HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1986-04-16, Page 25THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1986. PAGE 25.
New generations to enjoy old apple flavours
Continued from page 24
research to practical use two years
ago when she began her first
plantation of old apple varieties.
Modern horticulture uses the
process of "budding" in which a
single leaf bud from the variety of
tree you want to propogate is
attached to a root stock (most of
which is grown in Holland).
The budding process is gener-
ally more efficient than the graft-
ing process that was once used but
one disadvantage is that it's done
in the heat of mid summer where
grafting was generally done in-
doors in the late winter. In
addition, when Shelley set out to do
her first budding, she was several
months pregnant, making it even
more difficult to work six inches off
the ground.
Her research turned up the fact
that there are people who's
full-time job is budding and they
travel the world from one fruit -
growing area to another with the
change of seasons to bud the trees.
They can bud 2000 trees a day.
Shelley, inexperienced and with-
out a lot of mobility, managed
about 75 trees a day.
About 200 of the trees she
budded two years ago "took" and
of those, 150 are ready for sale this
spring.
As a concession to the needs of
modern garden owners, some of
the trees have been grafted into
dwarf rootstock for people who
want to put more trees into a
smaller area. Some of the trees are
of two different semi -vigorous
rootstocks, meaning they will be
closer to the original size of the old
varieties.
Last year, the second year of her
experiment brought a major
disappointment, however. She
was prepared to bud 500 trees and
arrangements had been made to go
to the Vineland museum to get the
bud wood. But the pressure of
land -use demands in the Niagara
Penninsula had caused the author-
ities of the museum to decide to
pull out the orchard and, through a
mix-up in communications, they
pulled out all the trees the day
before Shelley had made arrange-
ments to pick up her buds.
The museum officials, when
the mistake was discovered tried to
help out by giving her some
cuttings but after budding some
500 trees, she has found that only
about 50 have taken because the
cuttings weren't taken from the
right age of tree or the right part of
the tree. Days of work, and nearly a
whole year of development of her
business were lost.
Eventually, if all goes well, such
problems will be eliminated be-
cause she hopes to plant an orchard
with at least two trees of every
variety she has so she will have
access to her own budding stock.
The experiment is one of several
income sources the couple are
developing. They also plan to have
one acre of pick -your -own straw-
berries and raspberries.
Finding the right market for the
trees however is a challenge, parti-
cularly to get started. Volume of
the trees available is not large
enough to warrant large scale
advertising in the swanky maga-
zines for people who keep country
estates. For the present, at least,
she'll depend on the local market
and count on the memories people
have for apples that had a
personality of their own.
Eventually she thinks she may
advertise a "connoisseur collec-
tion" of 10 or 12 of the best tasting
apples (she has a friend, Fred
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I�
Jansen of Rockton, who has
studied the science of taste and has
rated the old apple varieties
according to their taste qualities).
Another possiblity is selling a
"cider collection" a selection of
apple trees whose apples, when
combined in juice, offer the most
tasty combination.
As for the hope that some of the
apple varieties will live again as
commercial varieties even in farm-
ers markets she doesn't hold out
much hope. Mr. Jansen has tried to
sell apples from his own small
collection of old -variety apple trees
in markets in the Toronto area with
little success. The modern palate of
the general public has been
conditioned to go for the more
traditional tastes of either the
Maclntosh or Red Delicious and
most people don't seem too willing
to be adverturous.
But for the home gardner, the
chance to keep alive the delicious
flavour of the past is there and
' Shelley Paulocik is hoping there
will be enough discriminating
apple lovers to help keep these
varieties alive for many years to
come.
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