Twigs and sunlight

Thaw has been proceeding remarkably quickly. Every day snow is peeled off and water trickles downhill. Yesterday I took some time to walk the property after work. It's been awhile since I could do this in the afternoon; the snow crust is firm from overnight frost but mushy in the warm afternoon so previously it meant stepping through knee-deep snow which isn't really much fun. Yesterday I stuck mostly to my previous tracks and dog trails and the snow never topped my farm boots.

My south slope is nearly clear of snow. I planted haskaps and romance cherries on this a couple years ago, together with three apple trees on antonovka (full sized) rootstock: September Sun, Wealthy, and Goodland. The Wealthy was girdled by voles back to below the graft union two years ago, and all were nibbled by geese that year; this year the September Sun and Goodland have new shoots of a couple feet from above the graft line, and what used to be Wealthy sent up several good shoots from the antonovka stock. Antonovka is supposed to make a pretty ok apple tree.

With the snow gone I was able to get a good look at that south slope. Last summer/fall I'd done cardboard over it with year-composted chicken bedding over that and coarse unchipped aspen saplings over that. While that was supposed to help alleviate the fact that it's a hot, baking-dry hill with layers of shade and organic material it did also prevent water infiltrating evenly during our super dry hot fall and I was concerned voles would find a playground under the cardboard all winter and just girdle everything.

While some of the haskaps have die-back, I imagine either from the drought or from the quick, deep cold we got when we dropped below -30C with no snow on the ground, some do not and the apples look good. I couldn't see any vole damage on the apples or the romance cherries, which I believe to be the voles' favourites. While the hillside looks deeply messy, it also has a satisfying understory look to my eye: I like those bigger, inch-or-so branches beginning to go brown and black and signal a very slow slump into soil. My plan is to continue to add a layer or two like this every couple years: some slow-decomposing material, some cardboard, and some animal bedding. I want the soil to develop a top organic layer with embedded wood in various stages of decomposition. This is also probably the fastest-decomposing place on my property, just because it's so warm and sunny.

Into that messy-looking slope of branches and bedding I need to (very quickly) seed some lettuce, poppies, calendula, edible chrysanthemum, and maybe a couple other greens and/or flowers. I'd like them to get the jump on whatever weeds are in the animal bedding.

Come to think of it, maybe I should put the poppies in a location that doesn't have edible greens/flowers so there are no mistakes when picking. They go well with small grains, I think.

Just above that steeper south slope is the spot I planted my garlic trial. I'm very interested to see if any of it survives.

Meanwhile the rhubarb is still under several feet of snow: microclimates are real. Increments of slope and shade make such a huge difference. I can't quite see the ground in my field gardens: it's a plain of slowly-subsiding snow punctuated by cornstalks and lamb's quarters seedstalks and around each stem is a dip that almost, almost shows the ground. Any object sticking out of the snow collects heat on the south side, melting more deeply, and most of them screen heat on the north side to leave a little mound. Metal fences collect heat and stand in their own dips. It is a good time of year to learn about sunshine and heat.

It's also seed-starting time. I'm trying to remember to pick up soil on my way home from work today so I can get everything started this weekend. I want to not just start tomatoes and peppers and potatoes, but also get the apple seeds from my fridge into soil. I'm very curious to see how they do.

I do not have a labelling solution for this year and I'm upset about it.

I'm debating buying more apple trees this spring (the best time for planting trees is always yesterday, the second best is now). I have elderberry cuttings I can almost get into the ground. I need to figure out which dimensions of frost cloth I want to get, which means remeasuring my fields and deciding on planting patterns/bed shape. I am not ready to make those decisions, but it needs to happen so the frost cloth can get here on time.

My first greenhouse's cover is definitely destroyed. I'm costing out plastic and wiggle wire to re-cover it. Five winters isn't a bad run, and the frame is still good. It was one of those pop-up ones. I also need to figure out how to re-cover the woodshed, ideally with something more permanent, and maybe I need to decide if I want it to stay there first.

During the winter the power company came along and straightened up the power poles along the road, they were leaning pretty badly. I honestly am pretty skeptical of the whole thing since my understanding is that if a mix of snow and dirt is used to prop up a pole, when the snow melts you're gonna have issues even if regular frost heaving wasn't a thing. But, that's not my problem. What I'm interested in is the bare, disturbed, and now snow-free ground outside my fence along the road there where I'm considering dropping some of my extra raspberry canes and some comfrey roots. I don't want to pay for something that deer might eat, so my first idea of haskaps wasn't great, but I have a ton of extra raspberry runners.

All the other apples seem to have come through without vole damage too, which is very strange. I know the cats were much less busy this winter than they were other years, and there's less vole damage than I've seen before so far. This year I really need to get vole collars on them all; I did most but not all last fall and it's just luck that everything made it through.

The Zestar! apples might have a bit of southwest disease damage, we'll see how they do. This was their first winter here.

So: spring, kind of unexpectedly early. I wasn't quite thinking I'd see the ground anywhere quite yet.

Apple inventory

Looks like the current survivors are:

The two original trees, maybe one of the bigger crabs (?Trailman?) and a transparent (or could be Lodi I guess) on dwarfing rootstock (they're 10'ish) and the original tiny-fruited fragrant crabapple (maybe Purple Prince, looks like it comes true from seed)

Antonovka, Goodland on antonovka, and September Sun on antonovka.

Three Zestar!s, a State Fair, and a Gloria on bylands rootstock (I honestly don't know what they use, and I guess I'll see if it survived its first winter in such a brutal dry/freeze-without-snow introduction).

One Ashmead's kernel on B118 in the lawn. This one's struggling between root competition from the spruces and having been nibbled by geese. Gonna give it some love. This apple and golden russet are, incidentally, my favourite apples I've ever tasted.

A row on B118 by the pigpen: Dexter Jackson, Ashmead, and a very happy-looking Frostbite.

What I'm looking at this year, I think all on 118 (most other rootstocks I've experimented with don't seem to have survived, and antonovka is hard to find):

-the dessert crabs Chestnut, Trailman, and Centennial

-the early apples William's Pride, Wealthy, and Norkent

-another instance of my favourites: Frostbite and Ashmead's Kernel. If my legacy is one surviving Ashmead's Kernel somewhere on the property that escapes all other changes, my life is complete.

-the later storage apples Hudson's Golden Gem and Sandow. These may not ripen in time here, but I suspect by the time they're old enough to fruit we'll have enough heat most years for them anyhow.

-Sweet Sixteen, an apparently excellent Frostbite/Wickson relative, also in the later category.

-I want a Wolf River but I can only find one on B10 rootstock, which is heavily dwarfing. Now I could get it and graft it onto a seedling rootstock later if it survives, or I could wait till next year. It's Angus' favourite apple and I'd love to be able to grow him a bag of them. The Hardy Apples book by Bob Osborne says B10 should be hardy enough and I haven't tried it yet so it might be a good experiment? And I could put it under the powerline to the house, as a tiny tree that might be a good spot for it.

For my seed experiments, I have the following:

-Seed from the transparent-ish and big red crab on my property. There's a miniscule, very fragrant-flowered crab on the property too. There are other apples in the neighbourhood but none super close, so I expect most of this seed will be a cross of these three (apples cross-pollinate and do not usually self-pollinate, so I can expect most-to-all to be crosses of some kind). These are obviously all hardy and well-suited to my area. Transparent is one of the earliest, hardiest, most recommended apples.

-Seed a friend sent from his Arkansas Black tree in Revelstoke. No idea what other trees are around but they should be reasonably hardy.

-Seed from commercial Lucy Glo apples I saved last fall.

-Seed from skillcult that's been stratifying. He has much warmer winters than I do, so I don't expect all the open-pollinated ones to survive the winter. The open-pollinated mixed seeds were cheap, though, and I've stuck to hardy parents where the parents were known so something good may come of some of them:
*Open-pollinated Wickson
*Twang x Jujube
*Sweet Sixteen x early blend pollen
*Sweet Sixteen x red flesh pollen
*Muscat de venus open-pollinated
*Open-pollinated red flesh mixed
*Open-pollinated early apples mixed
*Open-pollinated October apples mixed

-Seed from skillcult I haven't stratified yet and just received a bit ago. Same principle: either very cheap open-pollinated seeds with a smaller chance of surviving here, or 1 to 2 hardy parents with a much higher chance. Trailman, for example, is super hardy and crossing it with my faqvourite golden russet is ultra exciting. These seeds haven't been stratified though:
*Open-pollinated Williams' Pride
*Open-pollinated Wickson
*Trailman x Sweet Sixteen
*Trailman x Golden Russet (!!!)
*Sweet Sixteen x Wickson
*Sunrise x Wickson
*Sunrise x Cherry Crush
*Sunrise x Cherry Cox
*Open-pollinated Chestnut crab
*Open-pollinated Amberwine
*Mixed open-pollinated apple seeds
*Chestnut crab x Wickson
*Trailman * Wickson

-I have a stash of seeds sent from a friend in high-elevation states, a bunch of them are next generation from Oikos and have a strong focus on hardy crabapples. I will add them to this inventory when I inventory them. They are unstratified too, so like the second round of skillcult seeds they will probably go into the fridge in peat this fall and I'll sprout them in the spring.

Note: I heavily recommend the Hardy Apples book by Bob Osborne.