Apple trees for cider

In November of last year my wife and I bought a house. Prior to that we owned a Town-home with a zero lot line, so I never really got to start my garden or the various hippy ideas that floated in my head. The new home is on .38 acre, which isn't huge by any stretch, but will let me have a garden and plant some fruit trees. I've been shopping for heirloom varieties for cider making and have a few that seem interesting.

I found a site called Trees of Antiquity that specializes in heirloom varieties that will ship trees ready to plant.

First is the Manchurian Crab. I'm particularly interested in a crab variety that works well in my cooler summers and has a somewhat early harvest, that will also act as a pollinator for an eating or dessert apple tree that I would like to plant.

The second apple tree that is interesting is a Cox's Orange Pippin. It's supposed to be quite tasty and it appears to be compatible with the crab apple for bloom time and fertility, so they should do a good job of helping to keep each other pollinated. I also read that the Cox tree is good for espalier which could be useful to give me a little bit of a privacy screen between my home and the neighbors.  Previous owners of this house cut down some privacy bushes that were on the fence line so a tree that could do double duty of fruit and privacy seems like a win.

Two years later

I wasn't sure if I'd ever come back to this blog, I'm still frustrated at Google for tearing off the little badge of anonymity that made it so freeing to be on the blogger platform. I'm reasonably sure that that choice propelled the growth of several micro-blogging sites like tumblr and squarespace. Places where you could easily post without having to reveal your identity. It's not that this was ever a terribly personal site, but it was a nice place to unpack things, to consider them and keep track of them. I'm considering coming back here for a personal and public face that isn't Facebook. We'll see how that goes.