Our apple trees are in full bloom this week. The sun and warmth over the last two days have made almost every blossom pop. We seem to have been lucky and the freezing temperatures overnight last week, 26F, did not do any significant damage. The woods are now a riot of white and pink and the air is smelling very sweet.
All of our apples are untended and overgrown; some are more than 20 feet tall. Most of our trees are on the southwest slope facing the field and pond, over 50 on this slope alone. These trees are also interspersed with young hawthorns, which makes getting to them quite tricky. We have other apple trees scattered throughout the woods, along our back-fence row, and even a few up under the pine grove.
We have begun the task of tagging each tree, we plan to record the apple type (as best we can) in the fall and then collect scion wood for grafting from our favorites. We are unsure of the origin of our apples; some look like they were purposely planted maybe from when this land was part of a larger farm, others however seem to be volunteers.
This makes identification tricky. It is hard to tell what is a heritage variety purposely planted, and what is a hybrid variety sprouted from seed. I would love to eventually do a little populations genetic study on them, but for now we will stick to apple color, shape, size and most importantly, flavor.