Crab apples
 

Am I the only one out there who has had crab apple apple sauce? Who actually wants a crab apple tree with apples? The guy at local plant store just stared at me like I was crazy. Are the trees really that messy? Or hard to keep up? I have a couple of eating apple trees so will be spraying anyway.

Personally, my only issue is that they are a pain in the butt to harvest. I did it this last fall for the first time...never again :/

Keep your crab apples for at least the pectin they have. I have several and plan on using them for crab apples sauce and the pectin if it is hard to buy.

A wild crabapple tree came up at a convenient place in my orchard :) so I trim and spray it along with the rest. I don't mess with the fruit to any extent, though a basket is nice for decoration, but it is a pretty tree and a useful pollinator. There were commercial crabapple trees out there somewhere, with fruits maybe 3 inches across. My Dad's canning company used to put up spiced crab apple rings.

Many Nurseries sell Crab apple trees. Mostly for the beautiful blossoms. Because of all the blooms, they are often used in commercial orchards as pollinators. Don't forget you can graft a crab apple cutting onto any apple tree and get enough apples to satisfy your sauce needs. Or the other was around, graft a cutting from a standard variety apple onto your crab apple tree.
Some crabs hold their apples all winter, providing food for birds.

I never knew of any uses for crab apples until I went to my Uncle's place out west. We picked a bunch of them and made crab apple jam!

My dad always used them for pectin in his jam and they are gorgeous in the spring. Good to attract bees.

I went through the same thing a couple of years ago, I wanted crab apples for Jelly. Finally bought a couple from Stark Bros nursery. It seems folks just want them for flowers anymore :(

I have one crab apple tree. I pick the apples to make crab apple jelly. It is kind of a pain to pick and process the apples, but the end results are well worth it.

If you are looking to plant a crab, select a variety for the fruit and other characteristics that you are interested in... As with other apples, there is quite a bit of diversity available to pick from. In general crabapples are quite hardy and tend to be fairly disease resistant. They can be tolerant of many soil/moisture conditions, as well, and are sometimes used as rootstocks.

The size of the fruit can vary from smaller than a pea to more than an inch in diameter and comes in quite a few colors.

Okay, we have a wonderful crabapple tree. They are hardy and produce a good sized sweet apple. They are a Chestnut Crabapple. I plan to plant another one when we move.

When we go into Madison WI I have found a crabapple tree on commercial property that no one tends to or harvests from. The output every year is unbelievable! I plan to buy a red flesh crabapple tree this spring to make pickles down the road. When you look at the prices in the stores for apples it makes sense to try to grow you own. I hope that some of the cores that I've thrown out in compost get re-distributed by helpful critters. :heh:

i have a totally beautiful crab apple tree that has extra large crab apples that are red inside and out..they are gorgeous..and it has beautiful pink flowers..it was one of the POLE apples that came out about 20 years ago, they are still available..they grow upright, not spreading and are great for small yards.

You are indeed blessed! Is a pole apple the same thing as a spur apple tree?

Fedco has an amazing crab apple selection this year.

When we bought our little place, the Old Folks who had bought and built up the place originally had mostly the native wild life in mind. They had planted 7 crab apple trees, I think.
Three or four of the trees only have apples the size of a dime. They stay on the tree on into the Winter. But the birds eventually get all of them. A couple other trees get
apples abut the size of a nickel or a quarter. The deer get a lot of those, as they stand up on their hind legs to reach what they can.
And, one of the crab apple trees has apples the size of a 50cent piece. And the deer get most of those too. Unless we beat them to it. They are a nice tart little apple.
But not many on the tree. I think they are crossed with the crab apples.

And we only have one regular apple tree and the apples on it are not real large either. They are good to eat. And they make the very best fried apples.

Great to keep around even just to help pollinate your other apples.
Great early food for bees, and if you don't eat them the pigs and chickens sure will.
Hard to pick? Maybe they weren't ripe, mine aren't ready until September.

pole trees are trees that are freaks, they don't grow side branches out farther than a few feet from the trunk .when we had our fire when we moved our trees, we lost all but the crab apple..we had several columnar varities..also called pole varities.

http://www.ehow.com/list_7530591_var...ple-trees.html

mine are red inside and out and are about 2" or larger

Not all apple trees will pollinate each other. Crab apples will pollinate all apples (or nearly all) This is why the nurseries have crab apples planted amongst their other trees.

www.raintreenursery.com has a nice variety of crabapples. You might want to try the Dolgo, which is a large crab uused for cooking. I believe there is a lso a redfleshed variety called mott. I have the Evereste crab, planted in my Florida acid sugar sand. I doesn't look as pretty as their I;l;ustration, but it's alive, which is more than I can say for 9 other varieties of apples planted in the ground. Hence, all apples for the last 2 years go into large pots.

I made crabapple jelly for the first time last fall. There are LOTS of crabapple trees on the land that we bought – countless different varieties too in both greens and reds. The jelly recipe was a snap though the snipping of stems and then chopping were a pain. May try my Cuisinart for the chopping next year, although I am a little leery as the hand chopper I used this year came out discolored at the end of the day-long ordeal (including the picking with the wife and two kids). Anyone know why the crabapples would have discolored my chopper?

Jelly turned out fantastic.

Andrew

We make lots of jelly but we can't keep up, have dozens of crabapple trees and a couple of old cultivated orchards that went wild decades ago.

For those little ornamental crabs, I just throw them whole in a steamer/juicer and make jelly from the juice. No chopping involved.

We can the whole apple too.