Rooney said

I think Jafar almost nailed it in the middle part that I underlined because some trees will stop growing for the season when the bark gets a few hours of too much heat through the bark and is not shaded from it's own branches or painted white. I should have thought of that earlier but didn't think of it until protecting some of my backyard plum trees from overexposed trunks. I have also noted that walnut trees are painted in California up to until the point of sufficient shading from branches.  

I appreciate you all trying to help me figure this out. The thing is that the trees have never grown, no matter what the weather or season. Currently it's even been consistently cool for months (daytime high ~60). The mystery continues... I will fertilize them soon, though.

Rooney said
I did some checking around. Snowdrift crab is noted for being a pollinator apple with spread out blooming. Another site I checked shows that it's available as clone grafted on various rootstocks which makes the root type difficult to know chill hours for, but chill hours are an important consideration. For example an apple orchard in California may find a low chill clone as a pollinator as ideal grafted on a high chill root system because in California it may runt the tree which is ideal for maintenance workers and still ideal for bees. 

The problem then is you need more accumulated hours in the range of 32F - 45F (chill hours as required) to the above ground section and up to the graft in what is likely a higher elevation graft. In which case a white wrap now and if not now then through next year's dormancy may help establish this. I will alert one of the members in Monterey Bay that I have an email for to help confirm this as a problem and hopefully learn what best to do. 

Long flowering crabapples are usually inbred with lots of malus baccata which are low chill and as well smaller spreading trees. I think your best bet to get around the issue is knowing that a runted tree due to inappropriate chill hours still has normal root development. So I think you need another low chill apple grafted into as near as possible to the root (no need to remove snowdrift this year) and not use the slower form of the snowdrift for the task but rather a faster growing F1 with hybrid vigor. 

Palmetta apple is F1, is very fast, and is low chill enough to match the snowdrift just perfectly. Others in Monterey Bay may give other ideas. So don't go away quite yet.  

Just to clarify--I bought the trees for their blossoms, not for the fruit, so if they don't fruit, it doesn't matter to me (I have too many heavily fruiting other trees as it is).

Also, I wouldn't know how to begin to graft a tree, so that's totally out, but I really appreciate your taking all this time to help me solve the mystery.

Rooney said
>> solve the mystery

Thanks, and I still woke up the second day in a row with clarity of thought on this. 

That the roots of trees are always active year round (ie. no chill required). The portion above the ground and up to the graft has chill requirements not being met, thus is part asleep year round. The 'snowdrift' crabapple above the graft that is properly flowering every year has it chill hours met or it would not be flowering at all, thus is active during the high end of the seasons and is able to supply the roots the sap requirements. 

The reason why it gels is, as I find out in lower California and southern Africa, experiments on flowering behavior even for low chill apples by Kuffel Creek nursery. My friend Larry in Oregon who was familiar helped me find his site. 

Will you give white tree wrap a shot now?  

By now I can't quite follow the ins and outs of this chill hours thing anymore... do chill hours affect putting on new branch/leaf growth? Since other crab apple tree varieties in my orchard flower, leaf and fruit like crazy year after year, doesn't that mean there are enough chill hours for all crab apples (or most)? Again, I'm happy with the amount of flowers and do not care for fruit, just new leaves and branches.

Rooney said
I understand your delema which I think is simply to get your 6 trees kick started and above wildlife so that deer can't reach everything and kill the trees and while I'm trying to make you understand chilling hours I'll just say this, that there are individual differences in between each tree in chill requirements. While your other apple trees are well suited for your area it seems there is only an issue concerning the flowering 6.

>> do chill hours affect putting on new branch/leaf growth?

Yes.

I think you can do something about that though if your open to understanding that a part of each of the 6 were cultivated in another environment that provides more chill hours than you have around the trees right now. (the problem now stems from not knowing how to explain what chilling is to possibly convince you to shade everything below the graft so that that portion of the tree experiences below the 45F thresh-hold for as long as possible each year such as shading or tree white wrapping. I may not be the right person to explain these abstract principles but I enjoy trying to)

On a cell per cell basis, even in the never yet germinated seed of an apple, there is a mechanism that pays attention to accumulated length of time that the temperature is between 32F to 45F. Nobody knows what it looks like, we can't even yet determine how these signals are exactly shared across grafts.

Lets focus on the graft for a sec. Your snowdrift crab is grafted in order to keep the visual appeal to pollinators specific, and yes length of flowering is another good aspect of snowdrift crabapple. Had your crab been cultured on it's own roots via a clonal rooted cutting from a branch, a graft could as well too serve for other reasons than the pleasant aspects of flowers, such as limiting the growth and ultimate size of the tree -or- provide a fast growing story pole for a round spreading tree which (by the way) many crabapples are. Aside from appeal there's no doubt that each tree purchased in any nursery is in fact a "grafted tree" for these reasons and other convenience sakes as well.

The case of an apple/pear seed:

To make you feel comfortable that the temporary lack of growth of what an apple seed needs to experience then I can tell you what happens sometimes when an apple seed had inherited normal chill but is triggered to germinate via other internal mistakes. They are not winter chilled though still start growing in the fruit in as early as November. They grow normal roots indoors all winter and all of the next year (still no chill hours). They do not put on any noticeable verticle growth. They don't die. Once planted outside they experience the next winters length of time under the 45F mark. There forever after grow normal stems as long as every dormant season they pass through a decently cool winter.

That last paragraph is also about the craziest thing I have ever heard when I first read it which involved 15% of comice pears that after eaten in November and planted will start germinating about December. I replicated it and it worked just as I described for that weird apple explanation.

Your situation I think is weird in the way that there an intervention graft. Below the graft where the cells have not been seeing proper cool hours are sluggish still (half awake all years long). The snowdrift crab-apple is obviously above the graft that (obvious reasons) had experienced the same environment, but varies as a group of cells that speed progress towards hours, and tick as a clock much faster then the cells below the graft.

The fact is obvious that snowdrift crab is flowering, which is impossible should chill hours not been met yet.

There are interesting pictures online that show chill hours differences across grafts. It demonstrated that one part had flowered while the other half was still absent. Same as yours. If your part below was having a shoot it would never flower unless... cooooler (white wrap) etc.  

Wow, Rooney, that's pretty amazing stuff! Thanks for spending all this time explaining this. It's fascinating. It will take some time to wrap my head around this and snoop around the internet for more info. Then I'll post again.

For the record, the trees are all fenced in. Deer are not a problem whatsoever.

Rooney said
Thanks again.

Nobody said this would be easy to understand that's for sure! While your trying to get wrapping your mind around try looking up "black body heat" on the internet to see how white can throw off radiation heat back away from the trunk and into the air. The reverse of black body is the heating up of the lower below the graft section of trunk to a much higher temperature during daylight hours. That damaging heat effect is not the concern in your cool area but it does directly effect duration of time below 45F because hours might be everything to you in every year you want more growth to happen. Because earlier another post I thought you said your trees must grow. In which case other than white wrap foliar feeding to bypass the lazy trunk would work too.  

I get it now, and it all makes sense. So are you talking about this kind of product: and then I'd wrap only the root stock up the the graft come next fall? Or do you know of some other, more appropriate wrap?

Tracker said
I did some exploratory surgery to see where the graft point actually is on those trees. I had to dig down quite a bit as you can see in the first picture (I don't understand why the pics are always sideways when I attach them here). The second pic is just from a little further away. The grafting point is clearly around 2-3 inches below soil level with suckers happily sprouting, at least on this one tree. So what do I do in this situation? Dig away the soil until I'm 2" below the grafting point? Clearly it would make wrapping impossible?

While I was at it, I took a pic of this brown tip spot the trees always get every year, throughout the year, without them being fazed by it, apparently. The leaves never turn yellow, fall off or die. Does that give any pointers?  

Forgot to upload...

ML said
 Looking at your photos . it appears to me that you have buried your trunk flare or root flare with way too much mulch and soil . The trunk of a tree just above the roots needs to breathe . Also the added mulch so far up the trunk has a tendency to trap excess moisture which is also not very healthy for a tree . So , a simple solution may be to remove some of the soil just a little bit above your trees' roots where you see the trunk start to flare out to see if that may help . Just an observation , you can correct me if I am wrong . ML  

I just did that to the one in the pic and will do it to the others. I'm sure you're right!