Silver Creek Nursery Ltd.

Northern Spy Apple Bareroot

History: Northern Spy was first discovered in New York around 1800. It tends to be irregularly shaped and bruises easily, so it is not a popular commercial apple but it is still commonly grown in certain regions in the States today. It is featured in several poems and in 1953 a box of Northern Spy apples was sent to Senator Joseph McCarthy by the Toronto Globe and Mail during his infamous hunt for 'communist spies.' 

Why We Grow It: Northern Spy apples are juicy with a balanced sweet-tart honeyed flavour, although they do tend to bruise easily due to their thin skin. To make up for that, they are known for making wonderful pies. The trees are cold hardy and vigorous.

      $56.50

      Rootstock
      Size

      54 in stock

      Fruit Traits:

      Recommended Use: Fresh eating, cooking, baking

      Fruit Size: Large

      Storage: Keeps until May when stored in cold storage

      Harvest: October - Late

      Cider Class (if applicable):

      Tree Traits:

      Canadian Hardiness Zone: 4

      Soil Preferance: Sandy loam, loam, clay loam. Prefers average to moist conditions, avoid planting anywhere that floods for more than two weeks in the spring. Generally quite adaptable to different soil conditions.

      Flowering Time: Late

      Bloom Colour: White

      Pollination Requirements: Requires a pollinator of a different apple variety that blooms around the same time

      Sun/Shade Requirements: Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)

      General Growth Habit: Partially tip-bearing, moderately vigorous with an upright growth pattern, slow to start bearing fruit and tends to have good crops every other year. Susceptible to cedar rust, scab, bitter pit, mildew, fireblight, and quince rust, but resistant to woolly aphid. Despite the recorded susceptibilities, this variety has not shown particular susceptibility to them in our orchard - another tribute to holistic orcharding, and/or an adage to the fact that just because a tree is susceptible to something, doesn't mean it will get it.

      Overall Disease Resistance Rating*: Low

      *this rating is combined with our experience growing in our test orchards combined with already available information on the cultivar.

      Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of plants across Canada. We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them, and send them out via courier. CLICK HERE to see our shipping policy.

      Pick-up: We also have thousands of trees picked up from our nursery each year. The pick-up options is free, though you must wait until you have been emailed a confirmation that your order is ready to pick up, which will have further information such as hours, locations, etc.

      When Will My Order Be Ready?

      Bareroot apple and pear trees are available for both fall and spring planting! If you also order plants that are only available for spring, we will default to having your entire order ready for spring.

      Fall: Fall orders are generally ready to be picked up or shipped out around mid-November. We only accept a small number of fall orders each year so if there is no fall option at checkout, your order will be available in the spring.

      Spring: Spring orders are generally ready to be picked up or shipped out anywhere from late March to late May! We will be in touch in the spring once your order is ready to go. Orders placed in the spring might not be ready for 1-2 weeks as this is a very busy time of year for us.

      Our grafted fruit trees are graded into two categories, and the size includes the rootstock:

      • 50-80cm grade: Smaller trees that may have some minor branching, this grade is like a "b-grade" size tree according to industry standards. This size may include trees that are over 1m but have some scarring or mild crookedness.
      • 1m+ grade: Trees that are over 1m tall, some may have no branches and others may have light feathering or a few established branches 

      Please keep in mind, bareroot trees appear small if you are unfamiliar with them. Size can vary year to year due to weather conditions and every single variety has a unique amount of vigour (some varieties naturally are smaller and some bigger, much like humans -and when you propagate hundreds of varieties, there certainly is variation). While we remain competitive in our plant size, it's also worth noting we don't use synthetic chemicals to push vegetative growth. Therefore you may find some conventional nursery stock larger in comparison. 


      Why plant small? It's best to transplant a tree when it's young so it can establish its roots before it has a lot of vegetative growth. This is much less stressful on it and after a few years bareroot trees tend to catch up and even surpass larger potted trees planted at the same time.

      Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "too small"), will still incur the applicable cancellation fees if the trees are true to our grading standards as per the agreement of sale when the order was placed.

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