I have four young apple trees. Honeycrisp, Fuji, and Granny Smith., plus a crab apple, that was planted for pollination. However, I found out that the three varieties that I have will pollinate each other. So, I would like to get a yellow apple to take the crab apple’s place. Actually I want to get at least one scion and try my hand at grafting. I have successfully grafted citrus. I guess I could try to put several different ones on it. Any recommendations? I am leaning toward Gold Rush for one.
Come January or thereabouts bring up the subject and you’ll find plenty of people willing to give, swap, or sell more scions that you can ever use- so many varieties you’ll be buying land to plant orchards to try them all!
Personally I love Liberty, Rubinette, Karmijn d’ Sonnaville, Wealthy, Jonagold, Macoun, for starters. I’m excited to sample Caville Blanc, and Gold Rush, and there are dozens of others I’ve forgotten.
But it’s all good. If it does well in your area grow it!
Patented varieties whose owners only let growers who join the “club” grow them, they are often limited by geography. This is actually a good thing for the consumer. See the decline in the quality of Honeycrisp. These days supermarkets are full of Honeycrisp with hardly any color other than yellow, because they are being grown in areas that are less than ideal for the variety. After the plants are off patent then anyone should be able to obtain them.
SweeTango apples come only from these growers. And their exclusive rights could last forever, because SweeTango is not just covered by a patent. The name SweeTango is also a trademark, which never expires. And for every bushel of SweeTango apples that these growers sell, they pay a royalty to the University of Minnesota.
I assume this means that after the patent expires all you need is one guy getting scionwood from one grower, and then home owners can buy it just under a different name.
Wow,I never would have thought that club apples went this deep! When I first read about them I thought that they were a slice of apple that one would put in a mixed drink. Very interesting nonetheless.
You might consider an earlier apple such as Ginger Gold. This year a couple different people declared that apples of this variety that I gave them off my tree were the best they’d ever eaten. Of course these were people used to supermarket apples anyway, but it is a very good early yellow delicious type.
Many on this forum wouldn’t restrict their varieties to 4 when they have 4 trees, but if you love apples, at least half your crop should be for long term storage- Fuji and Granny Smith fill that role. However, Goldrush stores better than Granny, so you may want to at least try grafting that variety to one of your trees- maybe the crab. It is yellow instead of Granny’s green and has higher brix- more sugar and more acid. .
