Sooke, on Vancouver Island, is home to dozens of heritage apple trees, some planted by Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, a Scotsman who landed in Sooke in 1849. (Grant is also credited with introducing the now infamous Scotch broom to North America.)
Sooke, on Vancouver Island, is home to dozens of heritage apple trees, some planted by Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, a Scotsman who landed in Sooke in 1849. (Grant is also credited with introducing the now infamous Scotch broom to North America.)
Facts gathered by the University of Illinois:1
Apples harvested from an average tree can fill twenty boxes that weigh forty-two pounds each.
The largest apple picked weighed three pounds.
America’s longest-lived apple tree was reportedly planted in 1647 by Peter Stuyvesant in his Manhattan orchard and was still bearing fruit when a derailed train struck it in 1866.
One of George Washington’s hobbies was pruning his apple trees.
The irony became obvious as I met up again with apple expert Clay Whitney, this time in the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens in Sooke, on Vancouver Island.
It was a beautiful, sunny fall day and the community garden, with its nicely organized plots of soil, brimmed with leafy greenery. Clay showed me a string of young fruit trees and another line of apple trees, recently grafted from some of Sooke’s heritage trees. On a ridge above the community garden sat a ring of new houses, recently built as part of a huge development called Sunriver Estates. Across the street, a pretty eleven-acre parcel was all that remained of a heritage apple orchard planted in the mid-1800s.
From where we stood in the garden, we could see in front of us the newly planted row of narrow, stick-like young apple trees—still years away from producing fruit—while across the road towered two massive, hundred-year-old King trees at the edge of the old orchard. Clay said the back end of the property contained several Baldwins and a Lemon Pippin or two, and he estimated these trees produced about six hundred pounds of apples per year, many of which fed the bears that had visited the land for decades. Clay feared that whoever bought this property would take down the heritage trees to make way for development, and also to keep out the bears.
How ironic that fruit trees had been planted in a garden—created in part to provide food for the community—while across the street, old trees producing barrels of fruit could face a chainsaw.
Apple expert and enthusiast Clay Whitney has dedicated much of his life to the preservation of heritage apples trees, like this one at a historic site in Sooke.
Preserving the old apples trees in Sooke has become a passion for Clay, a landscaper, who commutes among Sooke, Victoria, Prince George (where his wife, Sierra, attends medical school), and various jobs all over southern Vancouver Island. In addition to busily pruning fruit trees, grapes, and berries, Clay lectures to garden clubs, travels the apple festival circuit, and has had inquiries from a group of people on the prairies, wanting help with planning and planting orchards there. Much of his apple work—like that in Sooke—is volunteer.
Clay believes the remaining Lemon Pippins planted in Sooke in the mid-1800s are some of the oldest apple trees in the province. His “call to arms” occurred in January 2010, as he headed to a farm on part of the original homestead of Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant, who landed in Sooke from Scotland in 1849 and carved an estate called Mullachard out of the wilderness. Aiming to get scionwood from the three huge, 160-year-old apple trees left in the orchard, Clay quickly discovered they’d been taken down by a new owner to make way for a subdivision.
“I came around the corner and saw a big open space—I started feeling sick—it looked like the moon,” he recalled, adding that the trees were healthy and producing about 150 pounds of apples a year. “People can’t always put that into context, but compare it to a 5-pound bag at the grocery store and that’s a lot of apples.”
Clay asked a nearby backhoe driver if the uprooted trees were still on the property because “even ripped out, the scionwood would have still been usable.” However, they were gone.
“Those trees were still alive and producing food, and nobody took the time to graft up more trees. If I’d known they were coming down, I would have done it sooner and got the scionwood.”
The loss of those trees prompted Clay to write to his local mayor, MLA, and MP, drawing their attention to the disappearance of trees and the corresponding link to Sooke’s history and culture. He also stressed his belief in the importance of maintaining and producing locally grown food.
“I pointed out how important it is to save what we have. It’s difficult to import anything, so what we’ve got is what we’ve got. We have to keep it for its historical and genetic importance.”
Canadian federal government regulations limit the importing of apple trees and scions so it is difficult to reintroduce some varieties once they are lost.
“If the material is coming from a source that has been federally inspected and has the proper paperwork, then it is allowed into Canada,” Clay said. “But most of the small growers who grow rare and obscure varieties don’t have these credentials, and it is too much work for them to do it for the number of scions or trees they sell to Canadians.”
These red-fleshed Pink Delight apples show a natural, waxy shine.
PHOTO: HARRY BURTON
Stung by the loss of those trees, Clay forged an idea to graft as many of Sooke’s heritage trees as possible and plant them in the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens. And in response to his correspondence, the District of Sooke developed a plan to create a database that would flag the locations of heritage trees should a property sell or an owner apply to undertake a major home renovation. Unlike some municipalities, Clay said, Sooke does not have a heritage tree bylaw and, although he is pleased with the steps being taken, he remains concerned that some trees could fall through the bureaucratic cracks.
Before our stop at the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens, we visited Woodside Farm and its 150-year-old fruit trees, including a towering Lemon Pippin, a Gravenstein, and a Esopus Spitzenburg (famous as American president Thomas Jefferson’s favourite apple). Woodside Farm contains one of the two remaining houses built in 1884 by John and Ann Muir, who obtained Captain Grant’s holdings when he returned to Britain in 1853. (Although Grant is credited with planting some of the oldest apple trees in Sooke, he is even more renowned for introducing Scotch broom, the invasive plant that now grows from Alaska to California, to the area. He said the bright yellow flowers reminded him of home.)
The apple trees at Woodside Farm are set against a peaceful backdrop of grassland and farm animals, including a gaggle of squawking fowl, and, of course, the charming old farmhouse itself. Clay showed me an old Lemon Pippin that had been split in half—likely due to a weak crotch in the tree—and fallen, but had completely re-rooted itself at both ends, each now with a mass of trunks and branches growing above it, all laden with fruit.
“Just because it’s fallen over doesn’t mean it can’t still produce apples,” Clay pointed out, adding that when he holds pruning workshops at the farm, he always directs people’s attention to this tree.
Down the road, we stopped at a property where a huge apple tree soared up and beyond the hydro pole. Clay wanted to measure its circumference because he believed it to be one of the biggest apple trees he’s ever seen. He estimated it’s 140 years old, 40 feet tall, and, as it turns out, 7 feet in diameter. Although the owner called it a Yellow Pippin, he was certain it’s a Lemon Pippin.
Our final stop was the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens—a project of which Sooke has every right to be proud. Located just a few kilometres off the main road, the 2.5-acre garden was created in 2010 through the Sooke Food Community Health Initiative Society with the goal of building awareness about local agriculture and food sustainability. Helpfully surrounded by deer fencing and rabbit wire, the garden’s sixty plots are available to rent for fifty dollars per season. In addition to the individual plots, there are community plots and spaces to hold workshops on pruning styles and techniques.
Following its creation, the garden underwent a second phase of development with the planting of the orchard the following spring. Clay, with two other local volunteers—horticulturalist Glen Thelin and Bonnie Jones—surveyed, sketched, and landscaped the northern part of the gardens and then planted fifty-eight fruit trees, including apple, pear, plum, and cherry. Also in the works was Clay’s “baby,” the creation of the Heritage Fruit Tree and Demonstration Orchard with grafts from local heritage trees. When I visited in the fall of 2011, Clay had already donated twenty grafts of the trees planted by pioneers, as well as a few of his own favourites. He had also donated fourteen trees to the Ladybug Garden, run by the region’s T’Sou-ke Nation, who are considered environmental leaders among Canada’s aboriginal peoples. Among their projects is a nationally acclaimed solar power program through which they generate energy and sell it back to the grid. The band is also working toward food sustainability by producing much of its own food in its garden and greenhouses.
“I donated a bunch of trees to them because I admire them so much,” Clay said. “These trees are just varieties I enjoy, but as we were moving so far [to Prince George], I couldn’t take them with me. I really felt that the T’Sou-ke would appreciate them and take care of them—and they have. I plan on giving more to the T’Sou-ke once I graft some more of the local trees.”
Clay Whitney believes this apple tree, which he calls Emily’s Pippin, was planted as a seedling by the famous painter Emily Carr. It’s located in Victoria, BC, at Carr’s former residence, The House of All Sorts.
PHOTO: CLAY WHITNEY
Clay Whitney measures what turns out to be one of the largest apple trees he’s ever seen. Located on a property in Sooke, it’s 7 feet in diameter, 40 feet tall, and over 140 years old.
Clay passionately believes we need to “take back the land for our food.” He recently told a woman buying trees from him that, ten years from now, this could be the most important money she’s spent. “We need to learn to take care of our lands and grow our own food—but we have forgotten how. We’ve lost the basics.”
Sooke, it seems, is one of the communities in Canada working to rectify this. In fact, judges in a national town-enhancement program called Communities in Bloom said in their 2011 report that Sooke could easily become the eco-capital of Canada. The report also praised the T’Sou-ke Nation and the allotment gardens.
“The community garden is an amazing place . . . In keeping with the keen interest of citizens in producing local food, the establishment of a heritage fruit tree program is exciting. The orchard in the community garden will become a place of interest to those wanting to learn about heritage fruit trees.” 2
Other groups, societies, and communities across Canada are working to preserve and educate people about heritage apples and other fruits. Much of Clay’s volunteer work—like the hours he spends at various festivals helping to identify apples—is through the British Columbia Fruit Testers Association, “an independent and all-volunteer group of fruit-growing enthusiasts.” The group includes hobby growers, commercial orchardists, professionals, and others who have a “common interest in the science and practice of fruit cultivation.” Among the association’s goals is to “identify and preserve heritage fruit varieties that are part of our agricultural heritage. By encouraging their propagation, we preserve their genetic diversity for future generations.” 3
The group holds regular grafting and pruning workshops, and publishes a newsletter, The Cider Press, four times a year.
Seeds of Diversity is another Canadian organization working to preserve heritage plants. A project launched by the Canadian Organic Growers in 1984, Seeds of Diversity is now an independent charitable organization, “dedicated to the conservation, documentation and use of public-domain, non-hybrid plants of Canadian significance.” It has fourteen hundred members from across the country and “grows, propagates and distributes over twenty-nine hundred varieties of vegetables, fruit, grains, flowers, and herbs.”
“We are a living gene bank,” the website notes. On its online heritage plants database, it includes descriptions, stories, history, and cultivation details, plus gardeners’ comments on nineteen thousand cultivars of Canadian garden vegetables, fruit, grains, and ornamentals, including ninety-four apple varieties.4
Another hotbed of heritage apples is located in Creemore, Ontario, in the Georgian Bay area. Here, the Creemore Heritage Apple Society is the umbrella for more than 10 heritage apple orchards, representing 250 varieties of apples. The society has two annual events: a meeting in the spring and (apparently even more popular) a highly competitive apple pie contest held every Thanksgiving. The website asks, “Why heritage apples?” and answers, “Because extinction is forever and the move to mono-culture farming endangers the survival of many of the old apple varieties . . . Perhaps the best reason for the society is that many of the old heritage apples simply surprise you [with their] great taste.” 5
One Creemore grower speaks of the link heritage apples have to past generations, “Ask your parents or grandparents . . . what their favorite apple was, and my goal was to have their apple in my orchard.” 6
It is this link that resonates with so many people, including Clay, who has for the last several years been attempting to graft an apple tree from The House of All Sorts, where the painter Emily Carr lived in Victoria. Carr built the “all sorts” boarding house in 1913 adjacent to Emily Carr House, where she spent most of her childhood. Clay believes Emily Carr planted this tree.
“I had posted an ad on Used Victoria for anyone who had too much fruit, saying that I’d harvest it in return for some apples—this was before LifeCycles really got going,” Clay recalled. “Over the phone, the owner of the house mentioned that the tree was a seedling planted by Emily Carr. When I got there I found this thirty-foot tree with a circumference of around five feet. This would definitely be the size if it was planted in Emily Carr’s time.” The tree looks like an Alexander but Clay said the apple is a slightly different in taste and “has small variable attributes like stem, calyx, and cavity. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I remember reading that Emily’s favourite apple was an Alexander.” If Emily Carr did plant it as a seedling, “it’s the only tree in the world of that variety.” He named it Emily’s Pippin and has been “desperately” and unsuccessfully trying to get the tree to propagate for several years.
Seedlings growing at the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens in Sooke, BC, where a community garden has been created amid a new subdivision.
Genetic biodiversity is another of the reasons Clay believes we need to save heritage apple trees. These trees are probably better able to resist disease such as canker, which he says is rampant. Apple canker is a fungal disease that attacks the bark, causing a sunken area of dead bark and eventually the death of the branch. Sometimes the canker stabilizes or heals but more often, it spreads gradually until the branch is girdled, or so weakened that it breaks.
“Canker is everywhere. It is in our atmosphere and the spores are part of what forms the nuclei of our precipitation. There has been so much importation over the years that before many regulations were in place, the various forms of cankers were being spread all over the earth,” he said, also attributing its proliferation to poor pruning practices. “With the lack of pruning knowledge I see everywhere I go—the way people hack their trees in fall and winter—we are just creating the perfect environment for this disease to spread unchecked. It makes me want to cry every time I hear someone say they heard or read that you only prune fruit trees in winter.”
Clay firmly believes that summertime pruning is essential to limit the spread of canker and explained his reasons in an email: “Auxins are concentrated at the tip of each branch . . . and act as a brake for the buds below, preventing them from shooting up. When you make heading cuts in the winter, you remove the branch tips where the auxins are concentrated—and also remove the brake causing vigorous growth when the tree comes out of dormancy . . . Each one of those wounds is now a possible infection point from canker spores, which are being produced in late January through May. So I do very little or no dormant pruning until mid-March when the tree is actually waking up, able to start healing its wounds and not be exposed for such a long time. When you make heading cuts in summer (roughly July 15 to August 7) the tree will put on very little growth before going into dormancy. During this time, auxins again become concentrated at the growing tip. As long as that tip is not cut back in winter, the tree will come out of dormancy in the spring and will not shoot up because the brake is already in place. By reserving winter or dormant pruning for structural cuts and the removal of dead, diseased, and damaged wood and by making heading back cuts in the summer, you prevent unnecessary vegetative growth and allow shoots to mature into fruiting wood.”
Back at the Sunriver Community & Allotment Gardens, Clay was feeling good about the young trees now growing “in the middle of a subdivision.” He was less concerned about grafting every single heritage tree in Sooke than he was about preserving different varieties. And despite the irony of planting new trees, which are years away from producing fruit, next door to 140-year-old trees that produce 600 pounds of apples, Clay can at least say that he is voluntarily helping preserve history and genetic diversity. “It’s what makes me sleep at night. I know I’ve done my part as much as I can.”
So what are Clay’s favourite heritage apple varieties? His top five include Vanderpool Red, Fameuse (as the first apple known in Canada), Spartan (a good dual-purpose eating apple), Knobby Russet (“the ugliest known apple variety”—although Bob Weeden says his Dumelow is definitely a contender), and any variety that has Cox’s Orange Pippin in its ancestry (including Holstein). This, he notes with a smile, adds about twenty varieties to his top “five.”
Taste and appearance: Small- to medium-sized, often oval in shape, with greenish-white, crisp, acid flesh. The skin is pale yellow, tinged with green, changing to a lemon yellow as it matures.
Use: Eating fresh, cooking, and drying.
History: It is uncertain when the Lemon Pippin was first discovered. One source notes that the eighteenth-century writer of The Modern Husbandman, William Ellis, described the Lemon Pippin in 1744 as “esteemed so good an apple for all uses, that many plant this tree preferable to all others.”
Growing and harvesting: Picked in October, it keeps until May.
PHOTO: CLAY WHITNEY
Taste and appearance: Small- to medium-sized, conical in shape, with bright red skin and white, crisp, juicy flesh. Taste is slightly acidic and sweet.
Use: Eating fresh.
History: Originated in Benton County, Oregon, in 1903.
Growing and harvesting: Picked in mid- to late October, but the flavour improves with age and is best around Christmas time. It keeps in good condition until May.
PHOTO: DERRICK LUNDY
Taste and appearance: A large, flattened, smooth, bright green apple, with yellow-white, firm juicy flesh and a tart, sharp, and acidic taste.
Use: Cooking.
History: Discovered as a chance seedling in 1809 in Nottinghamshire, England. The original tree was still alive as late as 1988.
Growing and harvesting: The tree is vigorous and grows well on the West Coast. Picked in mid-October, the fruit is “in season” from November to February.
Other: Ranks as one of the world’s great culinary apples. Says one source, “Many cooks reach automatically for the trusty Bramley . . . Its key feature is the very high level of acidity, and the excellent strong apple flavour that [it] lends to any apple dish.” 7
PHOTO COURTESY KEEPERS NURSERY, FRUITTREE.CO.UK
Taste and appearance: Large, round-conical fruit, yellow with red-flushed skin, and sweet, juicy, cream-coloured flesh.
Use: Eating fresh and cooking.
History: This old Russian dual-purpose apple originated in Ukraine circa 1700 and became popular in North America after 1817.
Growing and harvesting: Picked in mid-September and keeps well for a few months.
Other: Probably the parent of Wolf River.
Apple Brownies
3 large apples (any combination of varieties works)
½ cup softened butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup walnuts (optional)
1 cup flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
Peel, core, and thinly slice apples. Mix butter, sugar, and egg. Stir in apples. Mix together dry ingredients and stir into the butter mixture. Add a few drops of water to make the mixture spreadable. Bake in a buttered, 9-inch-square pan at 350 degrees for around 40 minutes. (Go short on the time—never overcook brownies.) Sprinkle top with cinnamon.
Quinoa and Apple Salad
1 cup white quinoa
1 tsp honey
1 Tbsp finely chopped shallot
1 tsp cardamom
¼ tsp coarse salt
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
freshly ground pepper, to taste
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp dried currants
1 apple, cut into 1/8-inch-thick wedges
¼ cup toasted slivered almonds
¼ cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped, plus more for garnish
Prepare quinoa as per package instructions. Fluff quinoa with a fork; let cool.
Whisk together honey, shallot, cardamon, salt, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Season with pepper. Whisking constantly, pour in oil in a slow, steady stream; whisk until dressing is emulsified. Add quinoa, currants, apple, mint, and nuts; toss well. Garnish with mint.