As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I lament as a child, that growing up, there was not an internet, and I lament that most people use the internet in their vacuous lives to just jack off to porn. For me, the internet is an adventure, akin to Benjamin Franklin reading books. In fact, it was his book which I delighted in so much, which I obtained online and read.
For living one's life, at least on script, Benjamin Franklin was a most sound person and a model for what all societies should be moulded upon. Common sense, initiative and work, should always be rewarded, but are not rewarded in these times.
This though is not about Mr. Franklin, but about a delight of lemonade from lemons.
Two years ago in Faith preparing for to obtain where the Uncle is holed up, TL and I splurged on an apple tree, a Honeycrisp, after I had obtained some on the store and we both agreed in who wonderful the apples were. This Minnesota invention is the best tree they ever were given by God. It is close to Firecrisp which is the best red apple there is providing it gets water. Otherwise it is a cellulose apple.
So we did not get the place, and apple tree stayed in the porch, with moving around this 9 foot tree all winter. So I sat it outside, it grew, and then the Uncle's evil appeared, and our cats literally clawed that tree to death. As it stayed alive and blossomed, I thought it would make it, and so I planted it in being pissed off at God, and come this spring, it was dead from the claw marks up.
I was disgruntled in this, but noted that I had about 4 inches from the graft which was alive, and I hoped that the Honeycrisp graft would send out a shoot, and save the 50 dollar tree, but all that came out were suckers from the rootstock and they did not look that great either.
So I had TL water the tree, and I mean watered the hell out of it, was we had nothing but freezing drying cold all spring, that the neighbor remarked today that the grass was not even growing.
So I check the stump and the shoots really took off like a brush forest, which pleased me as God had me wondering by the Holy Ghost how nurseries produce rootstock, and I discovered it is like wheat, in they "stool" the roots.
Stooling means you get more than one shoot out of a root. You get that with wheat in just right, cool and wet springs when the seeds sprout.
So I had my stools in this tree, but was still frowning as I did not want to waste that Honeyscrisp graft as it just looked to me that it would bud out, and it was green yet,........and then I just checked it and showed TL, and praise the Lord, there is a bud shoot which just erupted today.
We will continue to water like a monsoon, and I will protect that little shoot as that is my 50 dollar tree which will produce the wonderful apples. I though now of the clever reality which God is leading me to, to get those shoots to produce roots on them, so I will have half a dozen root stocks from a semi dwarf root.
There are two methods in trenching and mounding. In one you lay the tree down and the shoots come up and buried, they produce roots. In mounding you cut the tree off and mound dirt up, keeping it wet and the shoots produce roots this way. Neither will fly as I have to keep the original Honeycrisp alive as you can not bury the graft as those roots may take over and all you get are suckers, which is ok in rootstocks, but not in apple trees I intend to eat.
So the answer by God is for me to get these shoots about a foot long, bend them carefully over, and trench them into the soil, and keep them wet, and this should then produce the roots which I'm looking for. I get my apple tree and I get my rootstocks too. It is win win.
It is not that rootstocks are expensive, well the shipping and handling are, but this is a grande adventure which God intended for me, as He always does things like this to delight me, and here am I delighted to experience this, for what was dead, is now become a half dozen trees, and that which was dead is now alive.
Apparently in nurseries they can keep rootsocks, or mother plants going for over 10 years, and they continue to harvest roots off of the tree that way. This will just be a one time deal for me, as I can not retard the Honeycrisp.
Is odd this year in we invested in 3 apple trees, and every one of them is sending out suckers, which displeases me, but has me thinking that I will trench those shoots into the ground and harvest rootstock from them too for grafting.
I do not think these are Geneva Station roots though, and are probably the European Budagovsky or Mallin. Malling is the English stock and it prevails around the world, except in Russia. Cornell though in the Geneva stocks has improved upon them greatly in something Donald Trump should have given a Presidential medal for as the G series of rootstocks are much better for the United States than the Malling.
I could not be more pleased in how God turned this all out. I would that I had all that time back in not knowing so much of what I know now, and had all that time to put things into practice.
A thought just occurred to me in a place along the lake, where they used to raise apples a great deal and they were all wonderful apples, was there was a guy there who always sold an apple named Special, named after him. He had cultivated this apple, from seeds I would assume had Minnesota origins in the Wealthy and probably Haralson group, and it was a pretty good apple. People kind of shunned it, as it was not normal to what they were used to. I wonder if it even exists any more as so many apples disappeared, but when he was working on apples, it did not take a great deal to equal the shit which was out there. Remember that the Red Delicious was thee American Standard. That apple beat out apples like Baldwin, Spy, Greening, Winesap, and that is odd as Rhode Island or Northwestern Greening are fine apples. Just they are so hard like rocks it is difficult to get the first bite into them.
Those other apples like Wolf River and other shit that all tastes like a green apple off the tree, like that Russian thing that is big in Eastern Europe, and we use it as standard rootstock in Antonovka, is the kind of apple you say, "Nice to have an apple", and then you have a good apple and you think, "Wow I hope the pigs like those apples on that Russian tree".
I love Spitzenberg and hope to restore them. I have never had Cox Orange Pippen, and would love to try them, and yes I have tried Jazz and hosts of other apples, most of which is what China would not buy so they were not quality, but in this I now am procuring rootstock to expand my varieties and my horizons.
Whether it is Chip or T budding, in a plague and worst to come, I have the things that make the Spirit in me sing. I have apples on the move and growing, and a great pleasure in what evil old people tried to destroy, God has turned into a wonderful good in an adventure.
Once again, another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
agtG
