Regarding Dolgo crabs..I don't mind tart or even astringent flavour , and find that the best tasting apples are a mix of sweet and tart and other complex flavours....not so keen on sweet all by itself....like Red Delicious ....boring apple !.....I love russets because, although they are very sweet, they are also tart and malty and have other flavours ....which brings me to Dolgo crabapples....lots of comments about how they are only good for jelly......I strongly disagree, I only just planted my 2 Dolgo crabs last year and well, they are tiny, but incredibly delicious...they have wonderful sweet/tart flavour but also a tropical fruitiness not just golden orange colour, but also golden orange fruit flavours such as mango and passionfruit...they are delicious right off the tree in my opinion...they are tiny , dime size, or nickle size, but packed with flavour.

I did tremendous research on trees 3 years ago and finally settled on Crabapples. Purple Prince and Prairiefire were resistant to the diseases affecting some Crabapples and have persistent fruit. The birds pick my fruit off during the winter which is only about the size of a small cherry. I got the Purple Prince and love it. I do have a Prairiefire in a container, only because I have it and don't have any place to put it. :) I have high neutral soil at 6.8 and clay soil and so far it does beautifully. It does sucker, but all I have to do is prune them out maybe 3 times per year. No big deal when you only have 1 or 2 trees. I couldn't find any tree period that didn't have something I didn't like about it and the Crabapple won out overall for me. I did have to do some searching though to find the one I wanted locally. I don't know how they would do in your area but in Ohio it does great.

Hello, Thank you both for your replies. I appreciate your help in trying to resolve this. I know eventually I'll have to confront the nursery, but I am trying to confirm that I am not simply making a mistake. Spartanapples, yes, I was trying to examine the bark, but it's not very clear. On one of the green-leaf budding Snowdrifts, the bark is significantly lighter (and more scaly). The other three (red budding) are sort of mixed; some are a good deal darker (and less scaly), while one is maybe only mildly darker). BUT, I also have a couple of other crabapples not yet planted. These are marked Profusion, and they have the red budding leaves, and yet, the barks on these are as light, it seems (and scaly), as the first green-leaf budding Snowdrift tree that I mentioned above. Also, I have one other green-leaf budding Snowdrift with a clearly smooth dark bark (and no sign of red in the leaf bud at all)--darker even than three red budding "Snowdrift". So, for me at least, it seems the bark is not a reliable control here. Like you said, the most guaranteed way of resolving this is to wait and see simply. But, if I did have to make a change, I'd hate to wait too long into the season to dig up and switch things around, etc. I was hoping the issue was one of stress, etc. The trees, if this matters at all, are four inch caliper, with about 40-42 inch root balls. (So yes, they're big, and I moved them in place with a skid steer, etc. A lot of work, and again the cages and burlap all cut down as low as possible... )The nursery said they were out of the ground for one year, which is why I got a pretty good deal on them. They were freshly burlapped again this season, and I was told they were hand dug, with no cage (just nylon tied). Well, turns out, they did have cages, and I had to cut out two layers of burlap, in addition to the cages. And honestly, the burlap underneath looked older than just one season; on a few the first burlap layer was nearly completely deteriorated. Anyway, I don't mean to carry on, but I am just trying to give you all a more precise picture of their situation, in case there could be some stress related cause to all this. Perhaps, I'll try to get some pictures posted of the bark and leaf budding. Thank you again for all your assistance. Joe

My "Mt. Vernon Purple Noisette" is in a large pot, and too big for it really; it needs to go in the ground, and I can't fight the tree roots to dig a hole that large. Blooms are petite, clustering and usually light, lilac pink. In cooler weather it's a slightly darker color. Nicely fragrant to my nose... Fairly thorny, not too bad, but not a rose to plant near a pathway. Mine would probably have more leaves and blooms if it were properly planted out. One day, perhaps, but despite fine new shovels, my husband is strangely reluctant to dig holes in the summer heat, and I have a few other plants that are in more desperate need of his spading abilities... I hope this is somewhat helpful, Virginia ETA: No mildew here, but that's not usually a problem in my conditions. No balling either, that I've noticed. It may prefer hot'n'humid to hot and dry? I hope your experience will contradict that theory...