I was out thinning apples today and noticed a lot (maybe half) of my Hudson’s Golden Gem apples are cracked. It’s been pretty rainy of late, but I don’t see any other apples cracked.
Anyone else have cracking with apples on M27 rootstocks, or Hudson’s Golden Gem? I’d be interested to narrow down the cause. If nobody is having trouble with either, maybe I can figure it out in a few years when my nearby HGG graft (on a Sweet16 on B9) is bearing .
Similar here, this is the 2nd time this has happened to my Hooples Antique Gold which hasn’t yet matured fruit. The year in between it didn’t set anything. I think I have Hooples grafted to another tree that doesn’t do this.
Is it disease? Mineral deficiency? The leaves don’t look bad:
I was being patient before asking again. It’s only been 7 years
Actually, in the intervening years, I’ve had other apples crack. And most often, it seems to be russets. St Edmunds Pippin in particular, but I think I’ve also seen it on Ashmeads. I don’t think I’ve seen it on Golden Russet.
It’s not apples. but close enough, I guess. I have this happening on a summer blood pear grafted on quince. The tree puts up monster growth (not quite typical of quince rootstock, but it’s a Leskovac seedling, which I suspect is the cause of this), so it gets water in excess. It always happens after a long rainy period in early summer, when we get continental monsoon weather. The pears are way earlier than others and are a little sweet even a month before ripening. As the tree grows, the more fruit and leaf matter there is, the lower the ratio of split vs unaffected fruit.
Does that DNA parentage flowchart have St Edmunds Pippin on it? I’d be interested to see if it’s an ancestor to Grime’s Golden/Golden Delicious/Hudson’s Golden Gem. Cummin’s says Hudson’s is prone to cracking the first couple years.
Now that I think about it, the only apples I’ve had crack after too much rain were Reinette grise on Antonovka rootstock with another vigorous variety in between. I assumed it was the combination of vigorous rootstock and the toughness of the skin. It was the same year that all fruit on my summer blood pear cracked. Another russet that is in a dryer location and very close to a large 100+ year old pear had no split fruit at all.
Your Hooples has much more solid russeting than mine which is fruiting for the first time this year as a graft on another tree. No cracking issues here. But we also don’t typically get summer rains.
