A transplanted Southern Californian living in North Dakota Idaho, with some insights on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.





Monday, July 20, 2015

Apple Tree Lost to the Wind

Earlier this week we had some strong thunderstorms roll through the area.  There wasn't a tornado or anything, but some very strong straight-line winds brought a few tree limbs down.  The storm didn't last long, about an hour, but there was a decent amount of storm related carnage in our yard and throughout the neighborhood.
One of our apple trees was snapped off right at the base.  The winds that came through were in the 50 to 60 miles per hour range, pretty significant winds.  This was a Honeycrisp Apple that was in its' fourth year and was just starting to produce apples, so it was a big bummer for me.
The good news is that this is not a grafted tree, so the shoots that come up should be true Honeycrisp Apple shoots, and should (eventually and in theory) become a regular tree again and produce apples.

So I'll throw out some questions to you knowledgeable readers:  Is it worth the 3-4 years it will take for this to grow back, or should I just replace the tree?  As a non-grafted apple tree, can a sucker grow up, be trained into a main leader and indeed eventually produce apples? 

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