Wednesday, March 02, 2005

I Dug Seven Holes Today...And Buried All The Mail


NOB HILL--My trees and grapes arrived by mail today from Stark Bros. They sell bareroot products. I bought several things from them about 20 years ago and had real good luck with their trees. So I went online and ordered a catalog a month ago and eventually decided on what I wanted to buy. The biggest reason I buy from a mail-order house is the tremendous variety of trees that they do carry...for instance they offer 24 different peach trees. And they tell you the salient features of each of them: when their fruit is ready, whether they bloom early or late, how large the fruit is, whether it is good for canning, freezing, cooking, or eating fresh.
Anyway, my 4 dwarf trees came today along with 3 grapevines (all different, all seedless) and 10 strawberry plants. I already planted everything. Here are the trees I planted:
  1. Earliblue Prune-Plum (I used to have one of these. The absolute best tasting, easy to grow plum ever. Withstands late frosts.)
  2. Intrepid Peach (Late bloomer, extremely hardy)
  3. Starkrimson Sweet Cherry ("Produces its heart out in a small space." Fruit over an inch in diameter)
  4. Harglow Apricot ("This tree is compact, late blooming,productive, disease resistant, and cold-hardy.")
All the above varieties are self-pollinating. I also wanted to get an Aprium: 75% apricot, 25% plum...maybe later.

Here is a little bit about the nursery from their website.

The Beginning:

In 1816, James Hart Stark and a small band of pioneers moved west from Kentucky and settled on the west bank of the Mississippi in a place that would later become Louisiana, Missouri.

James Hart Stark brought with him a bundle of apple scions. From this bundle grew a thriving nursery business which became the world famous Stark Bro’s Nurseries and Orchards Co.

By carefully selecting and propagating only the best varieties, James Stark started a tradition. Dedicated to earning a reputation for quality, Stark Bro’s gained world leadership as a developer and promoter of outstanding fruit varieties. The most famous of these was the Stark Red Delicious Apple in 1893. In 1914, the Stark Golden Delicious Apple was discovered and developed.

This work led to an association with famed plant wizard Luther Burbank. He selected Stark Bro’s to carry on his work and willed over 750 varieties to the company.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting...

I found this post after recently purchasing the harglow apricot and the earliblu plum from stark's. I already have other plum and apricot varieties in my yard and wanted to "hedge" my investment by adding some late bloomers.

Glad to hear the flavor for the earliblu is excellent. I couldn't find anything on the flavor prior to purchasing.

I'll be posting pictures to my website as soon as I get them in the ground: my high-density backyard orchard.