I have been growing Crimson Crisp for 6 years and find it to be a delightful apple, very crisp and balanced flavor. I wonder if CC just performs better in our area. There have been many posts by folks on the forum that find CC taste to be average to below average. I also like that CC, along with Sundance, are the cleanest apples I grow with very little fungus, sooty blotch or fly speck issues.
I also agree with you about GR, it is the favorite apple of myself and my wife and I plan to regraft a few of my dud varieties to GR.
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When do CC and sundance ripen for you? I love GR but it seems to rot bad at my location but I have not been doing summer fungicide sprays. Are your CC and Sundance clean with minimal summer sprays? Do you have bad rot on GR as I have had?
I don’t grow Crimson Crisp in my personal orchard but carry it in my nursery and often pick tasty apples from it in spite of relative neglect. Goldrush is so much uglier from fly-speck and sooty-blotch without ample summer fungicide apps, and on a short season like the last, seems to only get good quality on sites with dawn to dusk sun, which my own orchard lacks. CC was a better apple this season. I’m in southern NY, away from big water.
CC and Sundance both ripen around mid September for me. My fungicide spray schedule is every 2 to 3 weeks from petal fall to the end of July.
I live not far from the north GA orchards you visited and on a visit last year, had an orchard owner tell me the are spraying something every week during the growing season to produce the pristine apples the public wants.
Commercial orchards tend to spray more than necessary to get the same results in a home orchard. In NY, I get pristine apples by beginning sprays about July 7th and continuing with sprays every 2 weeks with one spray in Sept. However, I use either Pristine or Flint in the tank along with the Captan that may be all your commercial grower is using.
This works even though the Cornell gurus say that if you don’t keep protection on through June it will be too late to protect them by July. My schedule has worked for me for about 6 years straight in multiple sites. It will never be a better year for fungus than last.
Of course, this schedule would likely have to be tweaked to work in GA, but the point is you can’t know the minimum requirement for results in an orchard unless you push the envelope.
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I only had a few Sundance and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted and it also looked pristine.
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The Arkansas Black is supposed to be more of a Southern apple. I though these apples are to be stored for a while before tasting or using them? I had a tree that did pretty well but moved to a different house before I could get a lot of product from them.
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South Dakota Bison? That’s a cool enough reason right there to order it! LOL!
My grin order was small this year as well, had some fails so ordered more of Empire, Paula Red, & Gravenstein. However did a michigan needed Fall Russet, then got some i’ve tried to graft before but had no luck with Macoun, Irish Peach, and Devonshire Quarrenden. The last 2 are ones from Stephen Hayes I’ve really wanted because they are early and are supposed to taste decent, I have the room, why not? 
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Have you tried Strawberry Parfait? It is very early and has a good flavor. Hubby liked them best before they were very red. Texture is what I would call tender. Flavor kinda tangy, but not sour. Everyone I shared with liked them and a tasty apple in July is kinda nice.
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Fall Russet has grown well for us, though we haven’t had fruit from it yet (just bench grafted a couple of years ago). My hope is that it will be something like the russets that my dad remembers picking from abandoned (or at least unguarded?) orchards around West Branch, MI, back when he was a kid.
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I had looked at the Strawberry Parfait for a while now. I did not know anyone that had actually grown and tasted it. I want an early apple but one that lasts longer than it takes to take it from the tree to the house before it is too soft to enjoy.
Ya, and with it’s lineage I’m hoping it will prove to be winter hardy. It’s supposed to be heavy bearing and the fruit is supposed to hang past maturity. Decent sized crab too…sounded like a heck of a deer tree to me.
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Strawberry Parfait is indeed soft, and while I don’t usually like apples that aren’t crisp and/or dense, I found that I like this one anyway. I enjoy them fresh off the tree, and they make good applesauce, too. Haven’t tried baking with them yet.
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Did you see that Grin has to diff id numbers attached to that specimen?
No, I didn’t. I did see that there’s another crab considered a “sister” to it though.
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I grow it and they do not do well here in SE Ohio.
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That the same as “pink parfait”, Jolena? I appreciate that you gave me that scion last year.
Thank you so much for this info. That saved me a lot of grief and time trying to grow this.
No. Strawberry Parfait is NJ 46, a New Jersey apple. Pink Parfait is Etter 7-9, a California apple bred by Alfred Etter but never released. Ram Fishman of Greenmantle Nursery recovered it from his abandoned test orchard.
I’m the farthest thing from an expert on these things, but I tried CC this year from a local orchard here in Connecticut. For me, it was too hard! It came in at about the same time as Honeycrisp, which has a much better flavor and texture IMO. The CC flavor wasn’t bad or average, but it wasn’t in the same league as the Honeycrisps that were offered for the same price at the same time at the local orchard’s store. Just my opinion.
I ate a few of the Crimson Crisps and used the rest as cooking apples.