Apple Augusta - a delicious late summer variety
Apple-tree Augusta is a new generation variety. It belongs to a rather rare species of triploid trees. Their cells contain not a double (equally from the maternal and paternal varieties), but a triple set of chromosomes. The fruits of these varieties are larger and tastier than ordinary ones (diploids), and fruiting is more regular.
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Description of the variety
The apple tree of the Augusta variety is tall, up to 4 m in height, with a rounded crown. There are few skeletal branches; they extend from the trunk at an angle close to a straight line. At the same time, the ends of the branches grow upward, due to which the fruits are well illuminated by the sun. Shoots are thick, rounded, covered with small villi.
The trunk and bark of the tree are gray, the shoots are brown. The leaves are large, light, dull, pubescent, oval in shape with a small spout. The cuttings are also pubescent, thick.
The fruits are conical, yellow with a blurred red blush covering most of the fruits. In places where there is no blush, apples are greenish-yellow in the center and bright yellow closer to the poles. The skin is shiny. Each apple weighs about 160 g. Score for appearance is 4.5 points. The pulp is juicy, white-green in color, sweet and sour taste. Experts gave the apples of the Augusta variety a score of 4.4 points for their taste.
The variety is fruitful. The apple tree begins to bear fruit in the fifth year. Gradually, the yield increases. More than 20 kg of beautiful and tasty fruits can be harvested from one eight-year-old tree.
Apple Augusta belongs to the late summer varieties.
The fruits begin to ripen in mid-August. You can eat them fresh for another month. The apple variety Augusta generally tolerates winter frosts well. But sometimes young apple trees freeze slightly at the latitude of the Leningrad region. The variety is resistant to scab, but sometimes it can still be damaged by this disease. Therefore, together with other trees for prevention, you can treat the scab and August.
The variety was created in the 80s of the last century by Russian breeders by crossing Papirovka with Orlik. The latter has 4 sets of chromosomes, therefore it is used to obtain new varieties. The Augusta variety of apple trees was created specifically for cultivation in the central black earth region. Mostly the fruits are used fresh. But you can make delicious juice, jam and pie filling from them.
Planting an apple tree
Grow at home apple tree Augusta varieties can be planted by planting a two-year-old seedling with a well-formed root system... It is better to plant in September. Before the onset of frost, he must take root in order to successfully winter. If the seedling is caught too late, it is better not to risk it and dig it in the cellar, and plant it in a prepared hole in the spring. For planting an apple tree seedling in the spring, it is better to prepare a pit in the fall. Its length, width and height must be at least one meter.
Preparatory work:
- In order for the August apple tree to grow well and bear fruit, special attention is paid to the choice of a planting site. It should be sunny. In the shade, the apple tree will not bear fruit, or the fruits will be pale and tasteless. Tall trees should grow at a distance of at least 4 m. It is allowed to have a nearby bush that will cover the seedling at first from the scorching sunlight.
- When growing a large number of August apple trees, the distance between the rows should be at least 5 m.Groundwater should not approach the surface of the earth at a distance closer than 1 m.If there is no such place, you can solve the problem by filling a mound with a height of 1 m with a diameter of up to 3 m.
- The soil for planting an apple tree must be loose enough. If it is clayey, add sand. Clay is also needed, it keeps water near the roots. Humus, peat, glass are added to the soil selected from the pit wood ash... The resulting mixture is poured into the pit.
After it has settled for at least 2 weeks, you can plant a tree. At the bottom of the pit, a mound of earth is poured, a seedling is placed on it so that after filling in the roots, the grafting site is 5 cm above the ground. The roots are leveled along the slopes of the mound, covered with earth, slightly compacting it. Watering.
Before planting, it is better to hammer a peg to the bottom of the pit (slightly to the side), to which you will then need to tie an apple tree.
Barrel circle mulch a layer of peat, humus, cut grass or hay at least 5 cm thick. It will help to retain moisture near the root system for a long time. Tie the trunk to the peg with an eight-shaped loop.
Apple tree care
Solvet on tree care:
- The seedling needs to be watered regularly in the evening, adding at least 10 liters of cold water at a time. First, they do it every 2-3 days. After the apple tree takes root and grows, the amount of watering is reduced, focusing on the level of precipitation and the condition of the leaves and young branches of the tree.
- The soil in the trunk circle is kept clean from weeds... This is facilitated by a thick layer of mulch, through which it is difficult for them to break through. If they do appear, remove them and add mulch. Loosening the soil contributes to the flow of air to the roots. But this must be done carefully so as not to damage them. Use a pitchfork that is plunged vertically into the ground.
- Fertilizing a planted tree in the first year of its life is not worth it. After all, it will receive useful substances from fertilizers harvested during planting. Then the apple tree is fed, applying nitrogen fertilizers in the spring and potassium-phosphorus fertilizers in the summer.
- Closely monitor the appearance of pests. In the first year, it may be aphids or caterpillars. The branches are treated with an insecticide or sprayed with a decoction of tobacco, to which laundry soap is added as an adhesive. A 3% nitrafen solution is used to combat ticks. The branches that they damaged are cut off, the cut site is treated with copper sulfate and covered with garden var.
- In winter, hares can damage the bark of an apple tree. To prevent this from happening, they wrap the trunk as high as possible with roofing material, reeds, burlap.
Apple tree pruning
In the fall, the crown of the apple tree is not cut, it is better to do this in the spring, when it becomes clear which of the branches are frozen. When planted in spring, they are cut to a height of 90 cm if the crown has not yet been formed, and by a third of the annual growth if the tree is crowned. This is necessary in order to balance the size of the aerial part and roots, which almost always suffer during transplantation.
A sample of the August apple tree is carried out before bud break.
In trees with a formed crown, the skeletal branches are shortened so that the outer bud is the last. A branch of the next order will grow from it. With this pruning, it will expand the crown. Then cut off two-thirds of the growth on the upper branches and a third on the lower branches. Due to the fact that the variety has few skeletal branches, this does not take much time.
By pruning, you can correct the shape of the crown. If it is one-sided for any reason (injury or improper pruning), leave the bud on the side where the missing branch needs to be directed. Although it is better not to buy seedlings with a crooked crown or one side branch. Skeletal branches are formed so that the lower one is at a height of about 50 cm. Subsequent branches are at a distance of 15 cm from each other. All leaves below this height are removed. In the fourth year, all unnecessary branches are removed, including the conductor. Thus, a sparse-tiered crown is formed.
More information can be found in the video:
Having formed the crown correctly in the first years after planting, then only correct it. Remove branches growing inside the crown, crossing, broken. Tops growing vertically upwards are removed. In vigorous apple trees, and the Augusta variety belongs to such, they carry out gentle pruning so as not to cause the formation of a large number of tops.
Pruning - this is the operation that allows you to change not only the shape of the crown, it affects the number of fruits, their quality. Indeed, with a thickened crown, the apple trees are not illuminated by the sun, therefore they grow pale in appearance, but sour in taste.
I don't really like the variety that ripens in August, for me this apple tree gives very sour fruits, so we make sweet jam with them, it's simply impossible to eat them.
Delicious variety of apples. The tree always bears excellent fruit, there are enough fruits for juice, compotes, jams. We share with friends and neighbors. Tree care is the same as for all fruit trees.
My mother-in-law has two Augusta trees in her garden. And nothing they are sour, very tasty, juicy, sweet, large apples. And the fact that they ripen at the end of summer is even a plus, we eat apples from a fresh harvest all autumn. When we rob the entire apple tree, we store them on the glazed balcony, in a cardboard box. They store well there, they just become more crumbly.