I finally opened my box from Adams County nursery yesterday and the bundle I was most interested in was the 5 Barnsby Pink Lady trees. ACN claims that it ripens a full 3 weeks ahead of the original which may make it one of my most useful apples.
I love PL but my season isn’t usually long enough to bring out its highest quality. I hope this will solve that problem.
I assume this variety is very new and none of you out there have any experience with it, but if I’m wrong, let me know.
Hopefully it tastes better than the KORU I bought at Walmart. Glad I only bought one.
You talk about bland. Yellow Delicious probably a parent or grandparent…and this apple is not an improvement. (Unless you call large size and interesting skin color an ‘improvement’.)
What does that variety have to do with Pink Lady? Usually it is when they remove the russet or go for much redder that the quality suffers. Yellow and Red D. as well as Stayman have suffered from this. However, I have a redder, earlier Jonagold strain I like better than the original- it is firmer and not so crazy huge and so less prone to bitter pit. I also have an early Fuji that I like better than the original.
I’ll be curious to hear your report. I now have the Maslin strain going, it should be good enough for me. I can (and did) grow the original and they were fine (better than most grocery store versions) but not great due to having to pick at frost.
Maslin is supposed to be a 3 week earlier strain of Pink Lady as well.
Lady in Red- I had actually ordered 5 of them from Van Well but then realized they were charging me retail for the 25 trees I ordered from them, doubling what they’d been charging me in the past.
I cancelled my entire order because my nursery is out of space anyway and ordered this new strain from Adams, my main supplier.
Hi,
Which Fuji strain is it that is earlier that you like better than the original?
The one that ACN sells. I think they call it Sept. Fuji. I like it because it isn’t so vegetative and is much easier to manage on 111 rootstock. The apple isn’t better, just the tree, although I like the earlier ripening as well- gives me an alternative to Gala in that category of sweets in the mid-season.
I have a Fuji from ACN called “Daybreak Fuji” about a month earlier than regular Fuji.
Makes a nice size tree even on B9
Ripens after Gala around Honeycrip time
About five years ago my wife bought some delicious club apple called Kiku. I read up on it and found out it was a sport of Fuji apple. The gentleman visited a Fuji apple farm in Japan and saw a branch with a redder apple and tasted better than the rest of the tree so he bought the whole orchard just to get that sport variety and branded Kiku. I then planted a seed and now it is 13 feet tall and putting out some real red flowers. I hope it turn out close to the Kiku but if the owner of the orchard plant crab apples to pollinate them then I am out of luck.
Tony
Maybe there are two- I have Daybreak also and if that’s what ACN carries it is the one I’m talking about.
Daybreak Fuji is an unregistered trademark for an apple patented as “Rankin Red”, which is sport of Yataka that ripens 5 days earlier.
September Wonder Fuji is a registered trademark for an apple patented as “Fiero”, which is sport of Yataka that ripens 7-10 days earlier.
According to wikipedia, there were at least 3 early ripening sports of Cripps Pink discovered in Australia around 1999-2000. Barnsby (PLBAR B1) was one, Maslin (PLMAS98) and Pink Belle (PLFOG99) are the others. Patents for all three were filed in US in 2008.
After reading some articles on Pink Lady marketing in US, it seems they have been growing and selling apples from several different sports as “Pink Lady” apples anyhow. Maslin was introduced first, and Barnsby was introduced a few years later. I haven’t found any mention of Pink Belle being marketed in the US.
So what is the catch to the early ripening sports? There doesn’t seem to be any detailed comparisons to the original Cripps Pink. Most descriptions simply say they are similar to the original but ripen earlier. Coloration is mentioned more that eating quality, which backyard growers won’t care about. I see some mention that Barnsby has less acidity at the time of harvest, which makes it more immediately palatable. Since acidity gradually drops off in storage, it might detract some its long-term storage quality. That would be an acceptable trade-off for growers with a shorter season.
They must have sold me September ;Fuji because it seems to ripen almost a month sooner- at least 3 weeks. Ripening times vary from region to region as well as relative distance between varieties.
Boy, that could suck. It is the acidity that makes the taste of PL.
It’s implied that the original Cripps Pink is too acidic off the tree and needs a little storage time. I don’t know, I’ve only ever had them from the store.
I like them right off the tree and most apples that they say that about taste great to me off the tree, including Ark Black, Goldrush and Spitz. They mellow in storage but I don’t find them excessively acid to begin with.
One thing that makes Pink Lady an exceptional apple is that it seems to want to fruit every year. I’m tired of great tasting apples that don’t crop consistently, such as the version of Ashmead’s K. I grow. So far I’ve been unable to unlock its secret code to productivity.
From the early Fujis I got September Wonder (first crop this year) and Beni Shogun. Beni Shogun is fine apple but I prefer Kiku (there are several strains like Fubrax or 8, I got Fubrax) which has denser flesh/more crunch to it. Kiku is great apple but gets a lot of powdery mildew and has to be sprayed a lot.
I got Pink Lady and have love/hate relationship with it. The taste is outstanding but has lower productivity. Also it’s most likely my most sensitive apple. It barely had any leaves this year and already showing symptoms of powdery mildew, scab is chapter on it’s own. I got also the Maslin strain but will have to wait about 2 years for first fruit to compare. I am looking forward to Alan’s report on Barnsby Pink Lady, this is the first time I hear about it.
I haven’t had any of those problems with PL and it has been a heavy bearer for me. My only problem is often not having a long enough season to ripen it. When we have a long season it is a top 3 apple here.
What region are you living and growing in?
I am in Central Europe zone 7A/7B we get no more than 20 inches precipitation per year (sometimes just 15)
Pink Lady doen’t fully ripen here in cold years. I pick them usually in the first half of November along with Goldrush…my last apples.
Right now I’m feeling pretty envious of your relatively dry conditions. In New York, and most of the eastern U.S., we’ve been having a monsoon that just doesn’t quit. The year before last was too wet but last season was ridiculous. Now we are having rain even more frequently than last spring.
On an average year we more than double your precip, but average is just a convenient myth. Actually, on an “average” season it is either too wet or too dry.
Sorry, I suppose the fine points of English word definitions are not especially interesting to you. Average can mean typical (such as calling someone an average person) or it can be a statistical term. When we talk about average rainfall, we are talking statistics. As a complaining farmer, I find the term a great source for complaint- when we get too much or too little rain, if feel justified in whining about it. Fruit growers dream of average weather conditions, but rarely get them.
If you don’t enjoy complaining you should probably get out of the soil.