I moved into an apartment last year with garden access and a tree in
the backyard that the landlord says is a crabapple. He wants to replace
it with a real apple tree, and I said I would be happy to use the
crabapples for jelly, etc. It produced apple-like pink blossoms in
spring and now has clusters of small bright red "apples," the size and
shape of small plums, that taste rather bitter.

What has me confused is it doesn't look like a normal apple tree--its
branches start almost at the base and are quite vertical, it has lots
of leaves evenly distributed, and its shape is tall (15-20 feet) and
columnar. I'm used to apple trees having a distinct trunk and being
short and gnarled and horizontal spreading.

Is this still something I can cook with, or is it just ornamental (or
even unsafe?)

Thanks,

Sarah

"sarah" wrote in news:1124656921.158549.249170
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

I moved into an apartment last year with garden access and a tree in
the backyard that the landlord says is a crabapple. He wants to replace
it with a real apple tree, and I said I would be happy to use the
crabapples for jelly, etc. It produced apple-like pink blossoms in
spring and now has clusters of small bright red "apples," the size and
shape of small plums, that taste rather bitter.


What do the leaves look like? Do they have edges that look like saw
teeth? If it is a crabapple he could just cut a small piece from the type
of apple tree that he wants and graft it on to the existing tree. He
could even graft several different types of apples onto the existing
tree. The only crabapple tree that I had was from suckers of another type
of apple tree that did not survive. I grafted a Fuji apple cutting onto
it and it is now a Fuji apple tree.

What has me confused is it doesn't look like a normal apple tree--its
branches start almost at the base and are quite vertical, it has lots
of leaves evenly distributed, and its shape is tall (15-20 feet) and
columnar. I'm used to apple trees having a distinct trunk and being
short and gnarled and horizontal spreading.


I have several different types of apple trees and a couple of them have
multiple branches that start at the base of the tree.

Is this still something I can cook with, or is it just ornamental (or
even unsafe?)

Thanks,

Sarah



Click the following link to see 100's of pictures of crabapple trees.

http://images.google.com/images?q=cr...=Search+Images