Russets from Reno. This ought to go well.
The plate these apples rest on is 8.5” in diameter. All were picked yesterday, 9/30.
This is my first crop of Bullock apples. I sampled one this morning: juicy (for a russet) and sweet with mild acidity and complexity; some starchIness that I expect will convert to sugar with a few weeks’ storage; 22 Brix, likely 26 or more once those sugars convert. I like it, plus the fruits all look great.
I’ve fruited Golden Russet for five or six years now. It’s a CM magnate, cracks and corks to some extent and has some rot problems. I still get a good number of nice fruits most years, and even those with issues generally have enough decent flesh that I cut away the inedible parts and use them in my apple butter mix. Some are about as juicy as Bullock, but most are drier. They are much more complex and far sweeter too, up to 30 Brix. I’ll keep the best for eating and juice the rest of a middling crop for a cider blend.
First crop of these small apples this year on the same tree as Bullock. I haven’t tasted them yet, but they look like they need a little storage.
My third or fourth crop of these. It’s okay, fairly intense, but dryish flesh. Lots of cracking problems and tiny apples. It’s similar to Pomme Gris here.
Side-by-side for Tippy. This is my second crop of Swayzie and fourth or fifth of Pomme Gris. See my Margil notes for my impression of PG, except it cracks and corks even more than that apple, though some specimens are a bit larger. Swayzie is happier here so far, with far less damage to the fruit. It may be worth keeping. I haven’t tasted these yet and don’t recall what it was like last year (tiny crop). Edit: I just tasted Swayzie. It’s very good. Juicy for a russet, fine grained, complex sweets plus acid. All the fruits, sadly only about 10, are the same size and have a similar look to those pictured. 22 Brix.
Second fruiting here. I have 25 of these on a largish scaffold grafted to a well-established tree in 2017, the same tree with Bullock and Old Nonpariel (and 15 or so other varieties). They are all disappointingly small. This one looks like it needs more time. Last season’s few equally small fruits never fully ripened and I fear the same for this crop. I expect it will eventually settle into normal production, delivering much larger fruit that ripens right about now.
Lol *sigh. King Russet, on same tree as Bullock et al, seems destined for removal. Orleans Reinette is proving a difficult variety here. My tree is quite biennial. This year was to be a big crop year, but a mid-May frost whacked what was a huge fruit set, leaving around 10 fruits, all of which resemble these. I’ve had large crops of really nice apples from this tree in years past, but the last two years the few fruits it produced looked like this. I hope this isn’t what I have to look forward to, because when right, it’s among the best two or three apples I’ve ever tasted.
Some cracking and rots, but rarely corks and sizes up pretty well. It’s not all that different than Bullock texturally, though sharper. It’s a keeper here, but a I wish it tasted more like Golden Russet.
Perhaps my most dependable and productive variety. A partial russet variety, is less so in this climate and decidedly weird in my orchard, producing more than one “type” of apple, particularly this year, more or less represented by these pictures, with, as one would expect, the apple on the left being much closer to your typical russet in texture, though juicier and with far more explosive flavor. Here’s a link to an exhaustive post I made on it a couple years ago. Here comes the 2018 apple & pear harvest! - #156 by HighandDry
These Fall Russets are from my first fruiting. Others had CM holes and dropped early, but otherwise didn’t crack or cork, so there’s potential. I haven’t tasted them yet. They have a good deal less russet than the single photo a brief search produced.
“May Queen”, which produced its first crop for me this year. I like the taste a lot, and while the apples have some issues, they have performed better than many of the russets in this post. The problem is, I don’t think it’s May Queen, as it bears almost no resemblance to the photos of it I find online. While I often see differences in my apples vs what they typically are supposed to look like (heck, that’s what this post is supposed to highlight), this is probably too different—there is zero red on these apples, blushed sun side or otherwise. I don’t think I have the real McCoy. If anybody reading this is growing a verified May Queen, I’d love to discuss a trade. Edit-same day: tasted the uglier of the two pictured above and was blown away. Fairly hard, dry flesh, nutty, complex flavor with high acid. It reminded me of Orleans Reinette. 28 Brix.