I unfortunately dropped the ball on the great looking Southern States trees. I stopped there with my daughter to get a Honeycrisp tree and all 5 of them had sold tags on them. They had a lot of other varieties but my daughter wants Honeycrisp. Can’t say I blame her. They checked their inventory sheet and it said they only received 5 HC trees but received 15 Macintosh trees. None appearing to have been sold. I joked with the clerk and asked why do they order so many Macintosh trees compared to other varieties. He said they will be the only ones left at the end of the season when they get put on clearance.
Honeycrisp is no longer under patent so don’t worry about it. You can graft it and likely find out it’s not as great as you thought as grown on your own tree. Here they suck when the weather is warm leading up to when they ripen- on a good year they are amazing, of course, but I haven’t had a good year with it in the last 5. Can’t say I’ve missed it.
There’s not another apple I’ve grown with its texture but there are other apples I like as much that are much better out of home storage and of higher quality most years. Further north I expect it is much more consistent. The variety is being overgrown in areas where it shouldn’t be IMO.
Speed,
If you want some more HC scions, just e-mail me. All my trees are still dormant. Today, it’s been snowing since 7 am until now and will be until the end of the day. Grafting apples is easy. Even I could get them to take!!
Alan, you just burst another bubble. 
Our HC just arrived Thursday, and isn’t even in the ground, yet. Around here it’s never anything except hot leading up to the harvest of anything.
Everybody wants Honeycrisp and for good reason, but Alan is right…it probably is overgrown out of it’s comfort zone. Don’t be dismayed though, so are many other fruits and HC can do well in warmer climates, but Z8 is really, really pushing it. I feel I must be about as far south as it can be somewhat consistently and successfully grown.
So far I’m 5 for 5 and I am so thankful I decided to plant this spectacular apple. I wouldn’t trade it for anything at this time. I feel that it is perhaps the greatest single apple introduction there has ever been and nearly all breeders have introduced it’s genetics into their breeding programs both here and abroad.
FWIW, mine also was a Southern States tree on M106, I bought it when it wasn’t available anywhere else…and I mean anywhere at the time. The single biggest issue with HC in hot weather is that it doesn’t want to color up. This effects both aesthetics as well as flavor.
Give it a chance…if it doesn’t do well there, you could always graft it over to something more suitable.
I don’t care about color. The problem here is they just don’t get the full sweetness before dropping off the tree- that is those apples that don’t rot on the tree, which is the majority for me at most sites.
If I do the calcium sprays like the commercial growers around here it doubles the spray hassle.
I’m glad the apple doesn’t impress me as much as Appleseed. Even on its best years it is a very minor apple for me as it ripens too early. Fall ripening apples are much easier to store, no matter what, once your orchard is really producing. In Honeycrisp’s season my refrigerators are full of nectarines, peaches and plums. I don’t have room to store apples and don’t eat many at that time.
Appleseed, if you have been growing Honeycrisp for nine years and harvesting fine fruit for five I’m really quite surprised, but it would indicate you have an exceptional site for it for some reason- unless the variety actually does better a little further south or I have been very unlucky in the nature of the sites where I’ve planted it.
Actually, come to think of it, I do manage a tree that does well consistently at a site with sandy soil that creates inadequate vigor for peach trees (without special input). The trick is probably to not have much vigor in the trees, which may be why it has been successful for Washington state growers. They can control vigor because it is dry during the growing season.
I have not tried growing it on more dwarfing rootstocks either, which might be helpful.
Other over-sized varieties tend to get rots as well, partially because they can’t draw enough calcium from the trees to serve their huge fruit.
I was watching a you tube video from New England apples and this one Apple grower in I believe Vermont or New Hampshire even mentioned trying to still find the right location in his orchard for growing Honecrisps. Give me a good Macoun in season for me it blows away most apples.
He was commenting on the difficulty of growing the perfect Honey Crisps in New England.
There is a big commercial orchard near pittsburgh that’s within an hour of my location that specializes in Honeycrisp, Fuji, and a couple of other varieties. They have the best honeycrisp apples I’ve ever eaten.
I wish the supermarket ones here were good they seem to get bad quick.
My kids love them.
John…if the HC your buying is going bad quickly, you are buying old apples. HC actually stores pretty well, in fact better than average. You can buy HC from Wenatchee, WA throughout the entire year.
Harvestman…I’ve been growing it for 5 and harvesting for 5. That’s right, it made 2 or 3 beautiful apples the first year and many more each successive year. 1 year I was working a ton and let it set way too many apples and the top of the tree broke out. The following year it set fruit, but sparsely. The following year after that it was right back to business as usual.
It’s planted in very rich, fairly deep, dark loam and to be honest it could probably use a bit better drainage, but has showed no issues whatsoever…so far (knock on wood).
I did buy it as a potted tree btw.
Appleseed, what rootsock is it on and what is the diameter of the tree now?
It sounds like its really been bearing properly for a year or 2. Once it is a mature tree that has achieved decent size, you will begin to know how well it actually does there. I hope the tree surprises me, but I’m very curious about the rootstock. I haven’t read about how that affects the performance of the variety.
My first couple of crops on any given tree are fine. I have one in the partial shade that does OK in my orchard but fruit doesn’t really get high quality. The first crops did.
I believe Ed Fackler’s proclamation that It takes at least ten years to evaluate a variety- not that that stops me from spouting out as soon as I become infatuated from some new fling.
Infatuation has more immediate velocity than true love, but it just isn’t sustainable.
+2 on that bit of wisdom on several fronts!!!
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H’man…imo it has been bearing “properly” from the get-go, in fact it has always wanted to set more heavily than it is capable of carrying thus the damage in year 2.
It is a Southern States tree just the same as Speedster was looking at, it is on M-106 and is indeed from the same source (all SS trees are).
Eastern Shore Nursery of Virginia
Keller, VA 23401
I believe Fackler’s statement of trees needing 10 years of evaluation is probably based on varieties that aren’t widely grown, known or well reported. HC is so widely grown and it’s habits and susceptibilities so well understood and reported in so many places that I cannot see the need for that. All the orchards around here grow it I think, save for one. I asked that one guy about it and he said he was interested, but concerned about it’s susceptibility to fireblight. I have read of this in older reports, but you don’t see as much reporting of fireblight susceptibility now, at least that is, overly-so in comparison to other mainstream commercial varieties.
As far as the trunk diameter, I’d have to go look at it, but I’d guess it’s maybe 4-5" , and the tree grows with heavy and rather short limbs (stubby). This I think was partially precipitated by the entire central leader loss in year 2.
It does (as you’ve pointed out before) have a tendency to rot quickly where damage occurs on the fruit surface. When beginning ripening, a bird peck one day will be a rotten spot 3 days later, even with heavy fungicide application. I’d say it’s worse in this regard than most apples I’m aware of, similar I think to Mac., but even worse. The good thing is that it doesn’t happen too frequently, so voluminous quantities of perfect fruit are still harvested. There is also the calcium issues which everyone knows really is bad and one of these days I’m going to try the calcium sprays too.
It’s a great apple in my book.
I’m growing Honeycrisp on M26 in a location with well draining, hard soil. It began fruiting very early and consistantly. The apples are better than the ones in the stores here but nothing to get excited about. I try to let them hang for a long time hoping it will get sweet or interesting but it begins to lose its trademark texture before any of that happens.
8 or 10 years ago when I tasted my first Honeycrisp I thought it was incredible. In the last 5 years or more I haven’t had one that I wanted to finish eating. I assume it is mostly due to quality of the apples sold here, but I suppose some of it could be my taste preference.
The best commercial apples, to my taste, that I’ve been able to get lately are Lady Alice, Opal and sometimes Envy. Yes, all club apples 
There were some good local Fuji but they weren’t handled well so storage life was limited by bruising and stem pokes and such.
I’ve heard that there is a guy at the Portland farmer’s market that brings good Goldrush and some others in November/December. I’ll have to give that a try. I don’t think I’ve had a Goldrush with higher than 13 brix. I want to taste a good one to see what the fuss is about.
BTW, locally available Honeycrisp are around the 12 brix range. I think I need at least 16 to get excited, preferably with some counter-balance.
Appleseed, I believe it takes 10 years because you don’t know how the trees is going to treat the fruit in the long term until it is really pulling everything a mature tree pulls from the soil. Honeycrisp suffers when it is too vigorous and it achieves full vigor once it is about the diameter yours is now. You will know in 3 or 4 years how reliable it actually is.
Well…hopefully it will work out ok (fingers crossed).
Murky…agree on the Opal…just bought a few the other day at Wallyworld. First time I ever had them and the ones I got clearly weren’t all that fresh. I was very impressed with the sweetness and juiciness. The only problem with that apple is that it isn’t red.
I bought 2 “nectarine” trees from my local Lowes this February. One was a “Red Gold Yellow Nectarine” and the other was a “White Chief White Nectarine”. The trees had perfect low branching established and looked perfect. I planted them in early February. In April after a March bloom that saw ice, mind you, they produced about 3 fruits apiece…the only trouble was that the fruit was fuzzy. I ended up getting 4 early peaches off of them, but that is not what I bought. I will never trust the labels again at a big box store.
I also purchased a Methley plum that didn’t fruit this year. Who knows, it could be any plum that grows in Texas.
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