Selling Stock

MAPLE VALLEY ORCHARDS is a large apple, pear and plum orchard in northern Brown County owned by John and Karen Kring. What makes it unique, however, is that its primary crop is not the fruit but the trees themselves.

The couple became involved in the orchard business after meeting Maxine and Tony Dembski in the 1990s. The Dembskis had started an orchard in the town of Maple Valley between Gillett and Suring as a commercial orchard then started collecting heirloom varieties.

“I met Tony when I took a grafting class through the Brown County Extension office,” John recalled. “I grew up on a farm so I took an interest. My family still owns the homestead in Price County so when I would go up there I would go past Tony’s orchard.” In 2005, John offered to build Tony a website so he could market scionwood, which is grafted onto existing trees. “This was when the hard cider market was starting and he had a number of heirloom varieties which are coveted by cider makers and Tony’s business took off.” John had a change of jobs in 2016, and Tony wanted the Krings to take over the orchard. A year later the Krings began selling stock, and they now have a thriving business selling scionwood, graft cuttings, bench grafts and rootstock serving customers around the country. “I think the only state we haven’t shipped to is Hawaii,” he said. The business has quadrupled since 2017.

“Apple trees don’t grow true from the seed, there’s a lot of DNA involved,” he explained. “So to get another, say Cortland tree, you need to graft a piece of Cortland wood onto an apple rootstock of some nature.”

“Apple trees don’t grow true from the seed, there’s a lot of DNA involved,” he explained. “So to get another, say Cortland tree, you need to graft a piece of Cortland wood onto an apple rootstock of some nature. Our season is in the spring because that’s when people do a lot of grafting. We ship 12-inch sticks as well as rootstock, and we’ll sell some trees.

Both John and Karen get involved in the collection, labeling and shipping of the scionwood. The collecting of the wood begins in late winter because it’s already spring in many of the areas where the Krings’ customers have orchards.

“Our orchard’s antique apple varieties include Ashmeads’ Kernel, Calville Blanc d’Hiver, Cox Orange Pippin, Esopus Spitzenburg, Hudson’s Golden Gem, Pitmaston Pineapple, and Roxbury Russet to name a few,” John said. “Another specialty of ours is red-fleshed apples like Pink Pearl, Almata and Hidden Rose.”

While the very popular Honey Crisp variety is the orchard’s top seller, John said the red-fleshed Hidden Rose variety is also a top seller. “Currently, we have over 750 varieties of apple cultivars available” he said. “For those who do their own grafting, we sell scionwood of most of our antique apple varieties. We will also do custom bench grafting of any of our cultivars on our semi-dwarfing rootstock.”

Over the years, the Krings have made improvements to their operation. One is in the efficiency of bundling the sticks. “You have to label every stick,” John said. “If you’re selling 5,000 sticks you can imagine how incredibly time consuming that is, so we moved to waterproof labels printed on a laser printer.” This advance also allowed for the printing of the customer’s name and the location of the tree in the orchard.

Another innovation was using tubes instead of boxes for shipping. Trees in the new orchard are planted in alphabetical rows, making locating a particular variety of wood much easier.
Like most crops, pests pose the biggest threat to the plants. John says the only spray he uses on his trees is “dormant” oil. Dormant oil sprays are highly refined petroleum products that are mixed with water and applied to trees and shrubs to control aphids, spider mites, and scale, according to the Iowa State University website.

Dormant oils destroy pests by suffocating them. When applied properly, the thin film of oil plugs the spiracles or pores through which the mite or insect breathes. Of course apples, plums and pears are a favorite food treat for deer, so the orchard is surrounded by a high fence with a gated entrance.