Old Common, Day to Day Technology. Waht do you hang onto?

[Jstpssng]

Yeah.

Long ago I wanted to re-open a terrace, an abandoned last row of trees, down by the ravine. Photo. Photo2 - a different attempt. I eventually made it through to where the terrace reappeared at the other end, but I had learned there weren't any apple trees in there worth trying to clean up and get back into production. I let it go back to jungle.

This is the lowest terrace worth harvesting now and its still more berries than apples. Subsequent to these old photos I bought a backhoe and use it to rake blackberry canes out of the trees. It's still a jumble of berries and old Gravenstein trees, but worth picking.

When I was a kid those slopes were kept clean by herbicides. I hate to think what chemicals were in the apples.

That looks pretty nasty. It must have taken quite a bit of work to eliminate the weeds, let alone bring the trees back. The only thing that I know about Gravenstein is they were my grandmother's favorite apple. I've been planting some of the older varieties so when I found a Red Gravenstein I bought it. Nothing like what you guys have, I only have 18 fruit trees planted and nothing is producing yet, someday hopefully I'll enjoy the fruits of my labor. I've been buying semi dwarf when I can but also have several standard trees; but I know how to use a saw to keep them cut back.

 

[Oaktree]

Understand this mindset. Been here all my life.
My son will be the sixth generation on the farm my great aunt left me.

I'm envious of you guys who have family property that goes back generations. While I grew up in the country, my parents (and grandparents) were "town" people and when my parents bought their house they figured a bit over an acre was more than enough. They did admit they regretted not getting a place with more land (especially in the late '40s when they got married old farms were going for cheap money), but being children of the depression they were reluctant to take on much debt and risk losing it all.

The Himalayan blackberry is a nasty plant... great berries and super easy to grow (IE if you try to kill them, they'll just keep going for good measure...), I try to keep them under control but if I get distracted with other projects they take over...

I find all the griping about blackberries "taking over" a bit amusing, especially since I can hardly get them to grow at all here. A few scraggly plants and that's about it.

Red gravs - a local story: They are accepted at the processing plant as Gravenstein for applesauce, juice, vinegar but they're not well thought of for retail apple sales because they don't look like gravs.

Apparently, they're a variety that's only grown in your general area...never heard of them before. I am a bit surprised you can grow Macintosh where you live, I would have thought it was too warm there for them. Even here in N.H. the ones grown in the north are much crisper than those from the southern part of the state.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^^^
My mother is on the property which my great-grandfather bought back in 18eightysomething but it's gradually getting absorbed by the city. When she's done with it most likely the land will be one acre houselots.
It's one of several parcels in a 350 acre undeveloped area surrounded by houses... to me if the city planners had any sense they would buy it at fair market value and create a green area within the city. From an environmental viewpoint it's more beneficial to have "green areas" close to the source of pollution rather than hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Fedco Trees in Maine sometimes has the Red Gravenstein, which is where I bought mine. This year all that they listed was the more normal variety.

 

[Jstpssng]

Not really technology, but I'm too cheap to buy AC. My place is small and by the time I settle in at night the sun has set below the trees and a good fan will cool it down. I put the fan in one window, open another in the other end of the house and the breeze flows right through... the same way that we cooled the greenhouses.
For years I've used an old all steel window fan which my employer was throwing out; I had to lube the motor up to get it to work properly, and it's a little noisy when I shut it down yet it's served me well for 10 years or more. It's pretty heavy though, as well as a little rusty so today I bought a newer, lighter window fan. (As a bonus it was Made in USA!)
After about three hours in the window the place hadn't cooled down a bit. So now I have the big old slightly rusty Dominion in the window and it's cooling down nicely. Maybe I'll invest in a can of paint and get another ten years out of it.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Traditionally Gravensteins. A Google search on 'Sonoma County Gravenstein' finds a large industry specializing on them in the past, for example over 100 apple drying kilns and annually 2,000 boxcars of fresh apples shipped. There was an annual Apple Fair that continues today. One recent article says less than a square mile of orchards remain in the county, that's 640 acres.

This present orchard has some large Gravensteins, large Golden Delicious, and then everything planted as replacements after the 70's is semi-dwarf size, reachable with a 12 ft ladder. More Gravenstein and Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Rome, several rows of Granny Smith, a few random Galas, Macintosh, Pink Lady, Honeycrisp etc. Fujis near the house for family and friends. Some other family fruit trees are replants in random spots - pear, persimmon, walnut, fig, pomegranate. And lots of blackberries down by the ravine, both native and Himalayan. We host annual blackberry harvest parties for relatives and friends.

We like pink lady, honeycrisp and Paula red.

 

[goeduck]

Summer and winter versions? Tell me more! Never heard of them. Ours ripen just before every other variety, late summer.

Red gravs - a local story: They are accepted at the processing plant as Gravenstein for applesauce, juice, vinegar but they're not well thought of for retail apple sales because they don't look like gravs. A local nursery sold them to homeowners in about 2005 as just gravs, then when they started bearing after a few years the customers with backyard trees were outraged, felt cheated. That nursery said what's the difference, everybody thinks apples should be red. Well not these customers, the type who attend the the annual Gravenstein Apple Fair and likely wanted traditional gravs in their subdivision back yards to confirm their (new) identity as locals. ... That nursery is no longer in business.

Do you see any other difference in red gravs aside from appearance? Tonnage per tree, thinning needed, ripening date, apple size, flavor, ???

My red gravenstein is a tiny tree, but it puts out apples very well and they keep well into the winter in the refrigerator. I have another tiny one that was attacked by wooly aphid (to the roots) that has not fully recovered yet after treatment. My old summer Gravensteins (down to two 160 year trees) are the typical gravenstein. My old winter gravenstein (down to three) are very similar to the summer variety except they fruit later and last longer in storage. I asked the Apple lady at the local fruit club about them and she said it was a gravenstein sport. We tend to use the summer varieties for pies and sauce and the winter for cider, storage and fritters. Fresh eating flavor there is no beating the summer gravenstein but I could not choose between it and the winter gravenstein since I can enjoy it longer. Both are great. I have numerous grafted trees from the old girls growning but snip off the apples so the trees focus on growing. All are on standard or 85% standard rootstock to stay above the cattle and deer. Original orchard in year 1860 had 150 trees.

 

[bunyip]

Blackberries here are far from amusing as they can take over in a matter of months, we simply don't get the frost to knock them back, one corner of our place is overrun with them as the adjoining property won't spray his, I spray them four times a year but they just bounce back, they are controlled on my side but the other side are spreading like wildfire, the coldest we get is about -2°C but only about half a dozen times a year, we curse the English botanist Von Mueller who introduced them here as a food source a few hundred years ago.

 

[goeduck]

Blackberries here are far from amusing as they can take over in a matter of months, we simply don't get the frost to knock them back, one corner of our place is overrun with them as the adjoining property won't spray his, I spray them four times a year but they just bounce back, they are controlled on my side but the other side are spreading like wildfire, the coldest we get is about -2°C but only about half a dozen times a year, we curse the English botanist Von Mueller who introduced them here as a food source a few hundred years ago.

We curse Luther Burbank, an American Botanist, for the introduction of the Himalayan Blackberry (native to Armenia and Northern Iran) as a crop. There was a story in an old Oregon newspaper saying that there is a bit of a containment problem with the berries and that they should not be sold any longer. Do ya think?

 

[California]

We curse Luther Burbank, an American Botanist, for the introduction of the Himalayan Blackberry (native to Armenia and Northern Iran) as a crop. There was a story in an old Oregon newspaper saying that there is a bit of a containment problem with the berries and that they should not be sold any longer. Do ya think?

Luther Burbank did that? He's a local hero. I never heard that before. Ok, I looked online and the PhD student studying him confirms this.

My place is a few miles from his experimental farm (not his home in Santa Rosa), with identical soil and climate.

If he did that to us I need to re-think my view of him!

Funny story - the gopher problem here is so severe that Burbank surrendered and gave part of his land to the neighboring cemetery.

 

[bunyip]

The birds are our problem, eat the ripe berries then spread seed filled superphosphate (that was being polite).