Do They Farm Trees?

Do they farm trees?

Someone who lives on the other side of the planet checked out my area on Google Earth after talking to me on the web and they asked me about the fields full of regular round objects. "Do they farm trees down your way?"

Well, yes they do. I live on the border of Kent and E.Sussex and Kent is the best place in the world for growing apples, some parts of Tasmania are almost as good.
There are hundreds of varieties, with some wonderful names, Egremont Russet, Laxton's Superb, Beauty of Bath. Most of them are not grown commercially of course.

There are few varieties that meet all the commercial requirements, most have desirable qualities combined with a commercial failing.

For example an apple with a great texture and taste may have an unattractive skin. Or it may be that it is an apple that bruises easily, the fruit are not uniform in size, the tree bears well only every second or third year or it is susceptible to disease.

From the Nurseryman growing young trees to the customer taking home fruit from the supermarket, there are a chain of people passing judgment on which trees to grow.
Those rows of trees in the Google view will be almost identical, grown from the same genetic stock. The nurseryman grows a lot of small apple trees from a favoured root stock, then cuts them down to below the lowest bud. A slit is cut vertically in the bark with two horizontal slits either end, like Roman number one.

Next a bud is cut from the favoured tree with a nice big "heel" of bark and a sliver of wood, the "I" is opened up like double doors and the bud slid in.

I learned to do this on the farm with my Father and Uncle Ted when I was a boy and the next step in those days was to close the "doors" and bind them shut with twine. Then we would seal the whole thing with hot sealing wax. I believe the modern method uses something like cling-film to bind the bud in.
The advantage to budding or grafting, rather than taking cuttings, is that plants with desirable root systems and plants with desirable apples are not usually the same.