Our young apple trees have produced their first harvest. Why I won't be planting any more apple trees at my dacha.

In the note about Apple season in Krasnoyarsk I was telling you about the apple trees we have at our dacha. I love apples and have always wanted a small apple orchard at my dacha. How beautiful are the apple trees in bloom in the spring! And in late summer and fall, the trees, covered with red and yellow apples, are simply a joy to the eye and soul.

And what an aroma emanates from the ripe fruits, it is carried by the breeze throughout the entire dacha!

For the winter, we wrapped all the young seedlings in covering material. The winter was cold and very snowy, with snowdrifts almost completely covering the small seedlings, with only the tops sticking out from under the snow.

In the spring, we removed the covering material; it seemed like all the apple trees were alive, they had brown flexible branches.

The spring of 2021 was cold, the snow took a long time to melt, and the soil was damp and never dried out. It also rained constantly. The buds on the apple trees swelled, but they were slow to open.

Soon, on the young apple trees - Brother of the Wonderful, Foster and Cherished - leaves appeared on all the branches, and Foster and Brother of the Wonderful opened their first flower buds.

Our Tolunay apple tree has only produced leaves on part of its branches, the other half of the apple tree has dried up.

While examining the tree, I discovered a crack near a fork in the tree's branches and sealed it with garden pitch. The dried branches had to be removed.

Borovinka and Melba had the same problem. Their branches looked strange—they seemed flexible and alive, but their leaves were wilted and tiny, and there were small cracks on the trunk and branches. Soon, the branches with their wilted leaves dried out. Not only ours, but most of the gardeners in our community lost their apple trees. It's unclear whether they froze during the cold winter or were soaked by the excess moisture from melting snowdrifts and constant rain.

Over the summer, new branches grew on Borovinka, but Melba grew one weak branch and the tree completely disappeared.

Of all our apple trees, only the Pupil and the Brother of the Wonderful blossomed this year.

When the branches began bearing fruit, it became clear that our Vostutannitsa wasn't a Vostutannitsa at all. It bears large, green, round, slightly ribbed apples with a yellowish blush on the sides.

At the beginning of September they were still green and unripe.

Most likely late-ripening. And we were all so looking forward to the Vostutannitsa apples—small, red, and delicious.

Brother Chudny also has large green apples.

Three apples growing on the lower branches fell, possibly knocked over by the cats, who have simply taken over our garden this year. The cats run around, fight, and mark their territory. Unripe apples are very hard and sour.

The two apple trees have almost identical fruits.

The ripe apples turned yellow and became tasty and juicy.

Although the tree crowns are different, they may be of the same variety, and they survived the winter well.

But I was still disappointed and decided not to plant any more apple trees at the dacha. Why torture them? They struggle to grow in risky farming zones, and they can't handle our Siberian conditions.

We'll be removing Melba in a few days. We've had it for six years now, and in all that time, it's only produced one apple, which took a long time to ripen. We picked it before the frost, and it sat around the house for a long time without ripening. What's the point of growing an apple tree that freezes every winter, grows new branches over the summer, and does this for six years, just taking up space? We'll give Borovinka one last chance.