My Frankenstein tree..

[dogdoc]

Members from the QDMA forum may remember my Frankenstein tree. It was originally a Gala apple that I got cheap and planted in my back yard. I ended up grafting a couple Golden delicious scions to it and also an Arkansas Black scion. It flowered for the first time spring '15 and I lost all blooms to blight. Well I gave it another year and spring of '16 it had a good 60 flowers or so and I lost everyone to blight again. There are 2 bradford pears in the neighbor's backyard that are loaded with blight. So early last summer after being disappointed I made a decision and decided to make a change. I cut all the top growth off and bark grafted 2 Enterprise scions. They both took and late winter I pruned to 1 scion. This spring I grafted 2 goldrush scions and 2 liberty scions. I never really thought I needed a dz resistant tree in the city but never thought of bradford pears being carriers of FB.

Goldrush:

Liberty:

Now these three varieties should be pretty darn dz resistant and all 3 will pollinate each other.
Todd

 

[Native Hunter]

Great pictures Todd. How long do you think it will take the big gap to fill in? I did one last year about 2/3 that size with two scions, and in one year they closed a big part of the space. I'm hoping this year they fill it in completely. The things that can go wrong before the space fills in is what worries me most.

 

[dogdoc]

I don't really know. I kept it supported all winter and just now took off the support stake. Survived some 80mph wind last week. Hoping it will continue to fill in since it is less than a year old. I have persimmons about the same size that are on their 4th year that are close to complete coverage.

 

[Fish]

We need a grafters poll of how many here have a Frankentree.
Ive got my own, and whittled on it again this year after many disappointing years with 2 limbs grafted to Freedom. That apple gets really bad summer rots here. Anyway......
Your tree should fare much better now. Good work with the knife there. Ive invested quite a bit of orchard space to Goldrush, so i am hoping it is as advertised.
I have cut those dead parts out of the "gap" in winter and the tree heals over really fast.

 

[dogdoc]

I have several goldrush, 2 that were ordered as bareroots, and several more from scions collected from my original two. Goldrush is suppose to have a good resistant to FB but it does get CAR but that doesn't hurt the tree much and with a timely spraying it is easily controlled.