Has anyone grown the Murray apple? Is it any good?
A soft-fleshed summer apple sounds like rot paradise to me for the mid-Atlantic. It was bred in Canada where rot is much less of a problem.
Its too bad there is no major apple breeding program in say North Carolina, they would put rot near the top of the list of things to be concerned with. This is one reason why I don’t pay much attention to “disease-resistant” apples. For growers further north the Cummins list is very useful, though.
1 Like
Dave, I had my first Edelborsdorfer off my 3 year old B9 tree this year. I was pleasantly surprised as I never expect much from first apples. I’m over on the wet side of the mountains. We might set a new wettest October record ever I heard today, lol.
Carole
Here in the northeast, I find at some sites many varieties are adequately disease resistant. Cummins is likely going by commercial production guidelines. According to Tom Burford, some scab resistant varieties include Ark Black*, Ashmead’s K.* Black Twig, Bramley’s S.,Golden Russet* (also resistant to summer fungus, IME), Hudson’s G. G., Jefferis, King David*, Limbertwig*, Mother, Rox. Russet*, St. Ed. Pippin*, Spartan*, Stayman (old strain)*, Summer Rambo, Tompkins’ King, Tydman’s Early, Wolf River, Yates. * indicates also resistant to CAR.
I can vouch for some of these in NYS anecdotally.
2 Likes
Edelborsdorfer! How I long for mine - on Gen41 - to offer debut fruit. There is enough sun and cool night temperatures here that I expect it to be as sweet and nuanced as is possible.
Where are you? Spokane gets less than 15 inches of rain or its equivalent - except this last month. October '16 will probably stand for generations as the wettest month on record.
Have you tried your Edelborsdorfer apple yet? I’ve heard it can have some spiciness.
Yes, the first apple had nice lightly sweet, favorable apple with a more complex taste. I inhaled it too quickly to discern a flavor analogy though. I did think it was the kind of apple one could eat daily.
My hope is that Edelborsdorfer will prove to be useful several ways and keep three or four months. BTW, have you ever read the post put out by suttonelms.org: “Inbreeding and genetic narrowing of apple cultivars…” by Hans-Joachim Bannier?
He mentions Edelborsdorfer has strong disease resistance and is a robust tree. I hope so. It may be an excellent choice for breeding.
NC breeding programs have produced a lot of well know peach and blueberry variety and one blackberry variety, but no apples as far as I know. With the budget cut backs, most of the NC breeding efforts have declined substantially
You are right about the rot problem here. Summer rots are a huge problem in NC and folks got pounded by it this year, even the large commercial growers on a regular fungicide program. The recommendation sent to the commercial growers was to spray more frequently - perhaps every 5-7 days. The suggestion for brown rot which was especially bad was to spray captan, prophyt and merivon and pick.
I have a bunch of PRI apple variety that I really like. Some may be less succeptable to FB, or CAR but overall I don’t see much difference between the “disease resistant” apples and other apples in my climate
1 Like
I have noticed a similar thing. But, there are definitely degrees of resistance to rots and I had plenty of varieties that were almost completely clean in this rough year.
Which of your PRI apples suffered from rot the leas this year? My rot showed up pretty late and once it got started it was tough to control.
I don’t have enough of them fruiting now to state much about the PRI ones alone. GoldRush was excellent; Pristine is usually excellent but no fruit this year as its a small graft; Williams Pride is usually very good but watercores very badly; I have Enterprise and Pixie Crunch grafts but no fruit yet. I was more referring to apples marked “disease resistant” in various lists, I have found those lists mainly focus on scab which I don’t care about. Akane for example, it rots horribly. I am sure that on average they are better than a random apple in terms of rot, but I want highly rot-resistant.
1 Like
Cousinfloyd: I had Liberty among the first lot of apples purchased. It had little trouble with diseases, although it still had scab strikes on leaves and fruit of lower branches if I was lazy and did not clean up fallen leaves in the previous fall. Above all those that have fruited here - 10 so far - Liberty attracted coddling moth. Getting fruit sox around the tiny fruits early enough to beat the moths was well nigh impossible. I was pleased when I could get 90% success - one year! Liberty had the misfortune to grow only one side, which can happen on M26. I sold it and the dwarf tree is slowly filling out on the blank side.
I worked last season where two William’s Pride grow and tried the fruit early and late in its harvest. As much as 11 Brix, but no flavor or tartness in Spokane. The owner did nothing to deter coddling moth and the fruit was about 1/3 infested. If you live anywhere east of the Red and Mississippi Rivers, you should have mild enough nights to preserve some acid and get a nice product.
Some day I hope to try Pristine and Goldrush. Both have avid fans. Sounds like you made some good choices for a beginner. I jumped in and learned the hard way!
I had to move mine but its finally getting going and I should get a small crop this year again. Its one of my top-three early apples now.
1 Like
I cant say that my trees are exposed to a ton of diseases but CAR (Cedar Apple Rust) is a plague to me. So far the least susceptible tree seems to be my Enterprise Apple. I have a Granny Smith that was purchased from home depot and while I thought GS were CAR resistant it gets hit pretty hard. I have been spraying my orchard with fungicide religiously but the proximity of the cedars makes for a heavy spore load.
2 Likes
Wow, never seen the galls so big before.
1 Like
Yep. If only they were edible then I would be in business.
3 Likes
I had a tree like that. Fortunately it was on my property so I chopped it down 
If you are spraying a synthetic I would make sure to use myclotbutanil and not some other fungicide, it is extremely effective.