William's Pride apple - is it good?

David,
Not bleeding red yet. I recalled two years ago. (nothing last year), there were some redness along the rim of the fruit. Mine hardly have water core, either.

Hope you bend the WP branch to stimulate fruit bud development. This may be a bit late to do it, though.

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Thanks. Apple looks tasty. My Williams Pride scions were grafted to bud9 rootstock in 2015. It is its own tree now. Growing pretty well. I’d like to at least get a couple fruit from it next year. But none of my apples have bloomed yet.

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That one in the pic, when I was peeling the skin of that apple ( daughter does not eat skin), redness under the skin seep out. The knife had red juice on it. Forgot to take a pic,

The we we ate is a bit on a tart side but most of you would like it. The word refreshing would fit. It has enough crunch but not crunchy like Honey Crisp. It definitely not soft or not Delicious- like texture.

It is good for an early apple. Our local apples around here won’t come out until some time in Sept.

I hope all your trees bloom next year.

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WP does not have much red streaking as grown here. Famuese does (snow apple). I believe it’s an ancestor of WP so maybe it gets it some places some seasons.

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This is my only WP. I grafted this variety mid April and left just one apple there out of curiosity. I am surprised how vigorous the variety is (compared to the mother tree which is Galmac apple)

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This is Galmac (truly beautiful apple) which ripened about 14 days ago, WP should be around the same time but is ripening just now because it was grafted this year which gave it late start

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This was picked this morning, Im pretty sure its Williams Pride, but the labels fell off my multi-grafted tree so its somewhat guess work. Main problem I have with these apples is they are red and the birds pick the heck out of them. Every day several end up on the ground and those left on the tree, most end up with beak damage… Im in ND, 46 N… Some that arent getting as much sun are very green on the back side still and they seem prone to sunburn more than most of my other apples.

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Williams’ Pride on B.9 in full bloom today:

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Has anyone tried Redfree or Priscilla?

I have redfree. They are okay, but nothing special. For apple crisp, it isn’t near as good as when cortlands are used. They are an early apple, so are good for that quality. They don’t keep very long.

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My early apples are:
Pristine
Williams Pride
Zestar!

To answer is it good…yes, it is good but the other two are Fabulous!

My Williams Pride are ripening, If left on the tree they tend to get very dark but I think our hot temps tend to cause them to over ripen very fast to the point of being bland and softer than I prefer. For my location they seem to be best tasting when they are about half colored, At this point they are sweet/tart and in my opinion as good or better tasting as the Carolina Red June.

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WP is the best summer apple in our orchard, competing with Yellow transparent and Rajka.

Usually has some reddish flesh under the skin, especially the smaller fruits. Watercore can happen occassionally.

The tree is grafted on a seedling and is 10 years old. This year’s harvest comes after a 2-year break due to late frosts. There was hailstorm damage and severe over-fruiting. Despite all this fruit quality is good as always and it also keeps well for a summer apple, doesn’t go mealy easily or spoil either.

The flesh is crisp (I usually eat them with a knife), sweetish and on the dry side - maybe not ideal for baking but the apple sauce is (red and) very good. Very ripe fruit is popular with hornets - they hollow out the apples so just the skins keep hanging on the tree, looking fine from an unaffected angle until you try to pick them. Very creative :slight_smile:

No dfisease problems. Hardly any scab (possibly none) on leaves, none on fruits. All in all a very good variety.

(The photo also includes some Rajka.)

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Same in my environment, which is probably much cooler than yours. The WP are very good this season.

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I believe WP requires a cooler climate for sure. They did not like my zone 7B hot, humid climate at all. Even after six years my 25 WP trees on B9 produced almost no sellable fruit so I top worked the trees to Fuji. Seemed like a good idea at the time. The grafts all took well but the ambrosia beetles moved in and killed all the trees.

I’m really better off with the dead trees! I don’t have to prune them or spray them.

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My WP never did very well in my 7b/8a heat. I got a few good ones but most had extreme water core and bitter pit (I think). Sounds similar to reports from other southern growers. I chopped it down when it got fireblight in the trunk.

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I’m grafting my WP over to Monark next spring.

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An update to my previous post.

The picking season for WP this year was a full month (in zone 6/7), from the second week of July to the second week of August.

As the apples’ ripening season overlapped with raspberries (mostly Polka) and aronia (mostly Viking) I’ve prepared serious quantities of low sugar, high aroma jam. That should tide us over even we get two consecutive years of late frosts agin

Even when WP is cooked on its own the pulp still turns out red - seemingly the red flush just under the skin is sufficient for this.

Having been picked, the apples would stand outside on a wooden table for a week or two without going bad. I was not experimenting with the time, this is just how long it took to process the waiting queue :slight_smile:

There was, amazingly, no watercore despite the huge quantity of apples. It used to happen before. In my understanding watercore is related to a deficiency of calcium - our low pH soil and an abundant crop would naturally lead to that; so the absence was a surprise. Possibly it could be explained by the fact that the tree is grafted on a seedling and is now 10 years old (so it has a strong and mature root system).

Normally watercore is the only recurring problem I notice on our WP. No scab or at least no scab in a way that would affect the fruit. Leaves may sometimes look kinda tired and spotty but the fruit is always Snow white - class. Nice fragrant blossoms.

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To me they are just like Macintosh.

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I just let my WP dropped by themself. They have dropped a couple of fruit every day for the past few weeks.

Today I tapped the tree so more dropped. I will give them to friends. This year’s wet summer has affected many fruit that ripened these past few weeks including WP. I don’t have a water core issue here.

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