Not sure if this fits anywhere else, so I’m starting a new thread.
The homely Ashmead’s Kernel.
'Not gonna win any beauty pageants, for sure . . . this apple makes up for that in taste. I don’t know if anyone else here is a fan - but this is one of my favorite apples. Kind of a brownish green. I’d say, russeted. Rough sandpaper skin.
Crisp texture and crisp taste. Combination of tart and sweet. Stores well. Great candidate for a pie. I like to quarter them and peel - before eating ‘out of hand’.
Here are 2 of mine. I have an M7 tree - trained horribly . . . but never the less - this year I have lots of these A.K.'s.
Great looking AK. I have one tree of the AK as well. Mine is also on a M-7 rootstock. That rootstock was all it was available on in 2017. It fell over 3 or 4 times while it was growing. I finally had to put a permanent stake in the ground to get it mostly upright. M-7 trait.
Great apple. I have some on my tree this year. Not as many as it sounds like you have. Still a great apple to have in your orchard. If it wasn’t that great of an apple I would have pulled it out by now. I will take a photo of a few of mine to show you. Mine are not ripe yet.
@39thparallel You are so right. Ashmead’s is a real slow poke. I’ve been waiting since my tree was planted in 2018.
@MikeC I had the same issues. I didn’t lose mine, but I did lose a Grimes Golden tree. Fell over in a storm. Couldn’t save it. So I staked the other M7s - including AK.
My apples have a lot of ugly stuff this year. Looks like a couple of different things. I’m going to post a question to be sure.
So far I’ve tasted Keepsake, Early Mac, King David, Akane, WineCrisp, Enterprise, Liberty, some unripe Goldrush, Monark . . . and I really only cared for the Akane, Winecrisp, and Ashmeads Kernel. When the Goldrush mature . . . if they can dodge that rot - I’m sure they’ll be great. Looks like I was very busy grafting apples a couple of years ago . . . because I still have Grimes Golden, Arkansas Black, Cortland, Johnson’s Keeper, American Golden Russet, and Sweet 16 to try! Probably a couple more that I just cannot recall.
If you had to name a favorite - of you apples . . . which would it be?
I think that most of my apples this year have been a bit tasteless. Too much rain, I guess.
I found a Lamb Abbey that had been missed when I covered them against codling moth some months ago, so picked it (worm damage & likely to have higher sugar already) to find it was already at 11 Brix. The seeds had blond tips & the flavor needs 8-12 days more to develop. It was a late spring so will wait that long.
Favorites? Lamb Abbey (pineapple lurking in the background), Gold Rush (no rot here; cardamom &/or cinnamon) & Claygate.(cheese & hazelnut sound like weird additions, but actually good).
The second tier of favorites would be a long list.
This is my first year with a good crop of KOR, I tried a couple but they appeared to have prematurely dropped. I need t leave them for a couple of weeks on the counter to ripen. Still, the ones I tried were promising. KOR had rave reviews from several forum members, that’s why I am growing it. Search for it in the search function and you should find those reviews.
@PomGranny Our taste preferences are somewhat different, I like low acid fruit (I like acidic too, but only when they have high sugar), and you like tart. Having said that, I think you should try EverCrisp (Gold Rush is more flavorful, but too acidic and too hard for me). My other favorites are Red Delicious, Fuji, Golden Delicious and Gala (all when properly tree-ripened).
What’s your experience with disease? Of course I care about scab and fireblight, but I have a gazillion cedars nearby so CAR is an issue. And summers are humid, so summer rots matter too. Thx.
Summer rots are very bad here. Marsonina Leaf Blotch too. I spray fungicide in the spring for rust (which afflicts my pears too) and scab, and in the summer I spray for rots. I spray my stone fruit for brown rot, so it isn’t too much work to spray the apples with them.
OK, I’ll bite. I have some Ashmead’s Kernal coming but the season is later here. Meanwhile, I’ve picked only some really early varieties. Here’s a sample of Redfree, picked today.
Other varieties that produce fruit this early here include Centennial and maybe Jupiter. I say “maybe” because my dwarf tree has a good crop – it’s first, so I’m still learning. It’s dropping some fruit. Based on a starch test, the dropped fruit is ripe but I haven’t picked much from the tree. Also, my White Jersey seem over-ripe. Oops!
