Best tasting apples

Do you know anything about Cora’s Grand greening? I have that grafted.

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Mutsu is a great tasting apple, a bit higher in Acid than some and a good keeper.
Does well in the Puget Sound Lowlands.
Triploid and highly vigorous tree.

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52 years ago, there was an organic orchard with about 40 acres of Rhode Island Greening.
The trees were approximately 20 years old at that time.
They were in the (Selah/Naches) Washington area.
My apologies can’t remember the name of the place or the address & couldn’t find when Googling.
They were however, very Granny Smith like, but heavily russeted, crisper, tarter & much more aromatic.
Wish I could remember more.

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That is the type of apple I am looking for. I will re-order one for next year. I am supposed to have one growing now but it was mislabeled and it is not a RI Greening. I have no idea what apple it actually is. Now I am 3-5 years away from having any RI Greening apples.

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You say Poh-taaaato . . . I say Poh-tah-to!
I am always scratching my head when I hear others saying a particular apple is great for them!

I guess it really really really depends on lots of things - other than particular tastes - as to how an apple does in different orchards? Soil? Weather? Care? . . . even just where the apple tree came from? (I’ve had 2 different pomegranate plants, from different vendors - the same variety - quite different result.)

@Auburn mentions Pink Lady. They stink for me, here in VA! LOL
And someone listed Aunt Rachel as their favorite apple. Pretty, but tasteless for me. (kind of tastes like a poh-taaaaaaa-toh, actually!)
Williams Pride is looking lovely . . . but haven’t gotten to taste one yet.
Oh . . . King David is a pretty good apple, here, too.

I know I’m stretching it - trying to grow apples successfully here in the southeast corner of VA.
But, so far . . . Goldrush has been the best producing, and best-tasting apple for us.

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If you’re in fireblight country, beware RI Greening, one of the worst, if not the worst blight magnet I ever grew in Z 7 MD.

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Goldrush must be in the top 5 if we came up with a composite home grower ranking from this site.

I commend you on how readable the label is too.

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After a lot of research, I bought my first four apple trees this year, all semi-dwarfs from Cummins: GoldRush, Liberty, Enterprise and Sansa. I only had room for four trees, and also wanted William’s Pride, King David, Priscilla and Kidd’s Orange Red. I purchased scions of those four and grafted them to the “feathered” GoldRush and Sansa trees a few weeks later, and hot dog, all took! I appreciated the affirmation from @PomGranny that it seems I chose well.

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@murky . . . thanks!
I’ve been through the typical ‘label failure’ experience.
Now - I do the ‘engraved’ method with a ball point pen and then go over it with a garden marker.
It seems to work great so far.
I also like the ones that ‘stand’ at the base of the tree. When the trees leaf out . . . it’s hard to find the tags, sometimes, if they are hanging from a branch.

@Yoda
Funny . . . I added Liberty, Enterprise, and Priscilla scions to my trees. 'Took a piece of my dwarf King David and grafted it to my Goldrush, for safe keeping. (or Ashmead’s Kernel . . . can’t remember which). Grafted several different things to my dwarf Aunt Rachel! (cause I don’t like that apple much) Akane. And others. If it turns out that we don’t like the apples - or they don’t do well in my yard . . . I’ll graft over them! It’s fun trying different ones!

I have a William’s Pride dwarf tree . . . only one we don’t ‘share’, from your list, is Sansa! We must be on the same wavelength!

And, hey . . . I’m a relative ‘newbie’ to fruit growing!
I didn’t even have any apple or peach/nectarine trees before 2017!
I learned almost everything I know, thus far, from other forum peeps! And YouTube videos and books! And I chose my apples from the ‘descriptions in the catalogs’! :wink: :joy: :relaxed:

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Ouch. I did not know that. That may change my idea of having one if these trees. I’ve had FB in two of my trees over the years. I had to remove them both it got so back even with cutting the FB parts out. That is nothing to mess around with.

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The “descriptions in the catalogs” always make it sound like THE perfect fruit, don’t they? Good thing the internet is available to at least look around and see what varieties are available. It can be hit or miss at even with just going by the descriptions.

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McIntosh was my very favorite tasting apple :apple:.

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Know nothing about that one, except Jason Bowen sells scions of it.

But, Northwest Greening appears to be disease free.

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McIntosh is a great apple and would be even greater if it didn’t go soft so quickly. I learned from my youth that grocery store Macs don’t last long. We don’t grow any McIntosh trees in our orchard, but I’m pretty sure an old tree on the property is a Mac.

I prefer its offspring Macoun for flavor and overall quality, and some other varieties with McIntosh in their parentage are among my favorites: Connell Red and Kestrel. Liberty is my favorite disease-resistant apple, and some years its flavor rivals Macoun.

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Oh darn, I can’t get the other varieities in France where I live, but I did find one nursery that sells Mackintosh.

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Empire also is not bad.

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Snow is very similar to McIntosh and is the parent I think. I like snow much better. For me they seem to last longer in the fridge, flavor is a little more complex, everyone in my family just seem to like it better. I wonder why someone did a breeding project and decided McIntosh was better than its parent.

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I’ve been looking for apples from New Zealand. This year they seem not to have shown up in
WA state. Even now in August, maybe 10 months after they were picked, they all have USA on their stickers.

That’s a lot to ask from an apple, to hold up that long - and then try to compete with summer fruit.

Currently I’m in Thailand, and scored some Smitten from New Zealand. When I’d done the same back in June, they were outstanding. I’m looking forward to trying these. Along with some longan, pomelo, jackfruit, mango, and so forth.

Noina seem not to have arrived yet. Maybe I’ll get to try them in November.

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I’m reading this thread regarding the apple varieties I picked today a an apple orchard in New Hampshire. They are Macintosh, Macoun, Cortland, Gala, Pixie Crunch, HoneyCrisp, and Snow sweet. So far I like Pixie Crunch and Gala. They are much better comparing to the Gala apples at our local Sprouts.
Eating them makes me think twice about growing apples in California, like day and night. No wonder I don’t like to eat apples at home.

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@resonanteye I was perusing these older posts about apples and saw your question about Old Types that are Tart and Crisp. Have you considered Ashmead’s Kernel? It isn’t ‘pretty’ - but the flavor is fabulous. So is Esopus Spitzenburg - which was Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple! Both of those have amazing flavor - and are tart and crisp!

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