I think you meant to say watercore in WP? I rarely get watercore in Gold Rush. WP was 100% watercore, 100% of the time
Are they not worth growing due to this?
Yes, WP.
Some people love watercore, others hate it. I donât mind it myself but apples that watercore donât store nearly as long. I ended up taking out the graft since I had far too many varieties crammed where it was.
Okay, I said screw it and just ordered the Williamâs Pride apple on M7 and an Ubileen Pear from One Green World.
Glad I pulled the trigger.
If you ever decide to grow Goldrush there is a whole forum here that would probably be happy to send you scions. I got my graft of it from someone here (sorry I forgot who). Happily I have evidence that it is Goldrush, as it is true to type and has some CAR. ha.
Oh and I have some seedlings that get CAR, but they havenât lost leaves due to it yet, but Iâm not sure if it causes defoliation as bad as scab. I vaguely recall @alan saying CAR susceptibility isnât as big of a fault as scab susceptibility.
I was planning to try and graft some GR if I could get scions. I know I have CAR fairly badly being in a suburb surrounded by host trees and I didnât want to risk losing an entire tree. The trees that do have CAR have the marks but continue to grow new leaves, so thatâs a plus.
Maybe not all watercore is equal. This year it seems to arrive with lots of bitter off taste- at least at one site on Tompkins King. Usually TK tastes fine with water core, and here, it usually has some. Iâve also tasted off tasting watercore of other varieties this season. Seems some fermentation may be coming with it.
Ok I got some fruit this year. I got hit with such a hard frost in mid-may that I lost most of the pears and about 1/2 of my apples. My peaches and tart cherry crops were great. Moving on to apples. My MacIntosh (LindaMac) is very close to harvest. Here are shots of Albemarle Pippen, Haralson, McIntosh and Red Delicious. At least they have a crop. The rest of my apples have just a handful per tree.
Fine looking fruit!
Wow Spartan, thatâs a lot of apples. Good work.
I havenât gotten that many yet, but we had fun picking the ones we had!
Very cute Apple pickers you got!
I could use a few of your helpers to pick some of my apples! My crop of
âhelpersâ have now gone to college or are too
I stopped out last night at the orchard and found my NW Greening that I grafted a few years ago is ripe too. I will have to get them picked this weekend. They are my favorite pie apple. They get so big I donât need many to make a pie. They have a very distinct taste that is in my top 5 for best pie apples. This variety originated in my home state of Wisconsin in the late 19th century. I find them best when just getting a yellow blush and the skin starts to get waxy. Time to make some pies!
Iâll send them up for a weekend, could use a little break. As you know parenting is a nonstop adventure. The older one just started kindergarden, the middle one preschool, and the baby just had to climb the ladder after watching her sisters do it.
We do a lot of pick your own apples at local orchards, but our whole family agreed the apples from our tree tasted better. Makes me happy.
Spartan, how old are your trees?
Howâd your bagging work for you?
Very well. I think I bagged about 10 apples. I also sprayed these apples with Surround and Spinosad at pedal drop and when they were about dime sized, before they were big enough to bag. Three fell from the tree about one week early but were still edible. The remainder were spotless.
Just to experiment I did not bag approximately 10 apples and sprayed them with Surround and Spinosad four times and not within the last month they were on the tree. They were bug free also but had tiny circles of black dots, (is there something called fly speck perhaps). These marks had no effect on quality or taste. I will continue to bag in the future though I can see this being a daunting task if my plans come to fruition.
My trees are mixed in age. Some are at least 12-15 years old. Others are perhaps
6-8 years. They got planted over a long time period. Just planted a potted peach the other day as the price was right (free). Some I personally grafted, some were free and others I purchased bare-root. Fruit is a disease to people like us as we never stop wanting more. I am always finding room for âjust a few more treesâ even though I do not need any more fruit. We give some away and process a lot. Our gifts to friends/family at Christmas often are jams,jellies, canned fruit ect that we
put up ourselves.
Now that my daughter in college has an apartment (nice kitchen) we will make a run to visit and also drop off some fruit for her while there. I think her and her roommate will use some up for us.
I sometimes get some flyspeck on bagged fruit, and sooty blotch - but not more than unbagged