In this terrible growing season, most of my trees got zapped by late freezes (no plums, peaches, apricots, etc).
My apples faired the best. Here’s what’s set fruit:
Gingergold on B.9
Red Gravenstein on B.9
Goldrush on EMLA.111
That’s it! Pretty lame, but better than nothing.
I don’t have Brushy but I do have Smoky Mountain Limbertwig. It has a little CAR. My crabapples are more susceptible.
Think I see the problem- on closer inspection my neighbor’s hedge is juniper, so will be a continuing problem. One reason I keep planting more pawpaws- no blight, no rust, no scab, no mildew.
I cannot say that I have ever noticed cedar apple rust on my Brushy Mtn LT or any LT.
Let me join this thread.
I just grafted 18 more varieties raising the total to 62. But the majority are new additions. So i only tasted about half of them.
My favorites until now are:
Cripps Pink (Pink Lady) - gets much sweeter in the last months of storage but keep that excellent flavour i like so much.
Bravo de Esmolfe - that peculiar and distinct flavour is hard to beat.
Rubinette Rosso Rafzubex - quite complex flavour over here.
Reine des Reinettes - for a first year production it surprised me a lot.
Reineta Parda - the best for cooking until now.
Ariane, Melrose and quite a few others where a disappointment but may improve with age (first year productions)
This year i am looking forward to taste some of the new additions like some of the Czech classics, like Topaz.
Also very curious on some traditional ones like the French “Patte du Loup” or the red fleshed one’s.
It should be a very exciting season. I can’t wait.
This is also one of my top choices.
It’s a great tasting apple. The balance between acidity and sugar is just perfect for me. I like the flavour very much.
It gets a bit too much sugar with 4-5 months in storage and looses some acidity, but it keeps well.
I am very curious about Kanzi - i was lucky enough to buy 2 trees of this variety on a Slovakian nursery along with Rubinola, Topaz, Ecolette, Rosette e Santana. One has 2 apples and i hope they get to full maturity so i can have a sample.
Reading about this apple taste profile, i think that i would probably like better is sibling - Jazz (Scifresh). Now, if i only could find a nursery in Europe that sells them…
Last week my wife brought home a koru, absolutely delicious, really nice crunch and sweet, but expensive. Turns out it’s and accidental cross between a fuji and braeburn…
My daughter and I are enjoying the Koru as well.
I bought an Envy apple (another club variety) yesterday for a princely sum of $1.29. It had the right amount of sweetness and tart. But what sold my wife was the crunch. My toddler came running from the other room to take a bite! 
Envy is another good, dense, club apple. It is extremely sweet, but is less tart to my palate than most apples.
I recently had the same experience with a batch of Envys. They were shipped over from New Zealand.
I know a lot of people were feverishly grafting this year so how did your grafts turn out? I had some good grafts growing nicely from the spring rains and some losses due to the storms. Think my best choices of the year were the apples I mentioned here in this thread. The apple trees I planted have had a hard year due to the extremely hot and dry summer but that was predictable. I hope I look back at 2016 as a great year to plant apples and not as a complete loss. So did you get some excellent new to you apples to grow for you this year? Hopeful to find a variety or two from this year that will do well here. The apple and pear growing states have nothing to fear from Kansas. I can make 300 perfect grafts and wind up with 30. If I ever move I would hate to think how good the crop could be! Hope 2016 was worth the effort but we won’t know until 2020 or so.
I’ve got a graft of Muscat du Venus growing well, which I’m excited about as it’s said to taste like lychee, and two wild apples found by @chartman. Also Foxwhelp took a long time to break bud but is now growing out nicely.
SMC,
Sounds really good! A truly rare group of apples you grafted! I thought Rubinette would be a tough one here but so far it loves it here and I’ve cut it back 3 times to make it bushy and to keep it from breaking in the storms. Lots of people say it’s a hardy version of cox orange pippin and others say it’s better. I read it can be a hard one to grow like it’s parent so the verdict is still out. http://www.orangepippin.com/apples/rubinette
I’ve only had a few fruit from my Rubinette but I’m very impressed so far- I hope it works for you.
I also am happy to get a few Karmijn De Sonneville, and hope that people don’t loose track of Jonagold, Wealthy, and Haralson. You don’t hear a great deal about them of late but they’re good.
It’s been an excellent apple grafting year for me; quite welcome after the previous mediocre one.
My young Muscat de Venus isn’t bearing yet, nor my Karmijn de Sonneville, but I’ll get my first few Rubinette samples this fall. I’ll have fruit from several of last year’s successful grafts as well; I’ve already made excellent fried apples from a handful of Yellow Transparents.
I should be inundated with new apples, mostly various Etter varieties and heirlooms, in two years or so. No doubt I’ll be looking for advice on what to do with them all.
How nice is that, ay? I want to mention something that Scottsmith had to say about Rubinette, to the affect that he almost didn’t keep the variety at first but it improved with maturity. I’ve no idea what the biology is, but apparently that’s often the case. (Unfortunately, I suspect that the converse is also true: at first try something may be quite good but decline over time!)
Thanks for mentioning that; I’ve heard it said about other apples as well. I recall that Ram Fishman warns that Pink Pearmain, which I’m growing here, tends to be sub-optimal in its first crop. It’s too soon for me to judge.
