Fact One: The first edition of The Nomenclature of the Apple, published by USDA pomologist W.H. Ragan in 1905, lists 6,554 uniquely named apple varieties then grown in the United States. One hundred years later Wisconsin orchard-keeper Dan Bussey, whose exhaustive history of American apples is due out in 2010, estimates the true number at … Continued
Would Red Delicious have taken over the world if it was still called the Hawkeye? A nice little piece from Edible Grande Traverse (who knew?) on the evolution of the apple that now dominates the American apple market.
This one, courtesy of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State, shows the number of crops and livestock produced for sale on one percent of Iowa farms between the years 1920 (far left column) and 2002 (far right). Kurt Meine passed it around the other night as part of his apple talk. For … Continued
I left the UW-Madison arboretum last night with a head so full of apple facts and figures that it’ll take a few days here to sort it all out. I now know how to do a graft and why you might want to seal it with paraffin; the difference between native crab apples and imports; … Continued