Sugar Tyme Trees Fruiting - October 2022

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A year and a month ago, I planted a pair of Crabapple trees along the side of our house on the southside.  After some hemming-and-hawing about what kind of trees I should plant in this spot (knowing I wanted to espalier them), I decided to plant Sugar Tyme Crabapple trees.  Why?  Because they're on the list of species that are both suitable for our Zone AND have 'excellent' disease resistance.  In the 13 months since planting, I've shown these trees in various posts - both about the trees as well as posts showing off the Disneyland Roses.  The most recent post was just last month when I was showing off the late-season blooms on the floribunda roses.   

My plan for these is to create a Palmette Verrier shape, which calls for the bottom branches to be the longest, followed up each level with a shorter horizontal branch terminating in a vertical segment.  So far, I've trained out four levels on one of the trees and three levels on the second tree.  The wall these are up against is very tall, so I'm thinking (currently) that I'll train the vertical shoots up quite a bit to capture/occupy some of that space.

Below are a few photos showing the tiers of the trees and how far they extend.

But, in addition to seeing the limbs stretching out horizontally, I'm seeing something else interesting going on with these crabapples.  What, exactly?  Have a look below:

What are those???

Crab Apples.  Sure enough, in year one (well...this is their first full year - but they were *in* last growing season, so technically this is year two), we're seeing a bounty of tiny, red fruits.  See below for a look at the cluster of crabapples:


This is really nice to see and is one of the reasons why this sport had appeal to me.  The Sugar Tyme tree is known for the fruit - this listing from Proven Winners talks about the fruit: 'bunches of resulting fruit that persist and dazzle in wintertime'.   I'm going to try to capture some photos of these trees this Winter after the foliage drops to see how long the apples persist.  

Location: Downers Grove, IL, USA

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