Hello! I am a beginner with gardening. I recently bought 3 fruit trees to plant in our garden (1 peach tree and 2 apple trees). However the two Winesap trees that I bought need a pollinator, and the sticker that came with them gave a list of the trees to buy as a pollinator. So my question is, is it okay to just have two of the same trees to pollinate each other or do I need to buy a different type of apple tree? Thanks!
Hi Esmi... and welcome to the Stew. Don't hesitate to introduce yourself on the Welcome page, too. You need a pollinator tree which is not of the same variety as the one you already have. Use the recommendation from the list included with the trees. If you don't have room for both winesaps exchange, sell, swap or give away one of them and get one that is a pollinator for a winesap. Otherwise you will just have a beautiful blossom covered tree each spring with no apples in the fall. Unless there are other pollinator trees or a crabapple in the area. I also went online to look for what trees are compatible and I saw the info that the winesap is a triploid tree and needs TWO different pollinators (which I didn't know). http://www.orangepippintrees.com/pollin ... ecker.aspx From experience I can tell you courtland, goldrush (which is a late season EASY CARE, disease resistant tree and an excellent variety), Empire, Gala, honeycrisp, jonathan, Freedom (another excellent no-spray tree, very disease resistant and my all time favorite) are all trees I grow and would recommend in a heartbeat. There are many other varieties, as you can see on the chart, but these are all ones I grow and like.
Welcome, and hope you enjoy it here. Sometimes neighbors have apple trees close enough to act as pollinators also. Might want to look around the neighborhood. I'd probably go with planting another tree though.
Hey Carolyn! Thank you so much for the reply. Your information was so helpful! I will definitely be returning the other tree, I have one acre of land but I don't know how big the tree will get. I might return both since the Winesap is triploid which I will need 3 apple trees in total. I have so much to learn! I appreciate your time Thanks Jewell. I will have to look around the neighbors house!
Esmi, you are welcome. In respect to acreage and trees...is the winesap a dwarf, semi-dwarf or a standard tree? We have about 26 apples in the front yard and it is less than an acre for where the trees are at, I would guess. All of mine are semi-dwarf trees, too. We plant our trees on 15' centers...and 20' apart for each row. So, you would have room for them, but they are a lot more work as the get bigger. Do you need or will you eat that many apples? A mature tree can produce at least 5 bu. of apples. Some will produce better than others. Some will produce earlier or even significantly later than others (northern spy?....15 years). So do a little research on what type of tree you may want in your yard. I would still recommend the Goldrush and Freedom before any other tree available as a pollinator for your tree. Order them from a reputable nursery if you can't find them locally. These two varieties will need no spraying for apple tree diseases. You may need to spray for insects. We spray ours just because we have other trees that we must spray and they happen to be in the same area. So we spray them, but they produce very nice fruit compared to some of the other (old varieties) trees. I order my trees from Stark Bros. or Miller's Nursery. OR try Adams Co. nursery. There is a small group of trees called spray-less trees. they are Libery, Freedom, Goldrush, Enterprise and Jonafree. The biggest issue or pest pressure you will find with them are going to be insects... mites, aphids and other insect pests which we spray for, are still going to attack the tree. The "spray-less" label is all about the disease resistance they have bred into them. You will need to research them to see if they are suitable for your area.
