Stayman is quite a lovely apple here, juicy with a pleasing crisp tartness. It’s also a much larger apple than King David, and more vigorous and productive. That’s likely due to it being a triploid, as @ZinHead correctly noted.
I assumed that @Lodidian was asking about this for his own orchard, and thus was unconcerned about pollination issues. He must have plenty of diploid trees about.
Why would you compare the two? To my palate, King David has much more intense flavor and really isn’t that much like Stayman. I realize that Stayman is often called Stayman Winesap, but those two apples aren’t that much alike either. King David is much different than either- to the point that it is the only one of the three I’m growing in my own orchard although I offer all of them from my nursery.
Because @Lodidian specified them as two of his three options. I grow them both and am aware that they’re not much alike.
Especially when the discussion is off topic and arguments become personal. I’m not interested in a members personality profile or someone else’s opinion of that personality. Also, this discussion isn’t about breeding better apples, but if you have bred one that is great and you can share wood with members, I’m sure we are all interested. If you want to discuss the process of breeding, it might be best to start a topic on the subject.
It is fine to go off topic when it has been pretty much exhausted, but I doubt this one will ever be.
Oops, sorry. That was many comments ago, I think I lost the thread.
Even though none of the three “southern” varieties are especially recommended for the Finger Lakes’ terroir, we have all three in our orchard. I had several reasons for choosing them. Lee Calhoun, in an interview, once suggested that in response to climate change, northern growers might do well to consider southern apples.
A dear old friend who worked in a Pennsylvania orchard told me her favorite apple was Blacktwig. I really like its flavor, and the apples are large, but the tree has been shy for us.
One of the apples that my father recommended from the orchard that his family maintained when he was a kid was Stayman. We got our tree from Cummins, which is about half an hour’s drive away, so I figured it should do fine here. Although only on M7, it has been one of our greatest challenges to keep to a manageable size (no taller than I can reach while in a 12’ ladder). We haven’t had much of a cracking problem except one year. It is supposed to be a heavy cropper, but ours hasn’t been. For flavor, it is my least favorite of the three — maybe that is a terroir factor.
King David was just a variety that intrigued me when I started reading up on old apple varieties. It is too recent a variety for Beach’s Apples of New York, however. Although the tree produces smaller fruits, it is much more prolific and consistent than either of the other two. Great flavor and versatile. One customer travels a couple hours each October to buy a bushel each of King Davids and Winesaps, but I think she has other reasons to come to the area. Our neighbor asked for apples to make apple butter two years ago, and I gave her mostly King Davids, because that’s what we had the most of. Last fall she asked specifically for King Davids. She shared a jar, and I don’t know what her recipe was, but it was a better tasting apple butter than I had made with a mix of apples.
Winesap (ours is an Original Winesap from Century Farms) is the parent of all three. It is good, but not a particular favorite of mine.
Why did I ask the question? Not to seek advice, but compare opinions. The topic is “Best Tasting Apples,” so I thought a comparative question might be appropriate. Of the three, if I had to start all over and only had room for one, I would pick King David.
Stayman is what we still have a dozen or so of in the fridge. Not from my own trees unfortunately, although I’ll harvest at least a few this year. It’s a regionally grown variety we can buy by the bushel from local “fruit stand” type places. We enjoy them, especially through the winter months, usually ending by May. We’ve still got good ones on into June this year though…
Love King David too but as others pointed out they’re a bit smaller, although a bit more “intense” tasting I think.
I’ve unfortunately not tried a Blacktwig yet, hopefully in the next year or two.
So two out of the three are great IMO, and the third I suspect I’ll like as well…
Tom Burford, who has tasted a very wide variety of apples his whole life, suggests that the redder new strains are not the same as old time Stayman, and I have to agree, only I’m not sure he was focusing on flavor, as he specifies it for disease resistance compared to newer strains. Redder doesn’t always mean worse but I think I prefer the older, stripey strain.
I grow the older one here as well. Can’t compare it to the newer one, but I like it a lot and I haven’t observed it to have any noteworthy disease problems. (Granted, I live in an area with low apple disease pressure.)
Sorry to have misunderstood.
No need to be sorry.
Our Stayman is very red, so it likely is a newer strain.
I’ve purchased Gravenstein trees from two different sources, hoping each time it was the original variety, but both times it was a Red Gravenstein.
Judging from their photo, Trees of Antiquity appears to offer the older striped strain. Neil could confirm that for you.
I’d be happy to send you scionwood from mine this winter, too. PM me for that.
A few years ago we purchased some “Old Stayman” and did not like them as much. Last year we stopped at “Hump Mountain Apple House” close to the TN/NC state line and they had a few they called “Speckled Stayman”. They also weren’t quite as good. I asked but the person at the cash register didn’t know. I assumed a sport on a Stayman tree.
Pretty hard to judge apples grown at different sites by different people with different intentions. Commercial growers tend to pick a bit early and too many at once. Also, same varieties often perform differently in different soils and also on different seasons depending on weather.
Not that you don’t already know this, but it might be helpful to someone else.
Yeah, even though the ones we purchased didn’t elicit a “wow”… I still took a scion from a local grafting class (closest thing to a scion exchange we have around here) and put it on one of my trees. Figured growing it myself this “Old Stayman” might just be very good. Same for Honeycrisp, not really a fan, but I have a limb of it growing too… If nothing else I can give them to friends who think HC from the grocery store is the best thing ever.
Planted a Northern Spy on MM111in 2012…it has yet to bloom. That one takes patience!!
I attended my first grafting event this year. Most of the material was reinforcement, but I was able to meet some fellow fruit growers and have pick of free scions. I’m going to attend next year. The only thing that bothered me was that there were not many pruners to go around, so they handed out razor blades instead.
Since first attending this class in 2015 I’ve went back a few times to peruse what they have. There are usually generous local growers providing scions for the class to use. I’ve only contributed a little so far but hope to do more in the future.
This event is held by my local county extension office and they had both sharp grafting knives and nice pro cleft grafting tools available.
WHAT? It has been 10 years and still no blooms? I hope you get some fruit from it soon. It is one of my favorite apples. Once you start getting fruit I think you will be happy with the results. Do not give up hope. If you waited this long a little longer will not hurt. Glad you have one of those trees.
My mistake used to be to allow oversized scaffolds to stay on the tree- more than half the diameter of the trunk where these branches are attached to it. Northern spy grows upright and tends towards such oversized branches when you turn your back for a few weeks. Upright branches tend to grow with more vigor than more horizontal ones and maintain their juvenility for much longer (juveniles don’t have babies in the apple tree world). Two things that encourage fruiting on vigorous varieties, scaffolds a third the diameter as the trunk and branches spread close to horizontal or trained to a weep.
You can subdue the vigor by training properly sized first tier scaffolds to barely above horizontal tying above tiers below horizontal while they are still green enough to bend- northern spy wood is supple. I often tape the upper branches to lower ones or use string). Once the tree begins to fruit its growth habit becomes more cooperative and weeping branches fruit very quickly…