Growing Apple Chairs

     We have this thing at work, which I'll call 'Mandatory Pie Break.' It takes place at any time of day in any room, and again, it's mandatory. That's how committed we are to enjoying and comparing local pies, usually apple. We live in what feels like the Apple Capitol of Vermont (complete with an annual Apple Fest on Columbus Day weekend) and apple pies are like knishes on Coney Island or cheesesteaks in Philadelphia; everyone has their local favorite. MPB was really inspired by our need to find a new pie, as Celia Hackett of Hackett's Orchard in South Hero finally closed down her famous pie operation after 35 plus years. People are freaking out.

     Because it's such a small town, I cannot rightly share with you our results. Let's just say that we've found a hands down winner (although nowhere near as good as a Hackett's,) and are also enjoying 'off - Island' pies in secret. There have been some occasional homemade entries between us, which brings me a little closer to the heart of this post. To celebrate Riki's return from Japan, I made a special apple coffee cake from 101cookbooks. 

glazed with homemade apple jelly 

steaming hot

     Maybe you know a bit about the genetics of apples; I'm a Michael Pollan fanatic, and was inspired to learn more about them after reading the Botany of Desire. The basics are that apple seeds do not produce offspring that resemble the trees in which they come from. A Mac doesn't make a Mac, and a Granny Smith doesn't make a Granny Smith. This unreliability is the basis of why apples are cut and grafted as opposed to started from seed (that and the ability to pair each tree to the proper rootstock for it's desired size and the local climate.) Apples from seed are rarely sweet, nor can their resistance to disease and pests be counted on. 

    This bit of information puts the home gardener in a pay-to-plant situation. You're unlikely to plant apples from seed on your property unless you can be sure that they will produce a variety that's to your liking. Purchasing grafted 'whips' (unbranched 4-6 ft trees on bare rootstock) can run about $12 - $20 apiece, or more for older and better established trees. Really, that's not bad. However, if you're like me, and have some zany projects in mind, then all of those numbers start to add up before you've accidentally killed your first tree.

McIntosh Seeds

     I have two books in my library that inspire me to do all sorts of crazy things with trees; Arborsulpture by Richard Reames and How to Grow a Chair, again by Reames and Barbara Delbol. Both of these books are fascinating accounts of different existing arborsculptures, as well as instructions for growing fences, chairs, and even houses. Arborsculpture is a term coined by Reames that encompasses his process of treeshaping, which relies on whips that are instantly shaped. The Gradual Shaping Method was developed by Peter Cook and Becky Northey and uses small saplings, like those I intend to grow from the apple seeds. Gradual tree shaping requires planning and design to slowly shape the tree into the desired form.

Garden Chair from Pooktre Tree Shapers


Peter Cook on the Garden Chair:


"Our living garden chair started life as a single tree under 10in (20cm) tall. We had planned out the design before the tree had even start to grow. The tree was grown into the design shape over a 3 year period. We waited about 6 years before we sat on it. So it was about 9 years old. This coming spring it will be 13 years old, it is a wild plum (Prunus Myrobalan). This tree now needs no more maintenance than that of the average fruit tree in your garden."

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     I'm not sure exactly what I'd like to do with treeshaping - I imagine that to start I'd just play with things on a small scale for container plantings and photographs. But what I do know is that without starting the seeds, I'd actually have to buy whips - and as I'm not planning on eating any of the fruit (we have already planted enough,) so why bother? With all of this in mind, I removed the seeds from my coffee cake apple scraps and stored them in the fridge until I was ready to plant.

Later, I added seeds from a Mutsu (aka Crispin) as well as both Bosc and Anjou pears. I had a Northern Spy as well, but it had no seeds!? This time, after removing the seeds I dried them out in the oven (mine can be set at 100 degrees) as I read that this was an important step. I had lent my dehydrator to a friend, but I think that would have really sped things up. If you're using either an oven or a dehydrator, I would be careful not to go above 110 degrees if you'd like your seeds to germinate.

And then, just like that, I set them up for Winter Sowing as I had done recently with several other seeds. You could also keep them in your refrigerator for a few months if you prefer. I, myself, am not too worried about failure (with regards to experimental gardening.) I am so busy in the summer that when I screw things up it usually amounts to nothing but sweet, sweet relief.

Winter Sowing (tomatoes, too...)

     A friend of mine is an employee at a National Gardening Association demonstration garden and has been telling me about their success with allowing lettuce to bolt. They just choose a few heads, neglect them, and in the spring they have lettuce sprouting up way earlier than if they had planted by hand (seems easy enough, as long as you remember not to weed out the sprouts come spring.) I've actually experienced this in our hoop house by planting for winter too late, and watching those seeds pop up months later. The timing was particularly bad (the lettuce was at maturity for my first market of the season,) but the plants were strong and beautiful.

May 2009

  
     Most cold climate seeds are designed to sleep their way through winter,  allowing temperature and moisture to prompt germination in spring. Weeds are thought to have such an advantage in the garden because they've experienced this dormancy naturally. When we start our own seeds, we're often instructed to methodically trick them into reacting as though they've experienced winter, in order to urge their germination. Scarification (nicking a seed coat with a razor prior to sowing) is simply mimicking the cracking that occurs in a seed hull after a season of freezing and thawing. So, why not just sow your seeds outdoors in autumn, and see what happens? Well, you could, but you'd be sure to lose some to wind, birds, and burrowing critters. But we've all seen volunteer squash come up in the compost, right?

     Winter sowing is a method of setting seeds outdoors in lidded containers to allow them to scarify and stratify naturally for spring. Although this method is really helpful for specialized northern plants, success has been experienced with warmer climate plants, as well. I happen to have a lot of wildflower seeds with picky instructions, and I'm also totally interested in experimenting with some tomatoes just to see what can be achieved in the hoop house without heat. This is a big issue where I live (at least to me) because a lot of the tomatoes that we buy over the summer are started really early by heating a green house with oil, propane, or wood - just because the public (myself included) can't wait for tomatoes to be ready in September, only to disappear within a month. I'm curious if winter sown tomatoes grow into stronger and more cold tolerant plants that can withstand some of the temperature swings we have in April and May. If so, then maybe they can be protected with an extra layer of plastic instead of being heated, and still produce early.

Pomykala Farm's tomatoes and heater

At wintersown.org (the best instructions for winter sowing anywhere) Trudi recommends saving plastic chinese food containers, cool whip tubs, and 2 liter soda bottles for sowing. If you live where I do (in the middle of nowhere) and eat like I do (not much soda and cool whip) look for foil catering trays - at Costco they're 30/$6.36. I happen to have a lot of plastic starter flats with lids on hand.

I set the whole operation up on the kitchen floor because it's mop-able. The trays were perforated, but I made sure to cut slits in the lids for air transpiration - I have fried countless little plants by not allowing the heat and moisture an obvious escape route.

 each flat was seeded, and larger seeds like these Turk Cap Lilies were covered with soil

I made duct tape labels for each tray, written in permanent marker

I set all the flats outside on tables and makeshift tables for the time being. I made sure to avoid places where our steep roof dumps snow (I woke up to no less than 7 'explosions' last night...)

each lid then got weighted down with a piece of wood in case of high winds

and lastly,  I made a diagram of what I planted where, as I've never had much luck with labels

Here are the wildflowers and natives that I sowed: Nodding Onion, Rose Mallow, Obedient Plant, Jacob's Ladder, Anise Hyssop, and Turk's Cap Lily. I also sowed 2 flats of Alpine strawberries, Blue Solaize leeks and 6 kinds of tomatoes: Moonglow, Green Zebra, Nyagous, Crnkovic Yugoslavian, Opalka, and Black from Tula, all from Seed Savers Exchange. Will winter sown tomatoes be more resistant to blight?

 

 last season's tomatoes finally got the blight in late August

I dont feel even close to done, but I ran out of (thawed) soil. Can I sow right into plug trays? Can I sow trays in the hoop house without using lids if I regulate the moisture?  I plan to try it all, as I have little use for seeds that need to be started indoors - what a drag. And what great gifts these flats would make - I can think of friends and family that would love this little experiment in their own yard, especially if they didn't have to do any of the work. Can you imagine how great it would be to start all of your seeds now? no lights, no watering, no getting the timing wrong. Have I convinced you to try? C'mon, just a quarter pack of tomato seeds in a cool whip tub...