Saturday, November 5, 2011

Hawkeye Delicious Trees

I've had so many emails on this apple I have to make a special post just for it. This is the original "red delicious" - which started as a seedling on the farm of Jesse Hiatt in Peru, Iowa around 1870. Jesse tried to kill the tree for several years but it persisted and he finally said "If thee must live, thee may". Years later he entered the tree into a contest held by Stark Brother Nursery to replace the Ben Davis apple. Jesse entered it as "Hawkeye Delicious" as Iowa is the Hawkeye State. He won the contest and the apple was rebranded to Red Delicious. The apple you see in the stores today is an example of the worst in modern produce. The current Red Delicious strains have been developed for color and the ability not to show their bruises. At Wagon Wheel Orchard we will not grow the modern Reds - but we do love the original. We will be offering custom grafted Hawkeye trees for our 2012 spring season. Scion wood is limited so please get your order in early! ($10 a tree 10 tree minimum, all taxes and shipping included) We would love to see the original Hawkeye Delicious make a comeback! Please check previous posts for additional varieties offered - I'll be doing a comprehensive list soon. Thanks, Rick

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Its getting cold again!

Thanks to everyone who made it out for our 2011 season. Despite a bad drought this year we still had a decent crop of un-sprayed fruit.

We are now taking orders for custom bench grafted trees. We can graft almost any variety for you at $10/tree with a 10 tree minimum (includes shipping and taxes). Currently we are putting together a master list of the more than 1,000 varieties we have in stock (we lost a few due to the heat this summer). Please email us at wagonwheelmail@aol.com with your requests. We prefer to graft on M111 rootstock as this gives you a hardy free standing semi-dwarf tree with little care but we can do other rootstocks for larger orders. Thanks, Rick