’m not much of a cider maker, but I may go back to it and try doing some micro batches in mason jars just to start testing some of the accumulation of potential cider apples out of the row. But of all of them, this seems to be the most promising yet.

Speaking of accumulating potential cider apples, among the rest of a handful of possibilities, the aptly named Sugarwood, a Grenadine x Wickson cross fruited again this year. I’m still high on this as a potential cider apple and will likely be sending out scions this year. It’s virtues seem to be sugar, tannin, adequate acidity, clean woody flesh, a good measure of nice flavors and good hanging properties. I have a feeling it will also be a good producer.

The cute, diminutive and woody Sugarwood, coming eventually to a cider orchard near you!

I’m hoping for a much better apple year next year. I’m pretty sure that if the bloom season goes reasonably well, the trees will try to set a lot of fruit. I’d guess that 70+ seedlings will set fruit next year, most of them varieties that have already fruited, but a good measure of new ones too.

Stone Roof #1, The Art of Slating

I have a new video out on slate roofing. I started this roof/art project about 10 years ago and never finished the last side of the roof. The goal is to finish it up before the fall rains. It’s an interesting and rewarding process with lots of room for creativity. This first video covers how the slate roofing system works, cutting and punching slates, and patterns.

Slate roofs are durable, very repairable, fire resistant and beautiful. The slates are pretty easily cut, opening up a lot of possibility for creativity in design. different widths, lengths, thicknesses and colors can also be used to creative advantage. One could also stack or double slates up just for visual effect. Honestly, I’m surprised how little advantage is taken of the possibilities for making visually interesting roofs. I think that a person could make a career out of creating artistic slate roofs of unique designs. There are some pretty fancy old roofs, but they still tend to use standard geometric shapes, rather than more creative patterns, or graduating designs. Very few do large scale patterning over many slates or even the whole roof. Some of the more creative attempts that do exist end up looking rather clunky and pixelated.

The video explains the parameters that need to be observed in slating to prevent leakage, which is basically 3 inches of overlap sideways and 3 inches overlap from the top of the previous row of slates. Otherwise, aside from slate being too weak to support lots of long pointy shapes, there is a huge amount of leeway in design. Many traditional roofs are made of completely random pieces of all sizes from huge sheets to smaller pieces, as long as adequate overlaps are observed in laying them.

It is actually pretty easy to learn and do, though it is certainly some work hoofing slates up and down ladders, punching, cutting and messing about with whatever little obstacles come up. One downside to using a complex pattern is that it will take a lot longer, v.s. slapping up a bunch of standard sizes and shapes. It takes me probably close to a day to cut all the slates for one side of this roof, so that is 4 to 5 days of cutting right there. It will also take time to design. This one probably took me days to design, and I think the other roof took us a couple of days too, and it’s not even that fancy. But to me, sitting in front of that pile of slate and knowing the possibilities, is like sitting in front of a pile of great food ingredients and wanting to cook something good instead of throwing it all in a steamer, very tempting.

Slate is quarried and split on site. It has a strong grain to it and splits easily in one direction, so sheets as thin as about 1/8” can be made. Some are much thicker. The slate for this particular roof was acquired cheap as a lot from craigslist and varies from 3/16” to over 3/4” thick. It also varies a great deal in quality from very soft and probably not very long lasting, to very hard and likely very durable. Be careful buying any lots left over from roofing jobs. While it might be very cheap, and a great way to get affordable slate, it can also be full of rejects, so get it cheap and make sure there is a lot more than you need to account for a high number of culls. Variations in thickness, lumpiness, and invisible cracks can all be reasons for slates to go to the reject pile. When you pick up a slate to use it, it should be tapped on to assess it for soundness. A good hard slate should ring if it is not cracked. Sometimes just a small loose piece of slate hanging on will keep it from ringing, but slates that don’t sound right are generally put back in the pile.

New slate is quite expensive, but probably a good deal if you are thinking far enough ahead. Many slate roofs are over 100 years old, even over 200. Given the durability, you can also salvage it from old buildings and re-use it. If there are slate roofs in your area, keep an eye out, or even contact roofers and ask them to call you if they have a replacement job and maybe they’ll let you remove the slate and save them some work. The slates may be perfectly good. Many people, including roofers don’t know how to repair them, so they just replace them instead. Tragic, but it could be good for you.

Cutting slates is essentially like cutting paper. It’s a shearing action. I use a slate cutter that is a lot like a paper cutter. Traditionally, a cleaver of sorts is used with a straight metal edge. Purpose dedicated slate hammers also have a shank that can cut slates. I watched a slate artist on youtube, James Parker, who uses a hammer face to shape slates. Any slate cutting by this type of shearing action leaves a beveled edge which is nearly always placed facing out on the roof as it is very attractive. Sawn slates are pretty boring looking and not commonly used.

Hole are usually punched instead of drilled. For most slates, one good smack from the pointy end of a slate hammer will knock a usable hole. Slate hammers and even some standard European framing hammers have a pointy end for punching slates. My slate cutter also has a punch on it that makes nice clean holes. You could also use a nail. Punching slates leaves a small divet in the face of the slate, which is necessary for countersinking the nail heads below the surface. It’s still good to have a drill and countersink handy for special situations, but generally punching is faster and easier.

The divot popped out on the face of a slate punched with the pointy end of a German carpentry hammer. This depression provides a place for the nail head to nestle into at or below the surface of the slate so that it does not rub on the bottom of the slate above it.

This was a more involved project than I had anticipated, but a very rewarding one. I would do it again if I could justify taking the time (making youtube videos is a good excuse ;), but I would take more time for design. Fortunately, it is easy to mock up designs with miniature slates cut to shape from scraps, of which there are always plenty. I’ll post follow up videos here in the blog as they come out.

My Spider Bite Story, Herbal Healing & Walking in The Dark

It’s story time! A video story on what I think was probably a spider bite that I got when I was 20. I think it went as well as it possibly could have, maybe due to the herbal remedies I employed. People suffer terribly and sometimes die from spider bites. Jeff Hanneman of Slayer died from a brown recluse bite, after a long hospital stay. I just hope I never get another one.

Apple Report: Grenadine X ? (Goldrush) 2011 #9 - Crunchy, Yellow, Scab Resistant Seedling

No time to type much. Gotta mail the old laptop off for a new keyboard this morning. But here’s a video report on a new seedling. In some ways it’s nothing super special. Just a competent, firm, crunchy, nice tasting, yellow apple in the Grime’s Golden/Golden Delicious complex. Good flavor, with a little spice and sometimes a fleeting lemon flavor. Though slightly pedestrian, it bore two years in a row and it’s almost scab free. It produced beautiful apples on a very sad looking sapling under tough conditions. It also expresses a very little bit of the red fleshed trait, which could be useful if used as a parent in further breeding of red fleshed apples. It might actually be useful for breeding for lemon flavored apples too, of which I have at least one other, actually named lemon. And of course scab resistance is also useful for breeding. This won’t be a long keeper like Gold Rush, but it does have the parentage, so it may express in offspring. all in all, a promising breeder carrying two important traits I want in apples, red flesh and scab resistance. It’s getting grafted out a few more places for further assessment and of course eating enjoyment :)

Commonly Axed Question: Charring Axe Handles, Why I Don't Do It

I’m asked a lot if I char the surface of my axe handles, have I tried it, do I recommend it, and so on. I’m going to tell you why I don’t, and am not likely to start. We’ll be looking at this problem largely through the lenses of primitive technology, bows and wood failure under tension, so there are some interesting general lessons to be dabbled in.

In spite of the very clickable, emphatic video thumbnail, even though I don’t practice it I don’t have a strong yay or nay opinion on whether anyone does or does not char their axe handles. People do it a lot and seem to get away with it, and it’s not my axe. I’m just sharing why I don’t do it. In searching for Youtube videos in preparation for this segment, I didn’t really see any dissent or contrary views, though I’m sure they must exist somewhere. It has become a popular and seemingly common practice lately.

I think of carbonized wood as compromised wood. Charring wood makes it harder up to a point, but also more brittle. I have done a lot of what is often called primitive technology, essentially stone age living skills. A very fundamental skill in primitive technology is heating and bending wood. Arrow and spear shafts, bows, hoops and other items sometimes need straightening, or curving. Many applications require the heating of dry wood, v.s. steaming the wood or heating green. If someone doesn’t teach you otherwise, you are likely to find out pretty fast, that if you scorch the wood of an arrow shaft, not even black, but just toasted brown, it becomes brittle and is much more likely to break when bent for straightening. It’s easy to do, I’ve done it many times, it’s a thing.

Let’s look at bows, because they are repeatedly put under a great deal of stress, and provide a perfect model of wood under extreme tension. Bows in fact often operate near the edge of failure.

A bow is made flexible enough to bend a lot. In order for the bow to do it’s work, and not break, the wood, and the design, have to be adequately RESILIENT to the stresses a bow comes under. Strength is a bit of a sloppy concept to use when looking at this problem. Strength is an important concept in resilience, but what kind of strength? resisting what forces? and in what context? Resilience is the total ability to withstand stress, though it is still dependent on what type of stress. I’ve discussed the importance of resilience in regard to axe handles in another post.

Some bows are curved back at the ends, which is called recurving. Usually heat is used to make the wood flexible. The heat can be either dry or wet, and often steaming is used. If you were to survey the literature, I’m pretty sure you’d find that if there is a standard recommendation, it is to avoid scorching bows when heating them to bend. Scorched wood is compromised, brittle wood. I think it’s very unlikely that you will find bowyers recommending that you scorch the surface of a bow at any time, and actually just the opposite.

Primitive technologist Jay Sliwa heating and bending a yew wood bow in my front yard. He probably spent over an hour bending both ends of this bow, because it takes time to get the temperature high enough, and also deep enough, without scorching the wood. Hot wood, even dry, will bend more easily. If cooled in the new shape, it will usually stay more or less that way.

Scorching and burning IS actually used in primitive technology though, to shape and harden wood. The common uses are for burning the ends of sticks to a pointed shape when making spears and digging sticks. This practice changes the character of the wood, making it harder, in order to resist the stresses of things like digging in the dirt, and that is a form of resilience right? A fire hardened digging stick tip is resilient to the stress of hitting dirt and rocks. It is more likely to retain it’s shape and will not dent as easily or wear away as quickly. Resisting the stress of digging is not resilience to bending though, it’s a resilience to impact, to denting and encountering other hard objects like rocks, dirt and animal ribs. These are the stresses encountered by a spear or digging stick point.

This digging stick tip is shaped and hardened by fire. Great for impact and abrasion resistance, not so much for flexibility.

That begs the question, might charring harden the wood of an axe handle to resist impacts that damage the wood by crushing, such as contacting wood on wood when splitting and limbing? I’m much more inclined to think that charring will increase the likelihood of wood tension failures, than that it will have any significant effect on impact resistance. There is also another solution to that problem, which is wraps, braces and collars.

Lets go back to bows again. When the bow is pulled, the part of the bow facing the archer, the belly, is compressed. The belly fibers are smashed together and essentially made shorter if that is possible. The wood fibers on the back are stretched out and put under tension like pulling a thread tight.

I think in both axe handles and bows, breakage is much more likely than not, to initiate at a single point of weakness, in wood that is under tension. As the bow is pulled, tension stress builds and the further toward the outside back of the bow the fibers are, the more they are stretched. The fibers at the very back of the bow are not only stretched the most, but they have also been violated in most cases, by being cut through to shape the limbs. If there is a weak point on or near the surface, the wood will begin to split and separate apart, and that separation may travel causing a crack or a full break.

The inside of a bow is under high compression and the outside (back) is under extreme tension or stretch. If you studied it, I think it’s likely that you’d find failures initiating on the outside back of the bow and traveling inward from there in most, if not all, cases.

If you could study that break in slow motion, I think you would see that the wood doesn’t come apart all at once, but that the crack initiates on the outside of the bend, on the surface, and travels from there toward the inside of the bend. In either a bow or axe handle, that weak spot might be where the grain is violated and runs out more than other spots, or there is a nick, knot or worm hole, or a thick or thin area. A weak point might also be where poor design or execution in building stacks an especially high stress on the wood.

Dry bent, with no scorching. This yew wood is prone to exploding apart when it fails. It is easy to understand why bowyers avoid scorching the backs of bows, where the wood comes under very high tension. Understand that this bow is not strung with this curve, but rather AGAINST this curve. It would be strung and pulled toward the ground in this picture.

Many Native bows in Western North America have sinew (animal tendon) glued onto the backs, similar to a layer of fiberglass. If there is one main reason to glue sinew or rawhide on the back of a bow, it is to keep the bow from breaking. Given the same exact bow, with and without sinew backing, the sinew backed bow is less likely to break. The reason this dried sheet of sinew prevents cracks is that it prevents them from initiating in the surface of the bow’s back in the first place. If the crack can’t initiate and travel because the fibers are held in place and reinforced, then the bow cannot easily fail in the way it is normally most likely to fail. Sinew backing is a very common way, to prevent the breakage of short bows that are under very high stress. In quite a few cases those bows use wood that is actually somewhat brittle and sometimes could not take the stress of being used to make a short powerful bow. The reason I point this effect out is to reinforce the idea that the initiation of cracks in the surface of wood is probably the initiating event in most wood that breaks under tension.

Sinew backed bow limb. Just like a collar or wrapping on an axe handle, sinew backing helps prevent failure, largely by preventing the initiation of cracks.

Axe handles are only somewhat analogous to bows, but they are under some of the same stresses and it is very likely that cracks typically initiate on the part of the wood that is under high tension in any given scenario. Like a bow, it is going to happen more where the wood is under greater stress and where the wood is weak at the surface in those high stress areas. This chink in the armor could be a small knot, a dent or nick in the wood or very likely where the wood grain is cut across at a strong angle. Another common place for cracks to initiate is where growth rings come together, because the wood between rings and between the fast spring growth and the slow summer growth are different, so they behave differently under stress.

So here are my working assumptions about axe handles and charring.

In most cases, failures will initiate at a point of weakness in wood under tension, on the outside surface of the wood, traveling from the point of initial failure.

Charring wood reduces the tensile strength of wood fibers, increasing brittleness under tension, therefore making that failure more likely to occur given the same tensile stress.

It’s important to note that theory v.s. real life is not always an easy pile of yarn to unravel. I may be missing something entirely that I haven’t thought of or have not been exposed to. Our decisions are informed by processing experience and information, and those are limited, as is our intellect. It may be that it is rarely, or even never, an actual problem to char the outside of an axe handle. Personally, knowing what I know and having charred and then broken arrow shafts, atlatl darts and other wood items, I cannot think of any good reason that I would burn the surface of a wooden handle that can come under a great deal of stress; on the contrary, it would seem I have good reason not to. Tests that might shed more light on the subject could be done pretty easily, as long as the sample sizes are large enough to account for wood variations and other unknown factors. But I’m not likely to spend my time at that, since I don’t really actually feel any need to treat handles that way.

The primary motivation for charring handles seems to be aesthetic, such as making the tool look more used or antiqued, or just good. And it is a very nice looking effect. I love charred wood and have practiced it a lot for decades, for reasons and effects I won’t go into here. I just built a whole wall of charred and burnished wood for my Indoor YouTube studio corner! But, you’re not likely to find me weakening the outside layer of an axe handle where failure is most likely to initiate, just for cosmetic purposes.

This video talks about how I do treat my axe handles after they are tuned up how I like them.

Charred and burnished pine used to good effect. This wood is basically under no stress.

Another question I’ve been asked quite a bit is how to make axe handles look used. My sole recommendation for that is to use them. I get it, you don’t want to be the kid with glaring white new shoes. If I were to treat my axe handles to make them look used, I think I would feel like I was the tool. An axe handle patina earned with dirt, sweat, and sap, rubbed to a polish thousands of times with calloused skin is something of an accomplishment and a point of pride. If you want that, pick just one or two axes, and take the axe cordwood challenge.

So, there’s another in depth dive into more relevant, if obscure topics, brought to you by my patrons @ www.patreon.com/skillcult

Introducing Black Strawberry, a New Seedling Apple

After planting a few open pollinated apple seeds in 2010, I immediately began breeding apples, by making specific, controlled cross pollinations between various parent varieties. In that process, some seeds went unlabelled, mixed up etc. I remember planting some unlabelled seeds outside. I didn’t graft them anywhere, but just left them there in the ground. A year or two later, I remember one winter, selecting the ones with the reddest bark, hoping those would be red fleshed types, and grafting them onto an established tree nearby. The rest were pulled and discarded. Well, 7 years after planting that unlabelled seed, 3 of those fruited and Black Strawberry is one of them.

I now vaguely remember making some cross pollinations with Grenadine and King David? Or losing track of them and planting the seeds anyway? I’m not sure what happened, but I’m about 95% sure that King David is the second parent and it’s likely that I made that cross pollination on purpose, though I did have King David growing nearby enough for it to naturally pollinate Grenadine. This apple has the speckled skin, some of the angular appearance and red flesh traits of Grenadine and the dark, almost black appearing red skin of King David. Unfortunately it also has a tendency to go mealy like Grenadine, but I think it is going to prove to have a better texture in the long run, which is important.

Comparison and similarities of King David and Black Strawberry. Oxford Black looks even more like Black Strawberry, but it was not flowering or fruiting when this seed was collected. Besides, I’m pretty sure now that I actually made crosses with Grenadine X King David that year and just lost track of them.

This apple is not the high quality dessert apple that I’m aiming toward in breeding. So why am I naming it and telling you about it? For one, I’m just excited about it and not inclined to curb my enthusiasm. It’s also so tasty that I’m sure I will be growing and eating it in spite of it’s flaws, and that’s enough to give it a real name. Finally, I will definitely be using it in breeding, talking about it, sharing seeds and pollen and maybe sending out scions. Even if it is only a stepping stone in breeding, why not give it a name? It actually has no number designation. When I grafted them out, I tagged them and wrote funny names on them hoping they would be red fleshed apples, like red scare and tirceratops. Black Strawberry’s tag says Drucilla, after an insane vampire girl in Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. which is kind of a cool apple name actually, just not for this one. Besides, I might get sued by someone. I have been inclined to think I would test stuff before naming it and releasing it, but I talk about these seedlings all the time and if I’m going to talk about one a lot, it might as well have a name, even if it’s only a breeding parent or never amounts to much.

So, lets talk about this apple. FLAVOR! Wow, does this thing have a heaping helping of special flavor saturating it’s mottled pink flesh. The main component is certainly strawberry, although it reminds me more of fake strawberry processed foods like candy, cereal or ice cream than a fresh real strawberry. One taster said “beyond strawberry”. It is definitely one of the most uniquely flavored apples I’ve ever eaten and also one of the best flavored. I had to think back to all the amazing apples I’ve tasted to convince myself that it isn’t the best apple I’ve ever tasted. It is as intensely flavored as Grenadine, if not more and as good, if not better.

Time stamped sections of videos in which I taste this apple:

https://youtu.be/f2q4VlYiJEo?t=35

https://youtu.be/pbaklnXXcoA?t=34

It inherited Grenadine’s tendency to go dry and mealy, but I think it will be at least a small improvement over that apple when it comes to texture. I bit into at least one that was actually crisp, but it’s going to be a problem.

Scab was pretty bad, but not horrible. It is grafted to a pink parfait tree, which does actually have horrible scab, with very few specimens untouched, but I was able to get quite a few nice apples off of the Black Strawberry branch. It probably rates as 3 or 4 out of 5 for scab susceptibility. It bore a lot, even in it’s first year, so that helped me select the least scabby specimens in thinning.

It did NOT inherit Grenadine’s tendency to turn waxy and drop off the tree before ripening normally. My main grenadine branch had 100% loss to that phenomenon this year. In most years, many grenadine fruits will drop early. It is extremely annoying.

Overall, the fruit is inconsistent in size, shape and texture. Some are pretty large and others are pretty small.

This apple will be more of a stepping stone in breeding on the way to better things, than anyones absolute favorite. But what excites me is that it validates my choice of Grenadine as a parent. I chose grenadine in spite of all of it’s negative traits, for the flesh color intensity and unique complex flavor. Maybe those could be gotten with a different parent with better dessert characteristics, like pink parfait, or Rubaiyat. But, I went with the best flavor/color combo, which was Grenadine. Also, it shows how deep the flavor possiblities are in this red fleshed gene pool, or in Grenadine at least. Grenadine I would never say tastes of strawberries, while this is distinctively so. I’d like to find other strawberry flavored apples to cross with Black Strawberry, the first of which will be Pink Parfait, which has a very subtle strawberry flavor, but it’s there. I also had another seedling fruit this year that had a strawberry flavor. Extremely flavorful and interestingly flavored apples will be coming to our tastebuds in the future. If Black Strawberry can taste this good and rich, others can as well, and even more so. This will definitely get crossed with Sweet 16, Pink Parfait, Wickson, William’s Pride and Golden Russet at least. I already made some crosses this spring.

I’m also encourage by this and a couple of other red flesh x King David crosses and plan to use King David more in breeding red fleshed apples. My original hope was that the dark red skin of King David indicates some genes that would reinforce the red fleshed trait in seedlings. So far 3 out of 3 (red flesh x KD) crosses do show red flesh, one solid through and two pretty strong, but mottled.

I’m sure I’ll have pollen and seeds available in the future, but that depends on how well it blooms and fruits. Scions probably won’t be available for a couple of years and when they do, it will be the usual late winter availability with my Patreon supporters getting first pick.

I hope this one develops into a better version of itself as it continues to fruit. I will be grafting another branch or two out this year, to make sure it survives and so that I’ll have more scion wood should I decide to send it out into the world. And of course so I can eat more of them! I ate several mealy samples down to the core because it tastes so damn good! I’m so excited to keep eating Black Strawberry, seeing how it develops over the next couple of years, and using it as a breeding parent.

Mealy, but delicious!

Flame Charred Eggplant & Tomato Salsa, Unique Flavor and Less Watery

My cooking creed goes something like this

Measure as little as possible

Experiment a lot

Observe no cultural boundaries

I don’t care if the spirits of a 1000 great, great, great grandmothers are standing around me wagging their translucent fingers, shaking their heads and making universally understood sounds of disapproval; if I think it will taste good, I’ll mix anything, with anything. The deep cultural melting pot of global cuisine, means that fusion cooking has arrived.

One day my good friend Scott McGrath was telling me about making babaganoush, a Middle Eastern dip based on eggplant and tahini, which I had never heard of. The part that caught my attention was scorching the eggplant with a torch until it is charred on the outside and cooked through. I threw some eggplants on the gas flame of the cooktop and realized that there was a whole new aspect of this vegetable to explore.

One day I had the audacity to mince up some of that pulp to mix in a batch of my tomato salsa, and a star was born. The cool thing about putting charred eggplant in your tomato salsa, is that it plays so well with the other ingredients in there, that it can augment without being overt. Yet you can also add more to bring a very unique and unexpected taste toward the front of the flavor line.

But wait, there’s more! Ever have your burrito get soggy from fresh salsa?, or have large quantities of juice run down into your sleeve?, or end up with a puddle of salsa juice on your plate when you make fresh salsa? It turns out that the eggplant pulp goes a long way toward absorbing extra juice in the salsa. That is a pretty great quality.

INGREDIENTS

Like I said, I don’t care to measure things much. It’s about how things taste, so taste, add, taste, add, taste, add… These ingredients are vaguely in order of quantity.

Tomatoes: (see thingy on tomato types below) dice 1/4 inch-ish

Eggplants: Preferably use 2 inch diameter and down if you can get them. Long skinny asian types are perfect. Char blackened on flame or charcoal until collapsed and totally squishy inside. Mince the pulp to almost paste consistency. A few bits of charred skin are fine, but don’t scrape everything right down to the skin, as it is pretty strong. Use some of the browned/burnt stuff, but not all of it.

Sweet peppers: bell, cheese or frying. flame roasted, diced or minced small

Anaheim Peppers: red ripe, flame roasted, take off most of the peel, or whatever comes off easily, mince finely

Cilantro: minced.

Onion: I like it minced very fine.

Small hot chilies: any kind, I prefer ripe over green.

Lemon or lime juice, or vinegar: Quantity depends on how acid the tomatoes are. I know it’s heresy, but I prefer lemon over lime.

Salt: use a lot, it’s a condiment

Chili powder: I use dried Anaheim, aka California chilies

Coriander and Cumin: fresh ground seed. Put in a lot, then taste it and add some more and then add even more.

SOME INGREDIENT AND PREP NOTES:

Tomatoes. If I have them, I use drier processing types to avoid having a lot of extra juice. Not the usual smaller roma, pear shaped paste tomatoes. Those are actually pretty wet. I mean larger, longer paste types like polish linguisa, blue beech and others (I have seeds available!). They have low amounts of watery pulp, and fewer seeds. I also like Zapotec, but it’s not as dry as these others.

Chili powder: I use California chilies, aka dried Anaheim peppers. This is s great pepper to grow and very versatile. California chilies can be had pretty much anywhere that Mexican people do their shopping. Toast lightly to crisp them up and add a little flavor, but don’t overdo it! Cool, then grind in an electric coffee grinder or blender. What is usually sold in the U.S. as chili powder is actually a spice blend, which I don’t recommend. Occasionally you can find pure chili powder, but it doesn’t keep very well. Paprika is not a bad substitute if it is fresh enough.

Coriander and Cumin are always available on my counter in pepper grinders. That is a great kitchen hack, try it! Both of the, as well as chili powder, lose their flavor quickly when ground. It is not just a matter of becoming weaker either, so you can’t really just add more. They should be fresh. If you don’t use them a lot, put the seeds in a tightly sealed jar and freeze. They will last for years that way.

Eggplants: don’t like them, or your family doesn’t like them? If there is a recipe with eggplant for people who don’t like eggplant, this is it. If I were to grow anything specifically for this, it would be the larger long asian types, like Ping Tung Long.

Fall Seeds and Bulbs in the Webstore

Just a heads up. I spent a bunch of time this late August preparing and listing some stuff in my webstore. Mostly Seeds and Bulbs. I have some saffron corms from digging and dividing my saffron bed, a collection of 8 varieties of narcissus, some of my top favorite tomatoes, lettuce, a cool poppy that has closed pods so the seeds don’t fall out, and Haogen melon, and lots of cactus seedlings. Most packages will go out in the first week and a half of September. Skillcult.com/store

Bronze Beauty lettuce

Paul Robeson, rich smokey goodness with a great sugar acid balance.

A closed vent poppy that allows for the harvest of every seed.

Twang, a New Seedling Apple Report

This year I was excited to see one of my Williams’ Pride x Vixen apple crosses flowering and setting fruit. Two of them actually flowered and only 5 years from seed, which is unusually fast, so this seems to be a precocious cross. One of the trees ripened 4 apples on a stunted, un-watered 5 foot high scrawny seedling. It is a drought year too, so producing 4 very handsome and perfectly clean, medium sized apples in it’s very first flowering is pretty impressive! The apples had dead smooth skin consisting of a pretty shade of pink blush over a yellow background. The first were ripe in late July and the last in mid August.

Twang is tangy, thus the name. It is not particularly lacking in sugar, but it is decidedly sharp. The flesh is rather dense and firm, which is unusual for an early apple, most of which suffer from thin foamy flesh. That alone is something of a triumph. It doesn’t seem likely to hold up well either on or off the tree however, which is also typical of early apples.

The flavor seems to vary from slightly complex, maybe a bit tropical with some nuance at it’s best, to a pretty generic apple flavor when over ripe. Most early apples are ready and then a few days later, they’re over-ready. I think Twang will not be an exception to that trend, but would not be surprised it it will hold for a week or two if picked significantly ahead of ripening. I found the flavor of the best specimen to be pleasant and somewhat interesting and would happily eat them if that was the best apple fruiting at the time.

As the tree is grafted out onto established orchard trees and the seedling itself matures and develops more, it may produce better and different fruit, especially with better culture. I don’t think the basic character will change a lot though. Likely it will be an apple that ripens over an extended season of about 3 weeks in early to mid august, with a few early specimens in late July. Given the sharpness and density, it will probably be a very good cooking apple for that season, and should fill the spot right before the Gravenstiens come in nicely. It does not have Gravenstein’s special aromatics, but it’s hard to compete with an apple that has been one of the most famous early pie and sauce apples for hundreds of years, if not the most famous. It will be best for all uses right off the tree or soon after.

I saw not one spec of scab on any of the fruits. That trait is probably inherited from William’s Pride, which is pretty well scab immune here. Vixen is related to Wickson and is the closest thing to a large Wickson. Wickson is also scab resistant, so maybe Vixen also carries that resistance, but I don’t know the scab status of Vixen itself.

While Twang shows traits of both parents, not so much in the flavor department, where it seems to resemble neither. Neither parent is particularly sharp and Twang’s level of sharpness is somewhat uncommon in my apple seedling trials. In some ways, it is a ho hum, mediocre apple. But as an apple enthusiast/collector/breeder, my bar is set pretty high. I have a feeling it will have a place in the seasonal parade of apples, quite possibly filling the important niche of an early tart cooking apple that actually has some density. While people may be cooking with unripe Gravenstein in August (I am!), Twang will actually be dead ripe in that season and probably available for early, under-ripe cooking in late July.

Only time will tell how this apple performs and impresses going forward. This winter it will be grafted out onto a couple of established trees in good sun. Then it’s wait, eat, wait, eat, wait, eat, maybe make a few pies and some sauce in there… Then, someday, I’ll decide if I want to send it out into the world or use it in further breeding. In the meantime, it has a cool name so we can talk about it and keep track of it. I’m hoping for more of the Williams’ Pride x Vixen crosses to produce fruit in the next couple of years. The real goal with that cross is to get the Wicksony maltiness flavor of Vixen to express in a new apple, with the general quality, performance and disease resistance of Williams’ Pride, so fingers crossed.

Winter Gardening Schedule and Garden Tour

Here is a tour of my July garden, with talking points. I touch on Winter gardening in this video, but I’d like to say a few words about it here and post my winter gardening planting schedule in brief for anyone that wants to get started experimenting this year. One thing to know about winter gardening is that it is actually quite easy. There is little work to do once it all gets established and the rains come. Weeds are weak and spindly in the low light, and watering is completely unnecessary. It’s pretty cool to have a garden full of food all winter and the main work just being to pull it out, clean it, cook it and eat it.

Keep in mind that my climate is rather mild. That is not to say that you can’t winter garden in colder climates, but that further expedients and different timing may be necessary. Eliot Coleman grows year round in Maine, as detailed in his Winter Harvest Handbook, so you probably can to, wherever you are. It’s just particularly easy anywhere from about my zone and warmer. Simple expedients like mulching mature roots with straw to insulate or growing under low plastic tunnels will probably go a long way, but the timing will be different. I will see consistent freeze damage to lettuce, but all root vegetables I can think of over winter fine here and most will actually continue growing through the winter (albeit slowly). My lows are around 20 f, but for just overnight and it is rare indeed for really freezing temps to hold through many days. Occasionally lower, but rarely. We get solid frozen ground, but shallow, frost heave, ice on any water left out, but just a sheet, not freezing whole buckets or anything like that.

The first step is to know what is possible. I can grow carrots, beets, turnips, rutabaga, many hardy radish types, parsnips, scorzonera, salsify, chard, kale, cole crops, cilantro, leeks, potato onions, parsley and probably stuff I’m forgetting, in the open all winter, with only occasional freeze damage, usually minor, to a few of those. Lettuce will do okay under tunnels and the like, but not in the open.

After that, the trick is timing. We have to remember in the heat of summer when we’re starting to bring in basket loads of produce, that this abundance is short lived, and it’s time now to put in winter stuff, just as we start summer garden plants when it’s still freezing out. As you can see in the schedule below, that varies depending on what plant it is. I’m likely to put in certain roots early to mature over the summer and then eat them in the winter, the most drastic example being leeks. Leeks I start in Mid January, but eat most of them the following fall/winter and spring.

This schedule is always a work in progress and I may move stuff by as much as a month in the future as I continue tweaking it all. So, use this as a starting place and adjust as you gain experience.

Note that times are either the first or fifteenth of the month, which is how I do nearly all of my planting.

LATE MAY TO EARLY JUNE: Plant in ground- Parsnip, Scorzonera & Salsify.

JULY 15TH:
In flats: turnip, rutabagas (swedes), beets, kale, chard.

Direct seed in ground: Carrots, Daikon for Fall Kimchee & cilantro for fall salsa making.

AUGUST 1st: Sow Chinese Cabbage (aka Napa Cabbage) in ground if there is bed space, or in flats for fall Kimchee making.

AUGUST 15th: Start lettuce and cilantro to over winter, in flats or direct sown.

SEPTEMBER 1st: Direct seed big winter radishes (like daikon, Spanish black, etc.), clover under the current crops for an early start on cover crops.

SEPTEMBER 15th: Direct sow Fava beans under current crops or in empty beds, vetch, barley, rye, other winter cover crops.

JANUARY 15th to. FEBRUARY 15th, sow stuff like lettuce, hardy greens, carrots, radish, spinach and peas under plastic tunnels. Start leeks in flats to eat through the following winter. Many summer crops also start in flats on FEBRUARY 15th, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, brassicas, chard and other greens, beets, turnip & annual herbs etc. But squash and melons I don’t start until MARCH.

Pear Tree Training, Year Two, Spring Cuts, Smart Fruit Tree Training For the Win!

I grafted and planted this pear tree over 10 years ago that never would grow. but it also didn’t die. One year the top died and the rootstock was growing back with some signs of enthusiasm. I pruned it back to one shoot, watered, fertilized and mulched it, and it grew like mad. It ended up growing into a tall whip, which is s single shoot with buds and no branches. I determined to make an example of it regarding how to train a whip into a tree of a desired form. I made a video, and then a follow up video, of training that tree last year, which are linked in a playlist at the end of this post.

This spring, it was time to revisit this tree, see how my interventions worked and set it up for the next stage of growth. It’s a quick recap of the process so far, a look at the results, some snipping and then showing what I would do with it next year. Instead of repeating that information here, I’ll make this post complimentary by discussing some important principals in tree training.

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Some Important Principals in Training Fruit Trees

If fewer growing points are left on a tree, those remaining will tend to grow more. This is how coppicing (cutting completely down to stimulate regrowth) and natural regrowth after floods and fires all work. A coppiced tree will have X number of growing points, far fewer than a mature tree. Therefore those few growing points grow faster. As the tree grows, those tall new shoots branch and suddenly there are more than double the amount of shoots, so the tree cannot grow them all like it did the initial regrowth. And the process will continue until the tree is clogged with small growth that extends very little each season. Small less vigorous growth now serves the wood that supports it further down the branches and trunk. This process is not predictable in a linear way however. In actual practice, this tendency can be taken advantage of by removing whole shoots, pinching off unwanted growth, or just removing buds before the tree even has a chance to grow them as I did with this tree. the 12 buds I left on the trunk all grew, so this year I took off all I didn’t want, leaving 4, which will not grow longer and thicker in light of that reduced competition.

Resources coming up the trunk from the roots can be diverted into branches, resulting in fewer resources reaching parts of the tree further up: This is not as simple as there being a large branch and therefore that branch will siphon off X amount of resources, but it is true nonetheless. Other factors would be the amount of leaf area that part of the tree has to drive it’s own growth and “draw” in resources from the trunk flow, how much sun it gets, and it’s hormone situation. By creating it’s own self feeding ability to grow, or not, a branch may limit or increase it’s own use of and access to those resources coming up the trunk. There seems to be both a global tree-wide system of growth drive and allocation of resources, and a phenomenon that presents like the tree is competing with itself.

Leaf area is required to grow trees: Trees need leaves in order to do things like extend shoots, grow thick & robust trunks and branches, stock carbohydrates for growth and storage, and to grow more shoots and leaves to gather yet more food. Principal one, (fewer shoots means more growth into those shoots), may translate into less energy gathered, stored and used by the tree because it can reduce leaf area by reducing the number of shoots allowed to grow. If carried to an extreme, the trunk and branches may end up too spindly and weak. That does not however necessarily mean that we have to leave as much growth as the tree wants to grow. We can find a balance where we utilize the above principals to drive growth where we want it and into fewer points, while still leaving some extra growth to collect food. I don’t think there is a complete functional alternative to removal of some growing points to drive growth into others in order to establish large, dominant scaffold branches. Not to say that there are no other tools for prioritizing growth potential of certain growing points, but that reduction of growing points is an essential tool to that end. Just keep in mind that leaf area is required and note both how leaving extra growth may feed the tree with it’s leaf area, and also how it may hold back growth of the wood that you want to grow the most.

Hormones have a major role in controlling tree growth. This is why notching above buds will drive their growth. In the future, as I have more trees to experiment on and sketch out what I think are the most telling, achievable experiments, I’ll be experimenting more with notching both above and below buds and branches as well as ringing trees completely at times to observe how those practices might be turned to practical effect in various situations.

Training Trees and Pruning Are More Art than Science: If you want consistent results, get a different hobby lol. While there is a lot of predictability, challenges will present themselves and plants will assert their priorities or tendencies over yours at times. These situations require adaptation by the artist. Think in terms of principals and actual goals. The. goal is not narrowly to grow branch x exactly at this point, but to fill a vertical and horizontal space in a certain way to grow fruit on. That may involve, bending or guidance pruning to get the branch to fill in that area. But as long as it fills it in and does the job, that’s the real goal. I’m trying to collect, innovate and test tools we can use to meet the challenges that sometimes present themselves.

I had planned to plant some test trees this year and bought a bunch of rootstocks, but it’s looking like that won’t happen this year. I’m trying to decide today whether to ditch that project completely, or try to find a spot to grow them out into whips this year. But it’s just as likely that if I bother to do that, I may not want to put them in next year either. My position on the homestead is uncertain right now, and I’m hesitant to put in anything long term until that is more clear, which probably won’t happen soon. I’m also putting in as much food as possible this year, and that is a competing priority for dirt, water and attention.

Whatever the future holds, I know I’m not going to get a fraction of what I want to do done if I don’t come up with a crap ton of money and pretty fast. Whether it’s to better secure or negotiate my place here or move somewhere else, a lot of money will be involved. Nothing is cheap here in the land of snooty wineries and black market cannabis culture. I’ll be switching my priorities to revolve around income for a while to see if I can make something work, which would essentially involve doing a bunch of stuff I want to do anyway, just in a very strategic way. My bare minimum goal is to be making 100% of the land and tax payments here by the end of a year from now and hopefully by then, or soon after, a lot more than that.

While the direct action part of tree training research has become a luxury that I probably can’t afford to engage in on any scale right now. It does remain a strong long term priority, because I think it has the potential to broadly update home fruit tree training to version 2.0 That solution probably won’t involve techniques and ideas that don’t already exist (nothing new under the sun eh?) but rather collecting those tools, vetting them for practical application, encouraging citizen testing and then packaging that effectively into a system or approach, that is both simple and effective for people that are not level 10 fruit nerds like me. I’m still super stoked about this project and have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people that are trying this type of approach. It’s just going to have to be put on the back burner to simmer for now.

In the meantime, I love hearing back from people how this approach works for them, good or bad.

Who Are You and Why Are You Here?

One of many new daffodil seedlings on the homeplace. If I keep it, I think I’ll call it ghost or spirit

I’m in an upward trajectory in general and working on my whole online interface as it relates to my message, my content and all of my pursuits. I’m taking an intensive YouTube education course that is very eye opening and I think will really help me get my message out more and more effectively. Part of that process if figuring out who I’m talking to out there and who I want to be talking to. I’d like to hear from any of you regarding almost anything related to your pursuits and interest in subjects I cover, or interaction with me and my content. It could be stuff like what interests brought you here, how you use my content, if you live a lifestyle that utilizes the type of things I talk about, or maybe you plan to live that lifestyle someday. Really, I’m interested in you talking about yourself as it relates to not just what I offer, but what you think I can offer you. Sometimes that stuff is not just practical either, but maybe inspirational or supportive of interests that maybe are not so common among other people you rub shoulders.

Feel free to go on and on and tell me your life story or anything you feel is relevant. I’ll read everything anyone writes. You can leave a comment or email me through the contact link on the website here. If you have any issues leaving comments here, please let me know about that too. One reason I don’t blog more is that I have zero idea if anyone is actually reading the stuff or getting anything out of it, because there is almost no feedback. I’ll put a bunch of time into a post, send it out into the world and it’s usually pretty much crickets. I don’t necessarily need a lot of validation for my ego or anything (well, mabye some..), but I literally forget to post stuff here, like when I release a video, because it’s easy to forget when there is so little feedback.

It may be that the comments plug in I’m using is not user friendly, or people don’t want to sign up, but until I know that, I can’t fix it. For all I know, my blog posts just suck. They suck lately, because it’s usually an afterthought and I’m not willing to invest when I don’t know if they are doing any good. So, I’m also very interested in feedback on why I don’t get any significant engagement on blog posts. I love writing and I can use it to complement videos well if I put in the time. But it is very time consuming.

With Mom and a basket of apples we picked for taste testing- new seedlings, heirlooms and moderns. Now you know where I get my youthful good looks from. She’s no spring chicken, as she would say, and still going strong.

Otherwise, I’m looking at my total content strategy and how I can serve people out there better, get more eyes, have more influence and bring in more money. In spite of much of the last few years being very demoralizing and difficult, I’m bouncing back strong and still have basically the same dreams to manifest enough resources to hire some help and make a few larger research and development projects happen related to orcharding, tanning, and possibly other stuff.

I want to hone my messages and content to be much more focused and effective in helping people with certain problems and generally inspiring and expanding my audiences options and interests. That may involve splintering off certain subjects to cover on other youtube channels and blogs, and possibly eventually hosting forums. If will also involve filling in blanks and getting new folks up to speed with foundational skills. The rock on which the foundation for all of that will be built is who exactly my audience is, so this is me doing my homework and asking. How is this interface between you and I working, what interests you, how do you live or how do you want to live and where do you watch or read my stuff and which do you prefer. Thanks do much in advance for any feedback you feel inclined to offer :)

Working on “the pit”, really more of a trench, a huge excavation that I’m backfilling by hand with differing percentages of charcoal and soil. This strip of land will house multiple orcharding and soil related experiments, like bringing new seedlings to fruit, more quickly, tree training methods, tree paints, effects of biochar and probably tree understories for Mediterranean climates.

Recent Gardening Videos, Vlog Style, FPG, First Person Gardening

Here are a couple of recent videos I did vlogging style, just working on stuff and touring the garden. I want to do more gardening content, since the recent events around COVID 19 virus pandemic should have people thinking about vulnerabilities in our material needs related to the supply stream of industrial goods that keep most of us going. in particular, I think that Self Reliant Gardening (SRG), is an important skill.

It is very different to garden as much as possible with what is free and easily available in your immediate environment than it is to purchase a lot of stuff in. Gardening can not only get expensive when purchasing a lot of fertilizers, starts, seeds, soil mixes and amendments, but if those become expensive, hard to get or just unavailable, it will put a real wrench in the gears of a dependent gardener. Self Reliant Gardeners can take advantage of those resources when needed and available, but we don’t need them.

When I first moved here, I decided to use very little from the outside. I bought oystershell for the acid soil, and the very first year of each bed I used steer manure because it was cheap and I needed something to get beds started right away since I had not even made any compost. After that, for the following 10 years I brought in minimal stuff; just oyster shell and waste coffee grounds from my neighbors and some places in town. For me to switch back now to using no imports is very easy. I have some holes in my game, but mostly related to more advanced seed saving.

Look forward to more gardening content and consider learning to grow some food if you don’t already. You can start small, even a few plants in pots, but the time to learn self reliance skills is definitely not when you suddenly need them. Our communities are ridiculously vulnerable to interruptions in the supply lines. Even in rural areas like mine, the agriculture is not at all geared toward being able to feed the local populace. In case of emergency, we’d have a lot of pot and a lot of wine, but not a lot else! As I’ve said for so long, FOOD NOT BONGS! This is a a very, very bad situation, and we should start living in a direction that begins to remedy it, or it will eventually be a serious problem. It’s not a matter of if, just when. The party is winding down folks. It’s time to invest in our own abilities and resilience, as well as that of our communities.

Stay safe and healthy out there, and plant something in the ground.

2020 Apple Scions, + Basket Willow and Grape Cuttings Available

The webstore is open at 12am on the 15th with scions, some new late ripening apple seed crosses, grape and basket willow cuttings for rooting and some crafty stuff. The store is password protected until that time while patrons finish their early access shopping. If you are a patron, check my post on www.patreon.com/skillcult for the password. The video is nothing groundbreaking, just talking about how I process, store and ship seeds and scions and of course, in SkillCult tradition, exactly why :)