New Mexico Fruit
Explorers, The Quest
It’s
about a diverse a group of people as one can imagine, different backgrounds,
ideologies, professions, experience, but we are gathered here in our living
room for a grafting workshop with a common purpose, our individual quest for a
perfect apple. We seek perfection in
flavor, not appearance, for perfect appearance can be found in the produce
department of any grocery store.
Of
approximately 10,000 named varieties of apples, possibly fewer than 20 can be
found on store shelves. For commercial
growers trying to survive in a market dominated by imported fruit a few traits
are necessary. First growers need uniformity,
all the apples in a box should look alike, without blemish. All the fruit should color before ripening
and all of the apples on a tree should be ready to pick at the same time. Ripe apples are more subject to bruising
during handling and have a shorter storage life. With labor costs in the field, growers need
one picking or two at the most in an area.
Any tree with apples of different sizes and maturity won’t provide a
profit.
“As
American as apple pie” is a catchy phrase.
Order a slice in America and ask the waitress what’s in it. She’ll answer “apples” and give a funny look back over her
shoulder as she wonders what kind of a
customer you are. Ask your produce man if
he has any Newtown Pippin or Esopus Spitzenberg and you can guess his answer,
yet these were the respective favorites
of Presidents Washington and Jefferson, both
men who knew their apples well.
We have
been taught that an apple is an apple.
Well………not really. In Europe
apples are classified according to their purpose. There are baking apples, sauce apples, cider
apples and dessert apples. Eating an
apple out of hand which is not classified as a dessert apple is considered a
waste of time.
Cider
presses are directed by masters with tastes as finely tuned as any
vintners. The blend of apples results in
raw apple juice unlike any on our store shelves. Fermented it becomes cider as varied as any
wine selection. Distill that cider and
apple brandy, or apple jack, or Calvados will emerge.
In the
US we still have thousands of apple varieties, suited for every taste and
purpose. Some store overwinter, almost
until other varieties are ready the following year. Others begin to deteriorate as soon as they
are picked, lasting only a few days. Shapes and sizes vary, some look like they
have potato skin. Beneath the skin they
can be white fleshed, yellow fleshed or red fleshed. There are sweets, bittersharps and every
degree between. Names can be as intriguing
as the appearances. Sops of Wine,
Irish Peach, Summer Rambo , Westfield’s Seek No Further and Winter Banana can conjure up all sorts of
images.
There
are thousands of varieties still in existence in the US, but finding them can
be a bit of a challenge. When the New
Mexico Fruit Explorers group gathers the challenge often is not in settling on
the best which is available, but finding and identifying the best which has no
longer been available because it is so rare.
As
piles of small branches appear on the table, people gather to sort and express
amazement on the scionwood which is available.
Scions (pronounced sigh-on, the “c” is silent) provide the buds from
which a new tree will grow. Rootstock
can be considered the foundation of a tree. From below the graft union it influences the
tree size, hardiness, and time required to reach bearing. Above the union, the scion grows into the
tree structure, duplicating the variety of its parent plant. Because apple seeds do not reproduce true to the parent, grafting
is necessary to provide known results.
The
mechanics of grafting involve matching the cambium layers of the scion and the
rootstock in such a way that they will grow together into one plant. There are many methods of doing this,
developed over centuries of trial and error.
However it is done, it still seems a bit of magic
when the new growth appears.
At this
meeting beginners are guided by experts and the bin of rootstock steadily
depletes leaving many choice varieties of scions ungrafted. Next month more rootstock will arrive and the
scene will be duplicated. The quest for
the best tasting apple will continue.
