Minnesota apple orchard owner shares the secret to Honeycrisps, how to be ‘wowed’ by fruit

In 1999, Scott Wardell launched his Johnny Appleseed-like mission by painstakingly planting 200 trees.

That tradition continued annually for a decade as he and his good-natured wife, Barb Wardell, turned an overgrown pasture in rural Minnesota into an impressive apple orchard.

Today, 69-year-old Scott Wardell’s Montgomery Orchard features 16 popular apple varieties on 12 acres. The bucolic setting is a roughly 45-minute drive south of the Twin Cities.

Whether seeking to sip cider or wine at the orchard’s Cider Haus, explore the Be-A-Mazed corn maze (this year’s cut: a hummingbird), pluck ripe apples or pears from the trees or snack on an Abdallah Candies caramel-coated apple in the market, customers flock to Montgomery Orchard.

In an interview edited for clarity and length, Wardell shares what it’s like to be in his shoes.

I’ve always had a love for the outdoors. I’m the fifth of six kids, and my dad planted six apple trees — one for each of us — in our suburban backyard. When Dad said, “We’re going to pick your tree this afternoon,” I always made sure to be there because it hit me: This was the fruit from my tree. I think of the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song, “teach your children well … feed them on your dreams; The one they pick is the one you’ll know by.” My dad shared all his dreams, and that’s the one that stuck with me. I loved spending time in nature with my dad.

At the University of Minnesota, I’d majored in business and minored in speech and horticulture. During high school, I worked at Bachman’s [Floral, Home and Garden on Lyndale Avenue South]. Later, I operated a landscaping business for a couple of years, then a lawn fertilizer/spraying business for a while. I also worked two years for a wholesale nursery company before moving into financial planning, from which I retired three years ago.

We’re so busy in the winter. Every one of our 2,000 trees needs pruning — every one, every stinking year. Something we hear all the time is, “Your Honeycrisp apples are so good.” The secret is Honeycrisp needs enough light and ventilation in each tree, and trees can’t be overloaded with fruit. Pruning can’t be done with a hedge trimmer; I’m really old school on this. In fact, I teach a pruning class attended by other orchards’ staff. And you have to prune when trees are dormant, so we usually start trimming in January and finish around the second week of March.

In spring, we bring in the bees — I’ve got a great partnership with a beekeeper from Veseli — and the place is buzzing. It’s lovely, standing underneath the trees, listening to the hum of the honeybees. And after pruning all winter long, we have to clean up all the branches and sticks.

Summer reveals the irony of growing apples. After bringing in bees to pollinate, the trees can actually overproduce if there was spectacular weather during pollination. So we have to apply a fruiting hormone to release some of the apples to prevent overproduction. And there’s integrated pest management to control the pests. Plus we have to constantly monitor and inspect the trees for broken tops or a dash of mildew. Otherwise, you get ugly apples.

Oh, and there’s a tremendous amount of mowing to keep 12 acres neat. Barb is great at that.

Growing apples in Minnesota is a high-maintenance job. Plant a plum tree if you want something easy.

We start picking SweeTango apples around Aug. 20. Everybody wants First Kiss right away, but we’ve learned First Kiss goes from being a super good apple to a sensational one if you leave it on the tree two extra weeks. And I want people to come here and be wowed by our fruit, not say, “Oh, that’s good.”

From mid-August till the first of November — depending on when we get a hard frost — we pick like crazy. Help has never been harder to get than it is now.

Barb dips our caramel apples, and she’s fussy as all get-out, adding nuts and sprinkles.

From a grower’s perspective, I like the flavor and darker red color of SweeTango. And SweeTango are harder than Honeycrisp, so they don’t bruise as easily.

Sleep? [Laughs.] We have so much to get ready for the fall opening that lists of tasks constantly run through our heads. November is when we sleep. If people had any idea what it takes to get a place like this ready for retail, pristine and beautiful, they’d never balk at prices charged. The amount of behind-the-scenes work is unbelievable.

Jane Turpin Moore is a writer based in Northfield. She can be reached at jturpinmoore@gmail.com.