Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by notable_user 2782 days ago
It’s a curse if you were a small orchard happily growing another apple variety. No one wants your apples anymore so you have to rip out all your trees an plant new one. (Side note: Really you’re grafting new branches.) That’s a lot of capital investment for a family business that might have been eeking along already.

And, as the article says, who knows when you’ll need to switch to the next variety.
1 comments
Alex3917 2782 days ago
> Really you’re grafting new branches.

Where does the expense come in for grafting? Isn't the only cost basically the parafilm? I'm not a grafter, but my understanding is that you just take some branches from the varietal you want to clone, cut off the tops off your existing root stock, and then connect the root stock with the twig using some grafting tape.

Unless by capital investment you just mean the fact that you're not going to get more apples for another three years or whatever.

link
handystack 2782 days ago
Apple trees take years to begin producing fruit. A new orchard is very expensive in terms of labor and the opportunity cost of tying up acreage with non-producing plants.
link
notable_user 2782 days ago
I’m not a grafter myself so I don’t know the specifics. But I do know it’s not cheap. Labor intensive and I don’t think the branches are cheap, despite them growing on trees.

And yes, loss of production is a huge hit to an orchard.

link