The Century Apple Tree

The apple tree was here when my grandmother arrived in 1905. Ever since, we've been making applesauce and apple pies from the hard, tart green apples. And we've never found any other apples like them, in all that time. They are sharp, and truly only a cooking apple. Even the horses pucker up when they bite into these, but there are no better apples for making pies.

We've tried to get the tree to propogate over the years, without a lot of success. Carol finally succeeded in getting several small trees to grow from apple seeds, and she is carefully nurturing them.

Rebecca, from BarKNursery, came last year to try air-layering the tree. This involves making a cut in a healthy branch, and layering moss and a container around the cut to encourage root growth. Rebecca is an environmental horticulturalist, specializing in producing Native plants, planning Garden installation & site restoration,environmental consulting & education. She's been here to offer a seminar to the Lake of Bays Association about Native plantings. She was instrumental in the shoreline restoration project at Norway Point, Lake of Bays, and also in the shoreline work and native plants garden at the Historical Plaque for the Portage Flyer at South Portage. She's also done some work along our shoreline at Bondi, and gone home with large quantities of iris when Carol is dividing the gardens here. We're always delighted to see her. Rebecca's work always puts the environment first.

Last week, one of the major branches of our apple tree split from the trunk, under the weight of the apples. Rebecca arrived to remove the air-layers, and hopefully (fingers crossed everyone!) they will thrive. She has also made the suggestion that Brian could bury the trunk with the branches protruding out of the ground, and it just might take root like that, putting up shoots of 'apple shrubs'. We'd take it..

We have plenty of apple trees on the property, including some wild ones scattered up around the back fields and in the most unlikely places, but this apple tree is very special to us, and we're doing everything we can to preserve it for the future.