On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:51:06 -0700, "Ted Mittelstaedt"
wrote:

big snip
Yellow Transparent is a cooking apple.

So from what I can tell you are trying to find out what was
used to cross pollinate the old Yellow Transparents?

I live pretty close "The Ridge", which is world renown for
apples and other fruit. Used to have a pair of trees just to
the north of me, one was red and the other was purported to
be a transparent. As far as I know they are still there with
a ton of brush grown up around them. Only the deer know for
sure

An old abandon orchard to the west of me had transparents
too. Pretty sure the owner is still with us and I could
probably ask him. Better yet try asking this guy first:

http://www.hrt.msu.edu/staff/st_schwail.htm

If he doesn't know, he will know who to ask. We still have
quite a few old time orchard growers around here. If that is
the Phil I think it is he grew up on a farm/orchard in this
area.

Let us know if you find out anything useful.

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email

On Aug 27, 3:40�pm, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:51:06 -0700, "Ted Mittelstaedt"

wrote:

big snip

Yellow Transparent is a cooking apple.

So from what I can tell you are trying to find out what was
used to cross pollinate the old Yellow Transparents?

I live pretty close "The Ridge", which is world renown for
apples and other fruit. Used to have a pair of trees just to
the north of me, one was red and the other was purported to
be a transparent. As far as I know they are still there with
a ton of brush grown up around them. Only the deer know for
sure

An old abandon orchard to the west of me had transparents
too. Pretty sure the owner is still with us and I could
probably ask him. Better yet try asking this guy first:

http://www.hrt.msu.edu/staff/st_schwail.htm

If he doesn't know, he will know who to ask. We still have
quite a few old time orchard growers around here. If that is
the Phil I think it is he grew up on a farm/orchard in this
area.

Let us know if you find out anything useful.


All one needs is to search the net, plenty of info.

Seems the Yellow Transparant need a pollenator, can even pollenate
itself but not from the same tree, needs a partner.

http://www.grandpasorchard.com/index...il&plant_id=78

http://www.oldvaapples.com/descriptions.htm

Seems if the OP spent half as much time researching as posting much
gaseous verbiage he'd have found the answer before posting here.

On Aug 27, 3:40�pm, Leon Fisk wrote:
On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:51:06 -0700, "Ted Mittelstaedt"

wrote:

big snip

Yellow Transparent is a cooking apple.

So from what I can tell you are trying to find out what was
used to cross pollinate the old Yellow Transparents?

I live pretty close "The Ridge", which is world renown for
apples and other fruit. Used to have a pair of trees just to
the north of me, one was red and the other was purported to
be a transparent. As far as I know they are still there with
a ton of brush grown up around them. Only the deer know for
sure

An old abandon orchard to the west of me had transparents
too. Pretty sure the owner is still with us and I could
probably ask him. Better yet try asking this guy first:

http://www.hrt.msu.edu/staff/st_schwail.htm

If he doesn't know, he will know who to ask. We still have
quite a few old time orchard growers around here. If that is
the Phil I think it is he grew up on a farm/orchard in this
area.

Let us know if you find out anything useful.

Useful:
http://www.starkbros.com/access?acti...4&collection=0

"Ted Mittelstaedt" wrote in
:


"Sheldon" wrote in message

groups.com... On Aug 24, 4:58?pm, "Ted Mittelstaedt"
wrote:
As I mentioned, I have an Indian Summer crabapple tree
that
is it's pollenator, and that tree produced a large number
of crabapples. ?As you said, all apple trees need a
pollenator - where did that crabapple tree get it's pollen
from if not from this tree? ?And if it got it from some
3rd tree in the area, then why didn't this tree get it
from that tree also?

Not all crabapple pollenates dessert apple well.

Yellow Transparent is a cooking apple.

ignore Shelly. he makes things up as he goes.

Your crab apple
produces fruit because some crabapple are self pollenating.
Your tree produced some apples because most likely there
is another apple tree not too distant and one that's in
blossom during the same period as yours, but probably too
distant to be an efficient pollenator, and probably the
wrong type of tree for your fruit to set well, so it will
drop. Check with a nurseryman to find out which type of
apple tree is recommended as a pollenator for yours, not
all are compatible so don't run out and buy just any old
apple tree.

There are no real nurserymen left in my city - none that is
who are available to any customer, that is. I already
tried that route a couple years ago. As I mentioned, none
had heard of the particular cultivar. Everyone I talked to
only wanted to sell me a Gala apple tree or some such
variety that I can buy from the supermarket - why even
bother planting one of those when every corner market that
sells apples already has tons of those apples.

have you tried contacting Trees of Antiquity?
http://www.treesofantiquity.com/inde...ain_page=index
they not only carry Yellow Transparent (one of my favorite
pie & sauce apples) but many other heirloom fruit trees.
i'm sure they can answer your questions far better than an
idiot on the opposite side of the continent from you.

My read of the local retail nurseries is that they follow
fads and fashions, and know nothing about plants anymore.
Half the retail nurseries are owned by chains in the first
place. And all of them carry the same varieties. Right
now the native plants are a big fad so they carry those.
But I could go from nursery to nursery writing down
varieties and I would end up with a list of perhaps a grand
total of 15 different apple varieties. And every one of
those 15 would be of an apple available in the supermarket.
Most people buy fruit trees that produce fruits they are
already used to buying and eating from the supermarket. So
that avenue is as they say a dry hole.

you can find 15 varieties of apple in local nurseries? i
think i can find maybe 5 or 6, one of which is always the
misnomered 'Delicious' yuck! i can only find decorative
crabapples, those with pretty flowers but tiny useless fruit.
I contacted several dozen "grower" nurseries nationally,
looking for this cultivar.
None carried it. One nursery back east claimed to carry it
in a non-grafted native root tree. Good luck with that. A
few wholesale nurseries in Canada also claimed to carry it.
Do you want a description of all the crap you have to go
through to take a tree across the border from Canada to the
US and how expensive it is? And this isn't even beginning
to touch the nonsense with minimum orders and all of that
which the wholesale nurseries have.

Trees of Antiquity has it on dwarfing rootstock,
conventionally grown, available for 2009 planting season.
http://www.treesofantiquity.com/index.php?
main_page=product_info&products_id=153
they know their trees. i really think they can tell you a
cross pollination cultivar. and they're on the west coast.

This isn't a cultivar that is an espically significant
historical cultivar, so
the various societies that care about saving "heirloom"
cultivars are no help either. Yellow Transparent is
equivalent to a 1984 Chevy Celebrity. During their day
millions were made. But they were always a workhorse and
at this time they have not been gone for long enough for
anyone to notice. No doubt in 50 years there will be
"heirloom apple tree preservers" out there tearing their
hair out wondering why nobody bothered saving a specimen of
yellow transparent, just as there will be old car buffs
tearing their hair out wondering why nobody bothered saving
1984 Chevy Celebrities. But right now there are not -
because most are like you who seem to think that it's an
ordinary enough tree that info should be readily available.

it's from the 1870s. it *is* considered an heirloom variety.
it is currently out of favor because it doesn't ship well &
has a *very* short "shelf life". it's NOT a 'keeping' apple.

30 years ago this cultivar had a limited success as a
commercial apple. What I need to find is some old retired
geezer farmer who at that time had an orchard with some of
these in it, and who remembers all about their habits and
how to make them happy and how to get them to yield well.

i would imagine it had *very* limited success as a commercial
variety, since it doesn't hold or ship worth crap. i'm trying
to remember if there was a big craze for dried apples 30 years
ago that might account for some interest in it commercially.
seriously, the fruit rots on the tree even, if you don't pick
it as soon as it's ripe.

The entire thing is an experiment. It may not work. But
the alternative is sitting on my butt doing nothing, being
****ed at the dumb supermarkets who only want to carry
something like 5 apple varieties, all of which have only
been bred to have 10 month shelf lives and skins made out
of what appears to be red stainless steel - so they can be
shipped on the cheapest freight carrier from Mexico and
still be salable.

yup. shipping apples. pretty & pretty inedible.

lee
--
Last night while sitting in my chair
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolved to NSA.

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
Hi All,

I am in USDA zone 8 (Oregon) and I have a question about an apple tree in
my yard,
the cultivar is Transparent Yellow (or Yellow Transparent) on a semi-dwarf
rootstock.
I got this tree from a guy in the area who grafts apple trees as a hobby and
was thinning
out his garden in Oct 2007. The tree is about 6 years old I think he said.
(I had
actually been looking for this specific cultivar for several years)

Anyway, I planted it according to the generally accepted planting
directions,
dug a big hole, watered it, mulched it, made sure the tree wasn't planted
too
deep and all of that. This was around Oct 2007. The tree needs a bit of
pruning, I decided to hold off on it for a year to make sure it would
survive
transplant shock. The one bit of pruning I did do around May of this year
was the tree had 3 verticals competing to be the leader, I topped 2 of them
and the remaining one I nipped 2 of the top shoots to leave a single one as
the leader. This single shoot grew about a foot this summer. So far so
good.

Now, here is the part I'm concerned about. This spring (April) the tree
flowered, here are the pics of it:

http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../apr-tree1.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../apr-tree2.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../apr-tree3.jpg

Then in May, most of the flowers dropped off leaving the green
fruit spurs (I also own an Indian Summer crabapple tree
planted in the front of the house that flowered at the same time as
this one did, I assume they pollenated. The Indian Summer produced
-lots- of crabapples.)

Then in late May just about all of the fruit spurs withered, wilted,
drooped over,
got brown and dropped off. The leaves were not affected, just the
fruit spurs. The tree produced a total of 6 apples. The
apples that WERE produced were perfect. (tasted exactly like transparent
yellow, at least like how I remember transparent yellow tasting from 25
years
ago) Here are the pics from that:

http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../jun-tree1.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../jun-tree2.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../jun-tree3.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../jun-tree4.jpg

The apples started dropping in early August, which is normal
for this cultivar. However, now the tree seems to be beginning to
show fall colors, here's current pics:

http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree1.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree2.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree3.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree4.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree5.jpg
http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.co.../aug-tree6.jpg

Now, I'm not particularly upset about the yield this year - if the
tree had produced a big crop of apples I would have pinched most
of them off very early since I wanted the tree to put it's energy into
establishing it's root system, not producing apples.

But what concerns me is that it -appeared- that most of the blossoms
pollenated and were well on their way to producing apples - then just
abruptly died off.

I have looked up the diseases of apple trees to see if there is a match
to any symptoms. Blossom Wilt is one that might be a cause - but
it is supposed to shrivel fruits and damage leaves, and that did not happen.
There are no other symptoms.

Unfortunately as Transparent Yellow is (apparently, nowadays) not
commercially viable, nobody sells these apples anymore, and there is
little information out there other than old charts of when it is supposed to
ripen. None of the nursuries in the area (including one of the largest
which claims itself as apple experts) have ever heard of this cultivar,
and most of them in any case are more interested in selling you a
"modern" cultivar with fruit that tastes like warm water, and has been
(apparently) genetically engineered to be
resistant to everything short of a nuclear explosion, I assume because
once they have your money and their door hits your ass on the way out,
they don't want to see you again - at least, not complaining about your
tree you bought from them.

I am hoping that someone with some of these who has some experience
might be able to tell me if what I'm seeing is perfectly normal, or
something to be alarmed about. Also I am wanting to know what I
should be spraying, and when.

Thanks!


From the pictures you provided, I was struck by the small amount of leaf
foliage. This may not be a disease. Are you fertilizing and mulching
this tree?

The other concern I have is your climate zone. The Yellow Transparent
is rated cold tolerant in your zone, but the other consideration is the
number of chill hours this tree is receiving. Most apple trees need a
minimum number of hours of temperatures between 32 and 45 degrees to
satisfy their dormant rest period. There are certain low chill
varieties, but I'm not sure about your variety. Is the person in your
area who gave you the tree growing the same variety, and with what success?

As long as the blossoms on your crabapple are opening about the same
time as your apple blossoms, there should be no pollination problems.

Your leaf damage looked minimal and the fruit did not look attacked.
You may not have to do much heavy spraying. A general orchard spray
applied as needed, should do the job.

Sherwin