The wife nixed my latest plan. I emailed Century Farm Orchards asking about availability of GoldRush on M111 and Hooples on M7, since I understand GoldRush grows down a size. It doesn’t look like they carry anything in M7 right now but they have the rootstock, so it’s worth asking. I’ll see if she lets me sneak in the Rubinette and Suncrisp on G.41 from Cummins, since they’re tiny trees and I really want to grow those, but 6 apple trees (even if they’re small) is not going to work with her. At this point GoldRush and Hooples are the two I want the most.
Cummins ran out of stock on Harrow Sweet pear and Crimson Crisp apple on me after I had already reserved them, but at this point I think I’m the worse customer than they are a seller.
If I remember correctly, they should keep well into the end December if bagged and refrigerated. They degrade quickly by the end of January. That goes for Macoun and Empire as well. I tend to think of those three as siblings for some reason.
Yeah, the plan at the start was to get a mother tree (Crimson Crisp) and a Goldrush. I suddenly had a change of heart after being wowed not by a Hooples but from an ordinary old strain Golden Delicious in a very wet year. I do want to graft other varieties of apples. Suncrisp and Rubinette scionwood seems to be available only from other growers on this site, the antique cultivars like Ashmead’s Kernel and Spitz are easily obtainable from a lot of places. I’d expect Goldrush to ripen here, it seems to ripen just fine for @BobVance and @alan. Do you have trouble ripening Goldrush in central Mass?
I’m contemplating dumping the Potomac pear, since I already have a Harrow Sweet on order, and just tossing the dwarf Suncrisp and Rubinette trees over where I wanted to plant the Potomac. Or just giving my wife a break and offering to cancel the order on all three of those trees. Pear pollination isn’t an issue. I have two neighbors with ornamental pears and one growing an unnamed eating pear.
I’m also thinking about grafting onto the peach and nectarine maybe after this year. The idea I have is to keep the trees with an open center and keep the original wood on one scaffold, replacing the other two scaffolds with different scionwood. Doing this would give me 6 peach/nectarine varieties between two trees. That should be plenty, as long as both trees remain alive.
I was similarly surprised by Ginger Gold. The bad weather didn’t affect its flavor at all. However, it needs a spray program as it seems susceptible to rotting and is a bug magnet.
Last year was my first year of GR fruiting. They were 80% ripe, meaning small part of each fruit was still greenish. The good thing was that because they were not fully ripe, they kept well until April this year.
That makes me wonder. You’re basically a zone down from me and I’m sure it gets colder quicker there than it does here in Southeastern CT. That might make a difference. Does your GR get optimal sun? I just did a very quick search and found a PYO orchard in Deerfield, MA, which is north of Springfield off I-91 almost in Vermont, that grows GoldRush.
Of course, picking a lot them green and storing them for the winter is part of the plan.
I’ve had Cortlands degrade in a month and assumed that was the norm. Things can vary season to season- location to location. If you live long enough and learn enough you may one day be an expert of your own orchard. I’m hoping.
If you visit Deerfield, bring your wife and kids to the Yankee Candle store there. This is closer to Christmas, the place will be very attractive to kids…
I wound up going with your recommendation of Kidd’s to go along with Hoople’s and GoldRush.
Now I have a crabapple tree at my parent’s house a mile away that I can attempt to top work. I read The Apples of New York last weekend and was looking at Hocking Hill’s list yesterday. I’m pretty set on getting some Rubinette scion, and am thinking Arkansas Black might be a good one as well since it’s supposed to be pretty reliable and can produce good apples even if I do a bad job spraying. It’d be nice to have a 2nd long-term storage apple in case I get nothing from GoldRush.
I thought about Newtown Pippin since it’s held in such high regard in The Apples of New York but the book says that apple’s quality can be very variable depending on the location with the Hudson Valley being one of the good spots. Not sure if being slightly upland a hundred miles or so to the east makes much difference? If this was a good location for growing Newtown Pippin apples they would have mentioned it in the book. I saw a comment from @alan mention that it doesn’t perform well.
Ashmead’s Kernal is widely regarded as a top apple but I’ve seen reports here that it doesn’t produce very well.
This brings me back to Alan’s praise for Esopus Spitzenburg. The scab susceptibility is the only hangup I have with trying this.
It takes quite a while to bear and I grafted Pink Lady over my only tree that shades it’s branches excessively at this point. I have not given it a fair test, but it also has a tendency for corking under the PL.
However, when ripe, the apple itself is world class. I used to eat them as a child in CA that were sold as “the ugly apple that tastes good”. It’s actually not ugly, but not as pretty as Red Delicious that the motto was based on.
I will continue to grow the variety and reduce the PL shading it. It is in bearing mode now. It’s tardy bearing makes me reluctant to use it much as a nursery tree- people are impatient.
Interesting. It’s not an early bearer here in Northern California, where it’s fairly common. The yellow/Albemarle variant appears to be predominant. I don’t pick mine until at least November, and usually still have some hanging in January (when the robins will suddenly appear and finish them off).
The Apples of New York notes that the Yellow Newtown is “more vigorous and more erect than that of Green Newtown”. It says the tree of Green Newtown is “a rather slow grower or moderately vigorous, of medium size or sometimes becoming large. Laterals shorter, twisted, spreading and drooping more than those of Yellow Newtown”.
I’d say Cummins must be selling the Yellow Newtown Pippin, but the second paragraph of their description begins with “The Green Newtown Pippin”.
Trees I got from Cummins appear to be the green version based on apple color when ripe. I have some in my nursery that are from the west and are called Yellow. I haven’t noticed a major difference in growth habit, but I haven’t been looking for it- however both are upright growers and on 111 both versions are slow to bear. My nursery trees never seem to bear any fruit, even at 5 years.
Newton Pippin isn’t actually bad looking- just green… Ashmead’s Kernel is actually a bit ugly. It also gets rots and sometimes bitter pit. Here’s one next to a Golden Russet (much smoother skin). The Golden Russet gets attacked by wasps, but has been an easier apple to grow for me.
Russets have their advantages and this was the best year for Golden Russet in memory- coddling moth is actually worse against it for me than Yellow Jackets and are not much defended against in my 2 insecticide app basic system. CM pressure was way down this year.
CM was much less an issue than usual with my Korean Giant pear as well, but I did give it one extra app as defense against stink bugs.
Ashmeads sometimes drop and sometimes hold onto the tree forever with no relationship to ripeness. The variety is not a good producer for me either and biennial is an understatement. However, when properly ripened it is a very impressive apple to my palate.
I’m waiting to see if my own Golden Russet apples on a single big branch reach the quality they are sometimes capable of. At the site I brought you to in Bedford I’ve never been that impressed with it and consider other apples far superior- including Goldrush, Braebern and, of course, Spitz. Even Baldwin has often been a worldclass apple when GR has seemed so-so to me.
I have tasted Golden Russet in the past that at the time I thought were great. Maybe my tastes have changed.
My tree has finally come into strong (at least on my scale) production. It’s been a bit slower than some other varieties (planted 2013) on B9, but wasn’t too bad.
I’ve always been a big fan of Golden Russet- at least some of them. I’ve tasted apples called Golden Russet which must have been mislabled. While most russets have good brix, I’ve seen 1 kind at the farmers market which is bland and low brix each year. Another guy has Golden Russets which are good in some years and not others (and sometimes very small).
The ones I’ve gotten off my tree (small crops for the last 2-3 years and more this year) all seem pretty good. Though this year I’m mostly eating the drops and damaged ones so far. I just had one which was 17-19 brix. In the past, I’ve see 20-22 at their peak. If you eat them in mid September, they are a 13-14 brix sweet apple (not bad, but not great). In mid/late October, they become candy.
