Those Jonathans look beautiful, Al. That’s some work bagging 900(?!?!) apples. We picked up some Jonathans from an orchard recently, and they were very tart, but still very good. They probably should’ve sat for a week before we ate them to maybe let them sweeten up, but they were hard to resist. Are yours like that?
Those yellow apples look kinda like Grimes Golden, but they are related so I guess there will be some similarities. Did these trees put out any fruit last year, and were they smaller then compared to this year after you had pruned them? What a treat to have two nice old apple trees already there when you moved in.
Thanks. These have been tart–I’ve been sampling several a week for probably 3 weeks now. The first non-tart one I had was today. I noticed that it had a brown cap on it, similar to the ones in my pic earlier. Tomorrow I’ll sample a few from the tree, but I expect it might be another week before we pick.
900 bags is easy when you only do 75-100 per evening. It doesn’t take long, and it’s very relaxing.
Both trees were covered with fruit–all tiny, misshapen, disease-ridden, and bug-laden. I was only brave enough to sample 4 bites.
This year I thinned heavily, particularly on the big tree (the suspected Golden Delicious, or could it be a Grimes?). The payoff is evident. Next year, I’ll thin more heavily still. I’m new at this, with my education borne primarily from reading, not from experience!
We have some old, tall apple trees on the family farm. My wife calls them Milam’s, an old heirloom that I haven’t found a lot of info on. We have 3 close to us, and there are 3 others on other parts of the family farm. We had only 2 trees set fruit this year, so I thinned quite a bit of them, that is, the parts I could reach. Plus I did a lot of pruning of those I could get to. These trees are huge, about 20’+, so there’s a lot of them I couldn’t touch.
Well, fast forward to now, it doesn’t appear that it helped much at all, the fruit are still very small (about 1 inch diameter). But, when ripe they don’t get much bigger than a golf ball. Plus, they’re just riddled with insect damage and sooty blotch. Not appealing at all. I didn’t do any spraying, but I wasn’t sure what to spray.
We had a very wet spring, and one of the trees seemed to get a bad case of fireblight, so that made the fruit look worse. So, not a very good year for the old trees.
Hopefully, the new trees we planted this spring will do well for us in the coming years.
Most recently picked:
Northfield Beauty Sep 4 — tree going out in glory; it was girdled last winter, but had its best crop ever.
Detroit Red Sep 6 — first harvest for this tree; tart with only hint of sweetness; made a nice pie
Magog Sep 9 — this is the first year the apples reached close to supposed giant size.
Porter Sep 10 — full tree this year, and better flavor than previous years, if still a cooking apple
Autumn Crisp Sep 11 — some years apples have been too tart; this year has a much fuller flavor. Redeemed itself.
Mother Sep 11 — harvested earlier this year. As good as Autumn Crisp was, Mother out shined it in rich well-balanced flavor. On my list of best flavored apples.
An interesting apple festival to occur this Saturday (Sept. 16, 2017) in Schaeffertown, Pennsylvania-- a really beautiful place. Cider and apple-butter discussions. Museum on Pennsylvania-German farming. I will be attending with family to check it out. Here’s the link:
Edit:
Apparently this event will be held on Sunday as well (Sept. 17, 2017).
Bumping up this thread one more time so folks near Pennsylvania might learn about tomorrow’s apple/farm festival. See previous post for the details. See you there!
Here are some shots of a few apples picked late last week. I need to get back to the orchard tonight and finish picking the last of the September ripening apples. The horrible hot temps we had the past 5 days (85-90 degrees) sure have hastened ripening. I feel guilty for taking off a few days for some trout fishing and not getting all the apples picked. Here are shots of Honeycrisp and another shot of NW Greening with a few Cortland on top. I grafted the Cortland and Greening myself so they have special meaning to me. Success!
Beautiful. And congrats on the success of your grafting. How do they taste? I’ve had Cortland and Honeycrisp, but never really heard about a Greening apple.
Lots of greenings existed in the past. N.W. Greening originated in my home state of WI in the 19th century supposedly near the town of Waupaca. Very large apple, cold hardy thru zone 4 and has a distinct flavor when used in an apple pie. It is still popular in Minnesota and the west side of Wisconsin but sadly almost never available in SE WI where I live. I have a few favorite apple varieties for pie and I would rate this one in the top 5. Here is a close up of one of them.
I believe another one called Patten Greening originated in Iowa. I have never had the opportunity of trying that one to see if any difference in flavor to NW Greening when made into a pie.
Now that this thread is re-awakened I see this from last year … the deer are huge Hunge fans, they reached pretty high to get most of the ones I had. I did get a couple, they were picked a bit too early (beat the deer) but were still good with that unique cheddar cheese or whatever component to the flavor. They were not sweet enough due to too-early picking. They don’t rot at all, they are a real southern apple.
No apples for me. Planted my one and only Apple tree last year. It’s hanging in there. I don’t see apples in my near future. Love seeing pictures of all your apples though.
I’m not sure about the rootstock. Tag only said standard size. Actually my husband picked it up in a store because I’ve been looking for a Fuji and he found one!
Now it also has couple of other varieties grafted on from wood I got from you this past spring. Hoping it will take off next year!
If it is indeed a standard rootstock, it may take more years than you want to know. Keep an eye out on its growth. Don’t let it get out of hand. It is no fun climbing a ladder to pick fruit.
Waiting patiently for gold rush, they look to be a little earlier this year. They are starting to get some light gold color with the green and the cheeks are already blushed. Can’t wait
This is the first year in 8 to 10 that I haven’t had to supplement our fruit (fresh, sauce, dried) with outside purchases. So nice!! Thanks mainly to a bumper Dudley crop, but the others helped. My first, and only, FrostBite didn’t add a lot but it was the most exciting! It dropped a few days ago. I haven’t eaten it yet (still admiring). Dudleys are just done – been harvesting those all month, many eaten, sauced, and dried, and still a bushel left to store and a bushel of smalls to press (thankfully the weather finally cooled down so my root cellar is cooling). Black Oxford still on the tree and I’ll be picking those soon for storage. A light crop but nice (only it’s second year of cropping). The other two are from wild, but managed, trees with decent fruit. My husband is now wondering what I plan to do when all those trees we’ve been grafting start producing. Can’t wait to have that ‘problem’! Happy end of September. Sue
