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Early March New Gardeners Thread
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this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Nature and Gardening
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Starting a new garden after moving from an apartment to a house last fall. Planning to do two 8'x4' raised beds with some scrap wood and put a squash tunnel between them. I've started 32 onion seedlings indoors and will be starting the brassicas this weekend!
Also thinking about getting apple trees - any suggestions for good varieties to grow in zone 6b (New England)? It's tempting to get a honey crisp but I hear they're pretty hard to grow.
Hey congrats! Here's hoping your thriftiness with the scrap wood has enabled you to do even more with the space.
I haven't had issues with getting our honey crisp to grow, but for a few years now it's been the cultivar to which the Japanese beetles seem most attracted where we are in Maine. Our neighbor has I think 8 varieties and his experience has been very similar. It's worth noting that last year our Wolf River apple had maybe a dozen leaves attacked by the beetles. The folks at FedCo have a really good selection for New England. The website doesn't go into quite as much detail as their apple catalogue does but it's still got plenty of commentary about how they perform.
Someone else recommended fedco to me and I'll definitely be ordering from them, I love everything they've got going on.
I've read elsewhere too that honey crisps seem more prone to diseases and pests. What other varieties do you have?
I, too, am a huge fan of theirs (organizationally, selection-wise, and acknowledgements wise). We currently just have the Wolf River and the Honeycrisp, but our next door neighbor also has a granny smith, Ashmead's Kernel, Pippin, Cox, and something else. I spent last season collecting the fallen crabs from our three old crabs and will hopefully have some rootstocks to practice my grafting on and build our collection this year and next. The past few years most of my garden fund has been spent on more readily multiplied plants (full disclosure: I sell plants) instead of cultivar trees.