[biotinker]

I got myself involved with a nonprofit local group preserving local pioneer era apple trees. They've been DNA testing and cataloging the trees, and had all the info stashed away in google drive and onedrive folders. The founder was looking to step back so they asked me if I wanted to step up as project lead, which I did.

I took the info and organized it into a nice wiki-style site with maps and descriptions so everyone in the community can learn about the old orchards.

https://heritageapplecorps.org/index.php/Main_Page

I've also learned how to prune and graft hundred year old apple trees and now have a couple dozen young grafted trees growing in my garage, all clones of local hundred year old trees, some of which genetically tested unique and are of currently unknown varieties.

[andrewhaupt]

Thats awesome! I'm doing apple stuff on the other side of the Cascades (Eugene), starting a cidery and trying to find rare varieties to graft. And doing little software projects like https://pomological.art/. Would love to get in touch if you want people to propagate these varieties you're finding and would potentially be interested in sharing some scion wood!

[biotinker]

Oh cool! I've used pomological.art! Great site!

I'm in the middle of building out a similar big project that takes a different tack: looking through every period pomological text (e.g. Apple of New York, Fruits and Fruit Trees of America) and pulling the images, descriptions, etc for every heritage apple variety. Includes the watercolors too. I also pull in every scanned catalog from nurseries selling fruit trees in the PNW from the late 1800s.

The goal is a tool we can use to identify apples, and also have comprehensive info on every variety, using public domain period content.

It's not fully done yet, there are bugs/issues right now but you can take a look here: https://heritageapplecorps.org/varieties/

I think we grafted ~90 scions this year. A lot of them we haven't actually DNA tested yet so no idea what they are. So many of these trees are on their last legs, so our priority is cloning them first, and then once the clones grow, DNA test those as funds are available.

I make my own cider too (though as a hobby). If we ever find ourselves in the same city I'd love to meet up and we can swap scions/cider/etc.

[andrewhaupt]

I love that idea, actually started something similar awhile back but didn't get far and ran out of time/energy. If you need any help/contributions I'd love to pitch in. And sounds great! I'll shoot you an email with my contact info

[jamiek88]

Small world! I’m doing it on the mid/south Oregon coast! Started with a late neighbors trees and went from there!

My work and operation is small, limited to residential yards/gardens and particularly focused on dwarf and columnar varieties.

Used your site quite a bit! Thanks for making it.

[andrewhaupt]

Good stuff! I honestly didn't know anyone used it so I'm happy to hear that

[joshmarinacci]

You’re in Eugene!? Me too. I’d love to meet up some time to talk about your software over coffee.

[andrewhaupt]

Nice! Sounds good, shoot me an email: [e-mail]

[Westley_Winks]

There are tens of us!

[subpixel]

I have done similar grafting experiments, although at present I am navigating a change in motivation. I got into apples through cider, but gave up alcohol this year. (As an aside, this was a long time coming and absolutely worth some small sacrifices!)

While I’m interested in heritage apples, I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate. An apple that thrived over a century ago depended on conditions that are different today and are continuing to change.

Some cool people active in this space include:

- https://gnarlypippins.com/6th-pomological-exhibition-high-hi...

- https://www.mofga.org/trainings/annual-events/seed-swap-and-...

[biotinker]

> I think it’s probably more important to find and cultivate wild apples showing attributes that can keep them hardy in 21st century climate.

The neat thing is that these tend to be self-selecting! These older orchards drop a lot of fruit and can self-propagate new seedlings. The ones that manage to survive are the ones well adapted to current local conditions.

[1-more]

Chuck Wendig's 2023 novel Black River Orchard has an apple historian as one of the protagonists. Lots of talk of scion wood and girdling and colonial era apple varieties. You may find this interesting.

[anfractuosity]

That sounds really cool, how did they do the DNA testing out of interest?

[biotinker]

We work with Dr Cameron Peace's lab at WSU. They send us test tubes, we send the tubes back with leaves in them, they run the DNA tests and compare against an apple ID database they've built. We pay ~$50 per test, which is what most of the groups budget goes towards.

[hatmanstack]

Anyway to petition Washington State to RELEASE the Cosmic Crisps?

[Fomite]

WSU faculty here. The Cosmic Crisp is under license to Washington state growers for ten years, starting in about 2019, so it will be a few years yet.

[e-topy]

This sounds like a cool mix of genetics and gardening, I like that. Maybe I should ask some local non profits whether they need help with IT infra, because I don't exactly think "google drive and onedrive folders" is going to be an outlier.

also I came back here after three days, how did this get 713 comments all of a sudden???

[RyJones]

A friend in Palouse has found several heritage apple trees and has spent at least a decade grafting and working with them. It’s an interesting hobby to watch him experiment with.

[hopinhopout]

I have to ask, how often is tissue culture used? I'm not sure of it's exact usecases like respawning old tree samples but it does seem very related.

[biotinker]

It isn't, really, at least not by us.

Apple trees are pretty easy to propagate if they're alive. Snip off a twig, graft it onto another tree, and away it goes.

Some poor-condition trees can certainly present a challenge in terms of finding ideal graftable wood, but even a poor-quality scion is a lot easier to propagate via grafting than trying to culture in a petri dish.

[lostworld]

I've never done it but apparently if you graft branches of different varieties on one tree, you can produce a number of different varieties of apples on one tree. This would be especially good if you could get some of the tastiest heirloom varieties.

[biotinker]

That's definitely a thing you can do!

We haven't been doing that for now. The success rate doing so is somewhat less than directly grafting the whole top of the tree onto rootstock, for a few reasons. Since our primary goal is preservation and a lot of these trees have zero clones and could be wiped out by wildfire on any given year, our first priority is to get clones of every tree.

[e-topy]

Oh wow that's getting really interesting, we have a bunch of old and new young apple trees on our field, it'd be really cool making tree mutants.

Do you know any good first resources about this? I'd like to give it a try.

[r5sz]

Wow that's awesome thanks for sharing.