I too have seen a marked decline in the quality of HC in the supermarket. I too, suppose the lure of high market price will ultimately destroy this variety. I hate to admit it, but this is one of the reasons (money being the other) that the syndicates are becoming so commonplace now. Every single new worthwhile variety is syndicated.
If I came up with a stellar new variety I’d probably want to form a club also. I wouldn’t want my hard work destroyed by greedy profiteers.
Honeycrisp may not be problematic for home growers in some regions but here they most certainly are. It really isn’t usually that good, to begin with because it often tends to drop off the tree before reaching adequate brix based on the last 5 or 6 seasons. It was OK last year without much premature dropping, but not great. My own tree had very good fruit its first couple seasons but has been mediocre since.
I haven’t grown really great Honeycrisps on any of the sites I manage on a consistent basis- but clients aren’t complaining even though their fruit isn’t reaching the brix levels of Appleseed’s. However, Goldrush has a much more adamant following in my crowd, and it hasn’t all been my influence.
HC is highly prone to rot, Jap beetles and squirrels love it. I grow it mostly on 111 and haven’t tried 106 with it.
I don’t think it is greedy profiteers that are destroying the apple but just growers producing it in less than ideal conditions. Blame the public for paying higher prices for a mediocre apple just because it’s called Honeycrisp.
If it had been a club apple its patent would be expired anyway and it’s popularity certainly wasn’t hurt by the methods the breeders used besides the fact that it didn’t catch on fast enough.
in my 4 years if growing apples, I have found Goldrush to be my most productive tree. As Alan has mentioned several times, Goldrush is a very precocious variety, it started cranking out apples in its second year in my orchard and has continued to produce probably the largest crop each year of my dwarf trees, even in spite of over cropping due to my lack of thinning.
Of all the variables that contribute to fruit trees becoming biennial, I am most interested in knowing what rootstocks those biennial-prone trees are on.
Unfortunately, I don’t know the rootstock of my HC.
My GoldRush and William Pride are on M 7.
Fuji is on bud 9.
Could you let me know yours, please?
My Goldrush are on b9’ Macoun is unknown, but I’ve read somewhere they are very biennial I believe.
Jeff,
The photos of your ample Honeycrisp harvest from last year still haunt my wildest fantasies.
My 3 year-old HC has no blossoms again this spring, but I will never give up on it. All the orchards around here have been very successful in fruiting it, so I am not detered.
Was very impressive.
I am finding my Goldrush on EMLA.111 to be precocious as well. The tree has a distinct lean (planted with a bit of an angle) but remains well-anchored by its roots. Maybe this is a contributing factor to its precocity. Here in its 2nd leaf, it has numerous blossoms. It fruited last year (its first year post-transplant).
My Gingergold on B.9 is exhibiting similar behavior.
I had read somewhere that B.9 and Geneva.41 rootstocks are suspected of having the ability to break the cycle of biennialism by forcing trees to fruit on an annual basis. I cannot remember where I read this, and I cannot corroborate it yet with any scientific references or extensive personal observation.
Here are photos of this years bloom. Dreary rainy day here, so the blossom isn’t as pretty as when fluffy on a sunny day. As you can see, ample bloom on everything. Second photo is Goldrush, it’s the only GR I have aside from the grafts put on the year before last. They along with HC and others have ample bloom.
Winesap (not pictured) was a freebie tree on I believe B9, and it has good bloom this year which is it’s 2nd year in the ground here. It was a terrible neglected tree from a super market tree sale that struggled to establish, but seems off and running now.
I now have exactly 30 varieties on just one of my frankentrees and all are doing well so far with about 6 or 7 varieties having bloom for the first time including a few of last years grafts.
Honeycrisp is on M106 / GR on M26 and scions of both on seed grown stock.
Very nice, Appleseed. Beautiful pictures.
Do you want to see pictures of apple and pear trees full of leaves. I can show you a few 
Look like M 106 can’t slow HC down.
I agree with it’s predisposition towards rot, but a lot of that (not all) is the result of bitter pit which is controllable. Alan, in reading the article where it mentions rot from too much thinning on 106, do you think M111 could be causing a reasonably thinned tree to behave more like 106 with an inadequate fruit load? I notice in the light crop years the rot issues (and bitter pit) seem far worse. I just wonder if those on 111 were allowed to carry a heavier fruit load, if the rot (and BP) issues might be mitigated or even vanquished?
I had zero rot issues last year except where birds pecked them or wasps and yellow jackets got into them. No doubt rot would have occurred on damaged apples like that no matter the variety.
I do know (or seems to me anyway) that 106 is a popular nursery choice for HC, and am wondering if this might be one of the reasons for it?
For sure though, once the skin is broken on HC (or compromised by BP) it will rot to nothing inside of 48 hours especially when temps are high.
I thought club apples essentially maintained their legal status indefinitely, or is it just the copyrighted name that remains legally untouchable? Isn’t Pink Lady like that?
Thanks, mamuang. The HC has terrible form and I’ve got to correct that. I let it set too many the year before last and the whole top central leader broke out of it. Pretty much a full 1/2 of the tree was effectively removed when that happened. I should have pruned it and installed spreaders etc this year, but cracked my rib coughing with the flu and couldn’t make myself do it this year. Cracked ribs hurt really, really bad.
I am no lawyer but it seems unlikely that the marketing method would change the status of the patent. I believe it is just a way to control the marketing and reduce the danger of illegal propagation, but I’ve not paid that close attention- if I can’t get a variety the less I know the better.
I believe it is the trademark that they use indefinitely. Like you can’t call your facial tissue Kleenex, but you can make 2-ply, tri-fold soft tissues in a rectangular box and infuse them with lotion and whatnot. Some of those features surely patented and expired at some point.
And while the patents may be expired, the growers of club apples may have agreed, in legal contracts, not to share any material from the trees with anyone.
You could legally make donuts that are physically identical to Krispy Kreme, but couldn’t sell them as such without a franchise. And the franchisees may be legally bound to not share the recipe (bud wood). Although once the recipe is out in the public domain, I don’t think they’d have any recourse against individuals using it. They could sue the leaker.
Exactly. I’m sure at some point some random worker will pocket a scion and once its in the open you can’t put the cat back in the bag.
MN55 sounds interesting:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/PP26412.html
Just came out so i doubt we’ll see it for a long time. Minneiska is “Sweetango”
I’m sure a whole truckload of HoneyCrisp offspring/clones are going to come out in the next decade…
It’s been on the market for some time warm, and it is indeed an awesome apple. Keep an eye out at wallyworld,it shows up there regularly in-season. There probably isn’t enough production yet to meet the demand, so they aren’t storing many, if any.
Maybe you mean we won’t see it for a long time as a freely propagated tree…no doubt about that.
Most of what I’ve heard though (mostly here, and not really very much) has it that HC is still better in terms of flavor and crunch than the HC offspring like ST, Snapdragon and RubyFrost… The SweeTango that I bought were superb in every regard and while not surpassing HC, they were better colored and overall more visually attractive.
Yep, I keep thinking the same thing, but evidently, so far at least, they are doing a pretty good job of keeping things under wraps.
I hope when that happens they will start selling them legally so we can purchase them. I’ll gladly pay whatever reasonable (or maybe even, not so reasonable) royalty they put on them.
I don’t believe nurseries ever charge a royalty on a tree post-patent. Maybe the club structure will make that possible. More likely the trees will not enter the open market as long as it is possible to make more money by not allowing it.
This is a kind of subterfuge designed to undermine the intent of patent laws. There are reasons the limits are put on to the lifespan of a patent- reward the “inventor” but don’t make the economy arthritic with a layer of expense created by an eternal “inventor” tax that gets passed on as an inheritance.
The introduction of patent laws were a primary source for the inventive energy that spurred the industrial revolution and were originally legislated in Britain. It was a truly ingenious use of government regulation.
I agree with Jeff’s assessment of HC and its offspring.
By the way-- SweeTango has been known to appear at my area Wegman’s in the fall.
