Apple comparison chart on Reddit drawing a lot of interest

Read through the comments and see what you think.

It is in https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/davkj5/

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First I saw “most tart”, then “Granny Smith” and that makes me question this chart. A tree ripened Granny Smith is yellow and quite sweet.
Reading through the comments at reddit I would say that most of the posters are big store customers, not growers. For example I do not share that Red Delicious hate. Sure, it’s not among the best, but is pretty decent apple (from the tree).

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My first thought is that the chart is misleading. You can rank apples by sugar content, i.e. from least sweet to most sweet very easily with brix. I suspect they are rating “tart” based on acidity which is not a very good measure of tartness. I would have to make a second chart and rank from least acid to most acid. This would of course make it much harder to make a selection given the difficulty most of us would have integrating two charts. We would just have to sit down and sample some apples to see which we like most. :slight_smile: :smiley: :open_mouth:

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I saw this and it made me smile even though i disagree with alot of there assertions, its nice seeing the public grow more interest in varieties and started a good conversation.

Now i absolutely love fresh off the tree golden delicious and one of my favourite old apple trees when i was younger was what i believe a grimes golden to be.

There is only one tree in my neighborhood that makes awful apples its a red delicious and the owners cant even give away the apples. Fresh off the tree they taste like a bad store based red delicious apple, and i know the real delicious apple is very good.

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It’s going to be “what normal people think about apples”, whereas this is “what people who grow 50 different cultivars in their yard think about apples”.

It’s reddit… Go to reddit.com/r/gardening and it’s mostly people who make me feel like a very experienced gardener, in other words the opposite of this place. Every other category (i.e. /r/personalfinance) just seems entry level.

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I completely agree with @Joe. I have very limited experience with reddit, but from what I have seen it appears to be the place on the internet where people go to argue.

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i found macs, corts, empire and macoun are sweet apples in my area. i consider y. transparent, duchess and wolf river to be more tart but thats whats i have experience in z3b. granny smith is bland tasting for me but I’ve never tried one from the tree. honeycrisp grows here but i don’t care for it. it has no complexity just sweet. the deliciouses here are even worse.

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I love comparison charts and Reddit, but apple charts like this annoy me because they are too linear/simple. They assume that an apple can’t be really tart AND really sweet. I had a huge Jonagold like this last year. It was really flavorful too, which made it a bit overwhelming and hard to eat half of it in one sitting. 2 separate rankings for sweet/brix and tart/acidity would be better.

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The biggest mistake there is Pacific Rose. It has no tartness whatsoever, I would put it next to Fuji. Ambrosia is also only “sweet water”

When I want an apple I know I will not spit out, I pick a Fuji.
Is it sweeter than a tree-ripened red delicious–No. (But we all know most red delicious anymore taste like sawdust and sugar water).

When I feel adventurous, I may pick any number of apples. Variety they say is the spice of life.

But I have to ask concerning the post about Granny Smith being sweet when tree ripened.
How do you know? Must have a good spray schedule.
( I can never get a tree-ripened Granny without spraying. They always rot,
and bees start eating next to the rot.) I planted my tree in 1991…and if I decide to get rid of a couple trees, Granny and one called Anoka will be first to go.

I like the chart, even if some of the entries may need a shuffle in some parts of the country.

My problem with Granny Smith was that it’s a very late ripening variety and I got a truly ripe fruits off it once in 3 or 4 years. That was the main reason to remove it. Other than that the maggots were a serious problem because back then I did not sprayed.

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The thread has an astounding 2.3 thousand or so replies on reddit, so the takeaway, besides the generally middling quality of the drivel over there, which I didn’t actually read much of, is that lots of people are interested in apple varieties and have just enough experience to descant upon some that are considerably more obscure than just the half-dozen that are supposed to be “in commerce.”

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One of the replies: “These are all also good stripper names”

looks at Granny Smith :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :thinking:

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