I’m looking for some of the earliest apples and of course the ones listed above always seem to come up durring research. However, I’ve not seen much information on how they would do in my area (Zone 6b/7a on the KY/TN border). I know these were developed for extreme warmer areas (I think they were created in Israel and often grown in Florida!) so I understand that they have very short chill hours required. But I’m not sure how that would translate to colder areas like mine (colder than Florida and Israel I mean). I wonder if they would bloom on the first warm streak they encounter after chill hours are met, because we almost always have a week or so of “Indian Summer” where it can even be in low 70’s or 60’s for 5-7 days in the winter, only to be followed by weeks of winter weather and occasional lows in the teens. So my fear is these trees would bloom in the winter once chill hours are me and if (when) we have an unusual warm streak. I have this problem with one of my pluots.
But I am very much attracted to the idea of an apple than comes in so early I could even put some in my late peach gift boxes (late August/early September). If you folks think the apples I listed wouldn’t work for me OR that they just aren’t very good apples, then perhaps you could recommend some better apples that are very early- especially disease resistant? Thanks all
thecityman, I don’t know your experieces in past…if any…but I’ll throw a few names out there:
Williams Pride, Williams Favorite, Pristine…all early August and disease resistant.
Lodi, Red June, Yellow Transparent, Anoka, Geneva Early and Lowland Raspberry are others I can think of that are early and also plenty winter hardy…but can’t vouch for disease resistance.
I’m what I consider zone 6b in Kentucky…although based on the current winter would be classed a zone 7a.
The trick with some of the early apples might be getting them to keep until late August/early Sept. I only have two early apples that are bearing thus far: Pristine and Yellow Transparent. Pristine kept much better, and tasted better to me than Yellow Transparent. We made the yellow transparent into apple chips, although we preferred chips made from other apples that had just a little more flavor (e.g., Gravenstein). Both have held up ok so far with CAR pressure – we’ll see if that continues. I think Lodi is mostly the same as Yellow Transparent so I didn’t bother planting it.
All of these are GREAT answers and I very much appreciate them. For those that recommended other apples, was that only because the ones I listed won’t work for me or aren’t good, or did you just want to give me more options.
@snowflake , I appreciate your comment about my listed choices maybe not lasting until late August. I take it you mean they will come in so early that they may not store that long. THat would be fine. I have some other apples in the pipeline that might be in at tat time. I’m looking for super early apples simply for the novelty of it…everyone thinks of apples in association with fall. Having apples in late summer (or even earlier) would be a big surprise to the people I know and would want to give them t0. I also very much appreciated the CAR information. Dumb as it sounds, I have a huge cedar of some kind just feet from my orchard. Also, it gets those big spore balls (I suspect there is a better name but you know what I mean haha) on it so I know it is involved in actively propagating the disease.
@Blueberry- to answer your question, my past experience, especially with apples, is VERY LITTLE! So I appreciate any advice for sure. BTW, and I apologize if I’ve asked you this before, but what part of KY are you in? I’m in South Central, very close to Franklin, KY and 20 min south of Bowling Green (though I’m about 1/4 mile south of KY state line in TN).
I’m not totally familiar with the varieties you listed but some of the early apples are very early, so I thought that might be something to watch for. I planted some early ones not really caring if they kept well or not. I just wanted to pick some apples early
As Blueberry mentioned, Pristine is supposed to be one of the better early apples. It was developed by the PRI program, and has good disease resistance. It’s a sweet/tart, crisp yellow apple. It should be pretty hardy.
I planted one on M7 in '16. It got off to a slow start, but looks good now, with several good wide angled branches. It’s not a huge tree, about 5ft tall, and kinda spindly, but I hope it may give us some apples for the first time this year.
thecityman….I think we did comment once a year or so as to where we were located…I’m near Somerset and Lake Cumberland.
Your other question…I don’t have experience with the apples on your initial short list. But, you were looking for other choices I thought. My guess is if you live in the Bahamas or McAllen, TX…those you mentioned probably would be among only a few apples that would work.
Where you are near Scottsville KY, you have lots and lots of options. But, in this area, disease resistance will be important if you don’t plan to spray trees.
Still, the worst ‘disease’ I’ve had was the 17-year cicadas over the last 30 or so years.
Here is what I got from my young pristine apple this year on bud 118. Pristines in the crisper. I don’t recall too much tart in them, but they weren’t bland either. I liked the taste. I’m happy with the shape of the tree and my daughter liked being able to reach the apples to pick. I swear I thinned the fruit but it ended up with a lot. I wanted to have some weight on the branches. First pic is July 20, and the apples in the crisper were Aug 3. Probably ripe a little earlier than usual this year. I didn’t spray anything and they weren’t bothered too much.
Nice tree and good looking fruit, especially with no spraying. So you said they weren’t tart, so I guess pretty sweet, and how was their texture? Also, how old is your tree, and how tall would you say it was at that time? I imagine a B118 tree will get pretty large eventually, right? Just curious as to what other varieties you have bearing.
Can’t wait for my tree to produce, this will be its fourth year, it hasn’t even bloomed the first three years.
I’m not great at describing tastes. For me, the pristine had a nice balance of sweet and tart. It had a nicely firm crunch. I ate the hell out of them Maybe not as good as some later apples but good. The yellow transparent was more dry in comparison if I recall correctly. That was its fourth season in the ground. The tree might get a good size possibly limited by climate. I did a mix of more full size tree rootstocks to get better anchoring and drought resistance. I did a bunch of antonovka for the long term, and then b118 and mm111 to maybe get fruit sooner. We had some late freezes in 2017 so I didn’t see much, and I pinched off the fruit that tried to grow.
We also had baldwin (liked), sansa (liked), liberty (not a fan, and bug magnet), freedom (not sure, maybe kind of like liberty), keepsake (liked, my son’s favorite, long keeper, on antonovka), gravenstein (not sure, tart, made awesome apple chips), roxbury russet (kind of lost touch with them in the fridge). We have some others that made a few apples but not enough to get an impression.
I dare say that is the shortest B118 mature tree I’ve ever seen. However it’s all in the way you shape them, the way you have it, that’ll be a monster producer forever.
I’m sure it will get taller, but if it stays weeping like that, I will be happy. If the deer start bothering, it will need to get a little taller. For now, our dog seems to do a good job keeping the deer away, and I like the picking height.
Thanks for the report, sounds like you have a nice mix of varieties. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Baldwin, a good old apple from New England, so might try a graft of that one day.
The only other ones we have in common are Rox Russet and Liberty. I think the RR ought to give us a few fruit this year, as it’s also 4th leaf, it’s a G30 tree and has become quite large. My Liberty is a G202 tree, but smaller, so I don’t think it’ll produce this year.
I don’t have any trees on the rootstocks you have except maybe a M111 Macoun. It’s also the same age as the others and has become quite a handful. I don’t know if it’ll fruit this year, but I’ve worked on pulling down branches to promote that. My other trees are a mishmash of G (11, 16, 202, 210, 222, 30, 890) and M7 rootstocks.
I imagine you picked your rootstocks because of your location? Which of the three came into production sooner?
We can easily go a month or two without rain, and usually have fairly low rainfall overall, so I picked those rootstocks with that in mind. I didn’t really want mm111, but that’s what some of the varieties were on at the time before I started grafting myself. By and large, the mm111 and b118 had the most production this year (didn’t notice a big difference), although we did have a young keepsake on antonovka that surprised me with a fair number of apples. Also, a liberty on antonovka had a few, but not as many as a liberty on b118 which went gangbusters (but then that seems to be the nature of a liberty). I’ll most likely graft the liberty on antonovka to something else. If we hadn’t had the freezes in 2017, the liberty on b118 would have been loaded. There was another as well that I pinched off (can’t recall which…maybe pristine on b118 or yellow transparent on mm111).
I have Anna and Dorset gold and they are blooming now! I am in the midlands of SC/zone 8b. These trees were planted in 2012 when I started fruit growing. They were suggested by the local nursery. We usually have a late cold snap in March, but I have gotten fruit from them. They can get fire blight if that is a concern in your area. I am only sharing my experience as a rookie ( and I mean that - no false modesty here!!!) so take this with a grain of salt. Best of luck!
Richard Fahey in upstate New York grew Anna, and said that it was just another fall apple there with mediocre quality. Here it blossoms right now and ripens the last week of June. Yellow Transparent is probably the earliest you’ll get.
So I appreciate any advice for sure. BTW, and I apologize if I’ve asked you this before, but what part of KY are you in? I’m in South Central, very close to Franklin, KY and 20 min south of Bowling Green (though I’m about 1/4 mile south of KY state line in TN).
