Thursday night one of the branches of our 100 year old King apple tree fell down. We were in the house and awake and didn't hear a thing. It must have gone down slowly. There had been a crack developing between the several main stems and we had been worried about it.
The three main stems had been held together by a graft made by twisting small branches together. This has to have been done when the tree was quite small. The angle between the trunks was too narrow to be strong and whoever did this hoped to give strength to the tree. Well, it did work as the tree lived to be over 100. One of the remaining two trunks may be salvageable, we'll have to see. Meanwhile we are planning to plant a new standard sized King tree this winter a ways away from this one so when the last of the old tree finally goes we will still have King apples. I grew up with a King tree and my mother made applesauce from its apples. To me the taste of applesauce from King apples is the way it is supposed go taste. We have gotten many, many boxes of great apples from this tree over the years and we will miss it.
Thursday night one of the branches of our 100 year old King apple tree fell down. We were in the house and awake and didn't hear a thing. It must have gone down slowly. There had been a crack developing between the several main stems and we had been worried about it.
The three main stems had been held together by a graft made by twisting small branches together. This has to have been done when the tree was quite small. The angle between the trunks was too narrow to be strong and whoever did this hoped to give strength to the tree. Well, it did work as the tree lived to be over 100. One of the remaining two trunks may be salvageable, we'll have to see. Meanwhile we are planning to plant a new standard sized King tree this winter a ways away from this one so when the last of the old tree finally goes we will still have King apples. I grew up with a King tree and my mother made applesauce from its apples. To me the taste of applesauce from King apples is the way it is supposed go taste. We have gotten many, many boxes of great apples from this tree over the years and we will miss it.
I love King apples. I had forgotten that until I read your post tonight. The last time I had one was when Kellen was little. I'm glad you're planting another one so you'll continue to have Kings! Maybe they'll be ripe sometime when I'm out on the island. :-)
ReplyDeleteMany years ago while working on the family cattle ranch I was re-engineering the old rickety corrals. There was an old hollow tree with one pathetic little green limb that had a few leaves. Before chopping it out of the way I checked with my grandmother. She said “Oh no," it was an old heirloom apple variety (forget the name) and this was the only one in existence as far as she know. By her description it was the greatest eating apple ever encountered, a national treasure really. I insisted it had to go because it was in the way. We reached a compromise that if I grafted it to a younger apple tree the old one could be removed. After many many unsuccessful attempts I finally gave up and re-planned the operation and managed to snuggle the new corrals in around the decrepit old tree although it took a good deal more work. That fall I noticed it had one lonely little pear growing at the end of the branch.
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