Is this the same apple as reinette gris du Canada?
I don’t think it is Swayzie as my Swayzie are just ripening now. Maybe Keener Seedling? It is mild and crunchy. It could be Swayzie, not impossible.
Yes
Russets are often very rich flavored.
1 Like
They are an October apple for me, not much before GoldRush.
1 Like
Thank you! I tried them last year for the first time and completely forgot when I picked them up.
I am very sure that I don’t have Keener Seedling. I think I may have grafted Swayzie some where on the tree. The apple fell prematurely. Seeds eere not quite dark. One side of it had a deep hole like bird’s pecks. That’s why it feel early.
Too bad that Suncrisp is another late apple 
. I have Gold Rush, Sun Crisp and Fuji, all late to very late for me.
1 Like
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.
18 Likes
Are the King Russet and Orlean’s Reinette exhibiting boron deficiency?
I don’t think northern Nevada souls (haha, think I’ll keep the autocorrect) are typically boron deficient. Too much boron may be more likely according to what I’ve read. Regardless, I really need to have my soil tested.
Neil
Thank you very much. Your apple pics are great to be used as references.
Re. Golden Russet, I think my is American Golden Russet (Bullock). It has been not productive and mostly tip bearers to me. A few fruit I tried, I can’t remember the taste! Growing it in a partial sun area could contribute it its stinginess. But Fuji next to it has produced abundantly, though.
Orleans Reinette won’t win a beauty contest anytime soon. My graft is too young to do anything even next year.
Your Pomme Grise were more yellow-skinned than mine and the russeting was from the top down. My PG russeted from the bottom up and had almost no russeting on the top. Wonder why?
To untrained eyes like mine, several of these russets look quite similar.
Thank you again for posting candid pics of your apples, warts and all. 
1 Like
My Golden Russet has been shy to bear the last several years, but this year it produced pretty well on two different trees.
It does have an unruly growth habit which positions the fruit in various places around my multi-grafted tree.
2 Likes
So far this year, my best have been Rubinette and Queen Cox. Liberty and North Pole have been very good too. I had my first taste of King David - excellent! my Jonagolds must not be ripe yet - not very sweet. Beni Shogun Fuji was quite sweet.
Good year so far. I missed out on my favorite early - Gravenstein. I wonder if they are alternate year bearing.
Apples over 30 brix in NYS? Are you having a big drought up there? I’ve never recorded an apple higher than about 23. What rootsocks are you using?
Best apples I’ve eaten this week are Spitz and Spygold. Spitz is my favorite apple off the tree, unless I’m feeling like a sweet. It’s also as high brix as any I grow.
The thing is that for such a highly flavored apple Spitz is also extremely productive and easy for me to produce because it doesn’t attract summer pests much. Stinkbugs are becoming an ever larger problem here with many varieties, especially russets. I do not want to have to keep insecticide on my apples all summer nor do I have time for bagging.
I picked it a week ahead of when I’d like because of bird pecking so they should store well. They also are a week ahead of “normal”. When you let them get fully ripe here they really don’t store for very long in spite of their reputation- in less than 2 months they severely lose crunch, but I haven’t tried picking them a bit green, which works very well with some varieties.
I depend on modern apples out of storage after Jan.
2 Likes
Are these all russet apple varieties? If so are the for cider?
I’m in Reno, NV. It’s much easier to build sugars in fruit here than most places due to hot, dry summers and low humidity.
I recorded my highest ever Brix measurements of fruit this year on a couple of small, somewhat gnarled Arctic Jay nectarines this year. One measured 35.5 Brix (estimated, as my refractometer is only numbered to 35), the other showed no line at all, so was completely off/above the scale, making it at least 37 Brix, I’d guess. They had a decent bit of acid too, but weren’t representative of what a regular AJ fruit should look like.
These were my first two AJ fruits ever, and I doubt they’ll all be like this in future years. Hope not. A bit more balance would be welcome.
4 Likes
I think FN has said if brix gets above about 28 in nects they tend to develop some off flavors.
They’re not all full russets, though some are supposed to be. Claygate Pearmain in particular is only partially russeted, but mos of my fruit off of that tree has almost no russet. It’s better with more. Anyway, the main intent of that post was to demonstrate how different russets generally look in my conditions compared to elsewhere. All-in-all, I seem to get far less russeting on my russets.
Re cider, most can be used in cider, but they are all eaters too, maybe even primarily. Golden Russet in particular has a reputation as a fine cider apple.
2 Likes