It does look that way, more like an Ashmead’s Kernel than GR. It had lots of sooty blotch and the lighting wasn’t good (cloudy evening), so that probably makes it look a bit darker than it was. Here’s a better angle.
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@TJ_westPA
My Gold Rush was the one in the middle.
It looked quite different from yours. I have never had any GR looked so russeted like yours. But mine did not have enough sun/heat.
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I had some apples with bitter rot this year as well. They looked pretty much like yours here. I would like some suggestions as well of how to combat the bitter rot too. They looked great for a while then the spots starting appearing.
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Commercial growers usually add calcium to their summer sprays but I read that a key problem that creates this is excess K that reduces uptake of calcium. According to the consultant that wrote the article a couple manganese sprays negates this negative result.
If your soil is high in K, and if you mulch with shredded or chipped wood it likely is, you can consider this treatment because I’ve had a growing problem with this in my own orchard with Pink Lady, Braebern, Jonagold and Honeycrisp that didn’t materialize much this year after experimenting with this treatment. Try two sprays starting about mid-July and then 2-3 weeks later and let me know how it works out.
That’s for treating bitter pit, not bitter rot. Though, I will make note of that in case I do run into bitter pit issues. Thanks!
Are you sure you are getting bitter rot? I’m pretty sure the red dots on the top picture is scale damage. However, I don’t know if that led to rot, I’ve not seen that happen.
This picture of bitter rot looks nothing like yours.
Are you sure you’re looking at my picture and not the one in the post above mine? I don’t see any red dots on my apple pics. Mine has the large, brown, rotten spots.
You are right- I thought it was the same series. But your rots look nothing like the bitter rot in the photo form Cornell. Maybe you should have a pathologist look at it when if it starts to develop next year. Bitter rot appears to be a fairly non-specific disease caused by many different species of fungus.
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I left just a couple gold rush apples to hang though two consecutive nights at 20 degrees. Turned them to mush. So for me at least, multiple nights of 25 degrees were no problem, but two nights at 20 degrees ruined the apples.
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It also depends on brix. How low an apple can take is about more than variety. Can you sample the brix of the mushy apples?
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I don’t have access to a refractometer. They are quite sweet, I will say that. It was mushy but pretty tasty in the few pieces I ate before it thawed out.
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The best organic control for BR is sanitation, but your problem could be another form of summer rot.
BR can be very hard to control in a bad year even with multiple “cocktails” of synthetic fungicide. I used multiple cocktails last year and had good control
Organic copper soap, lime sulfur or sulfur may help
It can be hard to identify BR especially when the apples are well decayed but when apple is sliced open BR shows a specific form Tree Fruit Disease Update: Increasing bitter rot pressures
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Yeah, it could have been another form of rot. Not sure if there is much I can do to improve sanitation. It’s a young tree and was fruiting for the first time, with 2 other young apples nearby. It’s on a hill with very good airflow and sunlight. There are plenty of wild apple trees in the area, though (too many to get rid of and not all on my property). Nothing real close to my orchard but close enough to be a problem for things like this (closest are maybe 100 yards away).
I had the apples covered with organza bags. Maybe that caused problems in some way? I could try using ziplock bags instead next year to see if that would work. I’ll try a copper or sulfur fungicide as well, maybe with a sticker.
Thanks for the advice!
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If you talk about air flow or ventilation. An organza bag gives far better air flow than a plastic zip lock bag ever can. That’s why in a hotter climate, using a plastic ziplock bag can cause sunburn on an apple. Even with two bottom corners of the bag cut off for ventilation, an apple can be “cooked”.
Check with the Penn Stae extension services to find out what diseases you have will be an approach I suggest.
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I don’t think those apples are GoldRush, that seems too far off in terms of how much russet and the shape - GoldRush is more tall, not so squat. Another indicator is GoldRush is not prone at all to that kind of spotting but other russets are highly prone. Golden Russet for example, that is why I removed Golden Russet.
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Yes, I like that the organza bags give good ventilation. I was just thinking that maybe a plastic bag would prevent the fungal spores from getting to the apple, unlike the organzas.
I may check with Penn State, though I am fairly certain I have bitter rot on the property since I’ve seen apples with the brown cone-shaped pattern inside them many times before from some of the wild trees. I wish I took a picture of the inside of those Goldrush apples… I think I was too excited to try them for the first time and just quickly cut them up lol.
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That could be a possibility. In any case, it seems to be immune or highly resistant to scab and the apples are densely textured, which could describe both Golden Russet and Goldrush. I picked them much earlier(due to the growing rot) than when Goldrush should ripen here and they didn’t seem too under-ripe to eat (the seeds were brown), though maybe the rot caused them to ripen prematurely.
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Now that @scottfsmith mentioned Golden Russet, I think he is right. I have only 2 Golden Russet from my tree last year and one this year.
The shape and the coloring of your apple looked like Golden Russet.
@BobVance also has plenty of apples from both varieties. He probably could share his opinion about your apple.
Here’s my Golden Russet this year. Not much sun so it did not get much russeting.
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And yet my Golden Russets from ACN are pure russet- never a spot of yellow flesh.
Depends on how many leaves were left…If there aren’t any leaves, it’s hard to ripen more…
Nothing a scrubby sponge won’t handle. Here’s a pic of my Goldrush (the one on the bottom) after I scrubbed half of it.
Agreed- it looks like some kind of russet to me as well. Sooty blotch and flyspec make it look like the Goldrush in my pic. The other apple in the pic (on top) is a Golden Russet. I picked both at the same time, about 1.5 months ago. Given that the Golden Russet has started to shrivel, you can see how Goldrush is the better keeper. I ate the Golden Russet tonight and it was still pretty good. Not mealy and it was 21 brix.
The rot looks like something I get a lot of on Egremont Russet and some of on Golden Russet, though I don’t know the correct name to refer to it by.
It’s hard to tell because of the shriveling, but my Golden Russets are 100% russeted (though not 100% pretty…).
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