Yesterday the temperature made it up to 64 degrees – warm, sunny, no wind – perfect spring day – warmest  day since October 29 last fall.  Snow is finally gone in the orchard.  We had 130 inches for the winter.

We took advantage of the beautiful day to graft 60 of our Fuji trees (which have not done well) over to Zestar which has been one of our most popular early apples.  The choice was to wait until we could get more new Zestar trees in spring 2018 or cut the center out of the Fujis and insert small scion wood from our Zestars.

In the attached pictures you can see the small twigs capped with green wax to keep them from drying out.  So in three years we will  start getting more Zestars.  It was a long day, but we are pleased with the results.