Quite a dry and hot summer, again. Lucky to be in an El Nino as I wipe sweat of my brow with a soaked through t-shirt Oct 2nd.
Apples this year best to yeah they had some apples…
Chieftain. 3"+ medium red apples, little disease or insects. Sweet, crispy and very juicy, still my fave.
Kidd’s Orange Red, best year yet. 3"+ Yellowish orange apples, sweet, crispy, coarse yellow flesh but spoiled very quickly.
Baldwin. Very early this year, good crop, intoxicating rich apple smell, baked into the best crisp ever, very sweet.
Colby Baldwin. Rougher skin than regular baldwin, very nice tartness mixed with the usual russet nuances
Caville Blanc. Another big crop, yearly. Ugly apple, very tart, unbelievable good cooker, best Tarte Tatin
Westfield-no apples, Jonathan-no apples, King of the pippens-no apples.
Chestnut and that other famous Crab both put on great crops, tasty little apples.
King David had a few nice apples but didn’t handle the heat well, rot. Too pretty to graft over.
Many others suffered in the hot and dry. High humidity didn’t help disease and I didn’t follow a good spray schedule either.
Colby Baldwin was the big surprise this year, very good tart/sweet apple with subtle flavors.Worth a try if you can find it.
I kept my promise to report, Dawn. Russet Baldwin is still hanging along with Kindercrisp and winesap.
Hope you all had a year and another to follow!!
An update:
Finished peeling and slicing a 3 gal. pan of Antietam Blush apples. From what I understand, this apple was bred for tidewater Virginia and surrounds, not Iowa.
It is a strange mottled/striped pink over green color, flesh is tart and juicy, tree has been productive over 3 yrs. Apples are 2"-2.5". because of the weather this year,other apples had little to no disease or insect pressure, not A. Blush. Every worm that didn’t get in my other apples found AB. To make matters worse, this apple gets corky voids and brown discoloration of the flesh around any damage to the fruit. as the leaves prepare to drop, I’m noticing the leaves have the symptoms of viral infection. The tree looks fine otherwise but is not a pleasant apple to prep for the kitchen. The chickens will get more of it than we will. The grafting knife will be out this spring.
Kindercrisp sized up x-large this year. Similar eat to Honeycrisp. Smaller apple and a tidier presentation than HC. BIG hit at market. It is growing right next to A. Blush, convenient scion wood.
First heavy crop of Russet Baldwin, not as good as Colby Baldwin, woodier flesh and duller flavors. Maybe because of drought.
Winesap. smaller than normal this year, red apple flavor. Very slow to come into bearing, wormy than others.
Sorry about the delay in answering you, Clark. Very heavy set in coolish wet weather. Little disease or insect pressure yet, saw numerous fb strikes on Jons, King David and Antietam Blush early with heat and humidity in June.
I’ve had help thinning. both paid and sevin and still have trees too heavy.
I have lost 4 trees to snapping on the rootstock on Geneva rootstocks this spring. all were cleft grafts and in moderate wind t-storms. Aged from 4-8 years old. I won’t regraft or replant, too old. Most definitely a problem some where in those Geneva roots. These were well supported trees and broke cleanly at the graft junction.
Best looking varieties this summer so far:
Zestar! looks amazing so far, 3"+ apples, very pretty, starting to get some sugar.
Kidd’s looks good, too many fruit.
Razor Russet has five limb supports under it, heavily thinned and still has too many apples.
Baldwin, King David, Chieftain, King of the pippens, Glockenapfel, and Westfield also have very promising starts.
Hope your year is going well also.
God Bless, Phil.
Sorry to hear about the problems with those geneva tootstocks. Years ago cummins told me they required permanent staking when i nearly ordered some. I was very lucky they were extremely honest with me. Very good to hear from you and get the latest updates! Thank you and likewise i’m wishing you the very best growing season!
So sorry to hear about your G series trees. It seems the G series rootstocks have that inherent problem of breaking off at the grafted area. I have a couple of G series trees I just planted. It was the apple variety I wanted and the only rootstock available was the G 890 series.
I will definitely keep them staked long after I normally take the stakes off my trees once the trunk gets thick enough.
Antietam Blush was bred in Frederick County, MD.