Hi everyone! Happy New Year! Some time has passed since my last post, and so very much has happened! PomEx 5 took place on the heels of what will be considered a historic harvest year, a real banger, a vintage year, which, for me, was marked with wonderful discovery, bountiful harvest, and no time to pause. It feels like the seasons keep moving by with such incredible speed, and yet there is so much space contained within the space of a day. So, I owe you all a quick word on year-in-review, and what’s in store for 2025!
Bins of wickson catching the afternoon light. In order for Wicksons grown in MA to be any good at all, the weather needs to follow a very specific pattern in Summer and Fall. This year they were unparalleled. 
Trees gave it up like it was going out of style. 
Kieffer pears from the Hadley Orchard 
GoldRush grafted to seedling stock. 
Dennis Rodman, view of the spur habit! 
perfect self-thinning ability 
Unsprayed Grimes golden going insane 
Grimes golden filling up the bed of my pickup truck 
PomEx 5 was a resounding success 
One of the medalists, the peerless V.I.P. from Aptos CA 
Packed house this time around! 
Packed house this time around! 
At the Exhibition and you gotta stay strapped w that thang
The 5th Annual Wild and Seedling Pomological Exhibition and the rest of Cider Days was a resounding success. We have set yet another record for number of varieties submitted with 200 submissions this year. Unreal enthusiasm befalls this mighty little pomological gathering. In addition to the quantity being simply higher than ever before, the quality of seedlings submitted was also far and away the best I think I’ve witnessed. It’s so special to see folks submit seedlings that they’ve been working with/grafting/following for a long time. This year, we had many more varieties submitted for which people had collected fruit from ex-situ grafts of novel seedling varieties, and offered a wealth of knowledge about each one to me. We also were lucky to receive submissions of a number of intentionally bred seedling apples from some highly distinguished fruit breeders whose contributions shined bright. It means so much to me that folks are coming out of the woodwork to put their special fruit on display. It’s a deeply personal thing.
WHEELS KEEP TURNING
Time keeps on marching on! Sometimes I’ll get a little lost in the microcosms of my own life, like the daily ins and outs of work at the orchard, with the sheep, whether I remembered to shut the barn door at the end of the day, whether the drive can be made in less than 2hrs if you’re really cookin’, so on and so forth. The thing that always does the best job at pulling me out of being too zoomed-in is to see the phases of tree growth that the trees I work on have put on since the last time I looked at them. The snapshots in this slideshow below are some reminders of these moments for me. All a reminder that the goddamn wheels don’t stop turning. We aren’t at the center of everything and for as consistent and stalwart as we strive to be, the trees are our guides and teachers, leading the way, making green leaves and wood and fruit and roots all along while we humans toil in these silly little matters!
These pretzel/loop trained limbs were installed to help tone the vigor on some golden russets following a very heavy prune due to some fireblight in 2023. Now they have started to put out fruit buds and spurs. So beautiful 
Newest GP research block is at Big River Chestnuts – Settright. These tiny little saplings, in 4 short months, have feathered out and look like bonafides now. Amazing 
Watersprouts from an old Hyslop Crab tree that I began restoring 5 years ago beginning to naturally graft themselves together. This tree looks amazing and is ready for crown retrenchment
Things to look forward to in 2025
One of the big areas of work that I am looking forward to in 2025 is to expand my offerings of orchard classes and workshops. Sharing knowledge and passing these skills onto other folks is an important part of the whole picture. In the past, I’ve led workshops and classes on pruning and grafting in a general sense, often aimed toward an introductory experience/skill level. I love doing that, and am grateful for all the organizations and folks who have facilitated those in the past. With that said, I have been considering offering some workshops with a finer focus on advanced skills and concepts. Specifically, topworking and pretzel training! This comes at the behest of many many requests in response to posts I’ve made on social media and classroom presentations I’ve given.
Some of these have taken shape already and others not quite yet! Registration and tickets will be offered through the webshop and I will make another blogpost that goes out to subscribers ahead of then. I urge you all to stay tuned and look into the following classes that I plan to offer this year!
- PRUNING 101 – Dormant season pruning theory and practice on apple trees ! * likely in Sharon, CT
- PRETZEL / LOOP TRAINING – Advanced concepts in orchard tree form! * somewhere in the pioneer valley, MA
- BENCH GRAFTING 101 – Spring grafting of young trees! * likely in Amherst, MA
- TOPWORKING CRASH COURSE – ‘Grafting over’ of established trees to different varieties! * likely in Harvard MA
- PRUNE A SPOON – Collaborative workshop combining apple tree “prune-a-long” followed by apple wood spoon carving lesson with master green woodworker Charles Thompson. Hope we can pull this one off! *likely to be in Hadley MA
POMOLOGICAL SERIES VOL. 4
Pre-order live now and sample pages uploaded!
Pomological Series: Wild Apple Exhibition Vol. 4
The print publication documenting the 4th Annual Wild and Seedling Pomological Exhibition which took place on November 3rd, 2023
Beautiful apple portraiture photographed by William Mullan is accompanied by full, formal pomological descriptions written by Matt Kaminsky which draw focus on the highlighted specimens submitted to the 2023 Exhibition. This volume features the most entries yet, which indicates the growing popularity of the Pomological Exhibition Series and the popularity of seedling apples in general. Dripping with color and detail, this book is printed on high quality photo stock, OTA layflat bound in 9″x 6″ format. The introductory essay explores the relationship between fruit exploring and spiritual practice.
Written and edited by Matt Kaminsky, photography, layout and typesetting by William Mullan with additional book design, and custom cover typeface by Andrea Trabucco Campos.
Edition of 500, limited to one printing production.
An Anointed Array of Apples? (AAAA?)
I am so happy to unveil this full sneak peek of Vol 4. One of the most stunning lineups of apples to date, featuring seedling apples and pears, both wild foraged and intentionally bred, by many of the illustrious fruit explorers of the US and Canada. 75 novel varieties of apple and pear are described here. Click through the slideshow below to see some of the magic.
I am also very proud of the introduction to Vol. 4. It explores the side of fruit exploring that connects us to spiritual practice and religious experience — that fruit exploring is an innately human act, and that it really transcends, predates, and goes deeper than our cultural limitations. There are few things in this world that fit that mold, and I see this practice around developing relationships with wild apple as an invitation to self-betterment as much as it is a means of having apples to use.
Apart from my waxing poetic, this exhibition was interesting for a number of reasons, but one reason more than any other. Although the varieties submitted represent a continental smattering, many of the areas that fruit was submitted from experienced a massive late frost which severely damaged the regional apple crop in much of the country – especially the eastern US. Many of the apples described here display elevated tolerance and resistance to freezing temperatures during bloom. This is a pretty poorly understood phenomenon. It defies our understandings of plant physiology and physics in general.
Rootstock as well as variety plays a role no doubt. I believe that there are genetic lines which make apples more likely to bear in the event of frost. I.e. varieties with bourse-wood flowering tendencies (later-emerging flower buds on 1 year old wood) as well as certain crabapple lineages, especially those originating in N. America but also M. baccata and others I may not be aware of. Harvest year 2023 underscored the importance of seedling trees, since those trees were largely unaffected across a wide variety of (micro)climates that experienced frost.
While much of the world of “progress” in developing new tree fruit systems has to do with more— more inputs, more yield, more trees per acre, more blossoms and less wood — I feel like the most resilience that we can build is in “primitivizing” our tree systems, growing on larger rootstocks, using apple that’s smaller, capable of producing in whiplash climate patterns, and is less disruptive to local ecology.
I am planning to write an essay called “APPLES ARE A FROST TOLERANT SPECIES” that will be published as the Introduction to Pomological Series Vol 5, currently in the works now.
Even though it isn’t without significant time and effort, continual this book series has grown legs and begun to run on its own, and for that I am so grateful. Please pre-order your copy of Vol. 4 by clicking the ‘Shop Now’ button below! Ordering this during the pre-order phase helps William and I close the funding gap so that we can keep this book self-published without going into massive debt! As of now we are looking to pre-sell another 100 copies, so tell your friends too! Copies will ship out in February and
SCIONWOOD ORDERS OPEN NOW!
Yep, it’s that time of year again! Scionwood is live in the webshop now! If you’re interested in grafting some fruit apple and pear trees from the Gnarly Pippins catalog, you can place your order by clicking the ‘Shop Now’ tabs below for scionwood by the foot or by the bulk bundle! I am really pleased to be integrating some new accessions into the catalog, as well as re-listing some which had been off the catalog for a year or two.
One of my own submissions from PomEx 5, an apple I call ‘Dennis Rodman,’ a dazzling star of a bittersharp, is now available! It hasn’t even been integrated into the “Varieties” page yet on the homepage of the website because it’s so new. But it has a pretty amazing story. It’s a tree I have been pruning for a client for 8 years, although I had never been back to visit the tree in the Fall until this year. I’ve always remarked how wonderful a tree it is. Perfect growth habit, amazing spur bearing quality, controlled growth habit. It really blew my mind when I saw it loaded up with bushels and bushels of fruit. Look for Dennis Rodman on the webshop and peep the Gnarly Pippns Instagram for photos of the mother tree in the next week or two.
I have also brought Queen Crab back to the webshop after being sold out for most of the year last year. Queen Crab is a hall of famer, a large crab which has gained acclaim from cidermakers, orchardists, and wildlife tree enthusiasts. Disease resistant, strong grower, and extremely flavorful. It’s solid gold. Footrace, an old fav, has graduated from the trial orchard research phase, after a couple years of questions, with a great showing from one of my research blocks this year, and therefore has returned to the scionwood catalog!
Juicy Juicy Pineapple, that sweet old thang, has finally become more plentiful, as the grafted trees are starting to produce enough scionwood to shift the onus of scion production off of the mother tree. Additionally, the test crop of JJP we got from the research block last year was mind blowing. A major improvement from the fruit on the mother tree, which is surprising, considering that the original tree produces one of my favorite eating apples of all time! So exciting. Slightly different coloration, big much bigger size, and new skin traits…
SO! go ahead and get your order in today.
Gnarly Pippins scionwood – by the foot
Available here are dormant scionwood twigs for grafting, selections from the Gnarly Pippins catalog. Choose from 16 selected seedling varieties of high quality apple & pear found throughout New England. Scionwood is sold by the linear foot. Quantity “1” will be entered as one linear foot of scionwood from the selected variety, whereas selecting quantity “2” will be entered as two linear feet of scionwood, so on and so forth. A limited quantity of scionwood is available for each variety, stock is managed on a first-come first-served basis. All orders of scionwood placed before March 31, 2026 will be filed as “pre-order,” and ship on or before April 1, 2026, unless preference for earlier shipment is noted. All orders placed after April 1, 2025 will be shipped as soon as they are received.
Gnarly Pippins Scion Wood – Bundle
Available here are 6-FOOT BUNDLES of dormant scionwood twigs for grafting, selections from the Gnarly Pippins catalog. Choose from select seedling varieties of high quality wild seedling apple and pear found throughout New England. Quantity “1” will be entered as six linear feet of scionwood from the selected variety, quantity “2” will be entered as twelve linear feet, so on and so forth. A limited quantity of scionwood is available for each variety, stock is managed on a first-come first-served basis. All sales prior to March 31, 2026 will be filed as “pre-order,” and ship on or before April 1, 2025 unless preference for earlier shipment is noted. Orders received after April 1, 2026 will be shipped as soon as they are received.
That’s all for now folks! Jeez, I don’t quite know what to say to sum it all up. While I have all these exciting updates to share, the wheels of this world keep turning, cruelly and smoothly. The quotient of suffering taking place on our Earth seems like it only rises more and more, and how fortunately we still have blessings to count in the kingdom of trees, with Pomona by our side. What little we can do by smiling, being nice to each other, trying to understand people who we don’t understand, trying to understand things we don’t understand, learning, teaching, learning more, being willing to see ourselves as imperfect. Working on it. Go plant some trees. Or if you can’t, just go and be with some trees. Even one tree. Tell the truth, and love each other.
