Fruit of knowledge (Spring 2007)

Nick Botner leads his guests through 8 acres of history - rows of heirloom fruit that span a world, and centuries, of fruit production. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the 3,500 apple varieties he’s growing near Yoncalla, Ore., and he’s quick to comment on all of them.

Actually, Botner is a little offended by the attention Spitzenburgs divert from his other prized varieties. He’s indignant when the topic comes up, like a doting father whose child hasn’t yet landed a prom date.

“How come you all want Cox’s Orange and Spitzenburg as if that’s the only thing that needs to be preserved?” he asks. “There are so many varieties. Everyone has a Top 10 list, but they all contain the same varieties. The problem is they haven’t tasted all the others.”

That’s a problem that Botner is trying to fix. He hauls samples from hundreds of his trees to the Home Orchard Society’s annual All About Fruit tasting expo. He loads several refrigerators each fall with foot-long scion branches to sell to fellow rare variety enthusiasts (his list of offerings fills six double-sided pages, five columns per page, in tiny type).

Botner also hosts fruit lovers from far and wide who walk his orchard in search of the perfect tree and the fruits of his knowledge.

“The best part is tasting the fruit to find out what they want to plant next year,” he says. If the timing is right, he can get right down to business. “When a customer comes and wants a tree, we’ll just take a shovel and take it out with some dirt on it,” says Botner.

The best trees to transplant are small, says Botner, and the best customers are those who explore varieties beyond the dozen-or-so familiar ones. Then the fun starts.

Ted Swensen, a retired biology and botany teacher, is a case in point. On his 65x75-foot urban lot in Portland, Ore., Swensen has packed the yard with 35 trees, spaced three feet apart. Now he’s focused his considerable energy on perfecting super-dwarf cultivation. “I’m learning how to make apple trees a foot tall with apples hanging 6 inches off the ground,” he says enthusiastically.

Swensen shares his enthusiasm with nearly 600 members of the Home Orchard Society, which he also serves as president. For $25 per year, members enjoy access to busy forums and helpful articles on the club’s www.homeorchardsociety.org site, a quarterly magazine, and admission to the All About Fruit tasting and a spring Scion Exchange.

Botner also belongs to the North American Fruit Explorers (NAFEX).

For $19 per year, NAFEX offers Pomona magazine, a library, a scholarly annual meeting, and consultations via www.nafex.org with experts on an array of fruit, including president Jerry Lehman of Terre Haute, Ind., a 15-acre grower who specializes in persimmons.

“There’s no better contact than personal contact on this sort of thing,” says Lehman. That goes double for the fruit itself. But don’t expect easy answers. Botner’s favorite apple? “There are too many that are so good,” he says, smiling...and plucking another.

A spicy mouthful of Ginger Gold is “about as good as an apple can be.” Taking a bite of a classic D’Arcy Spice: “It doesn’t look too good, but you can’t beat that one for flavor.” He points to a Dabenette and says, “there’s a big demand for cider apples nowadays.”

He cuts open an opalescent Mott Pink. He passes inky Black Oxfords and massive Wolf Rivers. He points out elongated Kendil Sinaps from Turkey and Akanes from Japan. There’s the George Botner, a discovery that Botner named for his late brother. And here’s a coveted Esophus Spitzenburg. Botner tastes the apple, so complex it’s like a mouthful of cider. “Anytime anybody makes a Top 10 list, a Spitzenburg is on it,” he notes.