I haven’t had SugarBee but I like Envy. I first noticed this apple when a teenager walked straight over to pick this apple at Sprouts, I knew it must be good, otherwise these teenagers wouldn’t even touch them.
But in London I’ve tasted some very small, but very good something Gala.
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I will repeat a comment I’ve made before, club apples don’t involve anyone on this forum as far as the subject of growing fruit- all we can say is that we can’t legally grow them. I’d find the subject more interesting if a member was a commercial grower licensed to grow them and could speak from that knowledge.
An accomplished and experienced apple grower seldom should need to purchase apples, but in the case of crop failure, purchased fruit would seem a more appropriate subject for the lounge.
Just an opinion, and I can even make an argument against it- that the club apples serve the purpose of comparison to what we do grow.
I personally find it frustrating when there’s a fine variety that I’m not permitted to grow. I don’t enjoy coveting what I can’t have. I also believe that the latest and greatest thing is usually simply different, at best, and, objectively, there are so many great varieties already free to graft and grow that breeding something truly remarkably better than any of them is quite unlikely.
Honeycrisp was the greatest apple breeding success of my lifetime as far as garnering popularity (the patent passed before this happened, whence club apples) but there are many I prefer to eat. At least Honeycrisp was very unusually crunchy, but I grow a version of Jonagold that is slightly sweeter but otherwise very difficult to differentiate. Jonaprince. In my climate it is far easier to grow than Honeycrisp and ripens at a more opportune time (Oct instead of Sept), especially for long term storage.
One of the best store bought apples i ever tasted was a honey crisp. Some of the most disappointing store bought apples i have tasted were honey crisps. The problem with super markets and commodity apples is that the quality can be all over the map, regardless of the breed potential.
Heck i can spot a bland sub standard honey crisp from across the aisle, it is the one that is too big for breed. It means that somebody got a bit hog wild with nitrogen and you end up with an apple that is large from water retention. Raising big good looking apples and raising tasty apples are not the same thing and commodity apples are more commercially viable if they are pretty.
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What I like about Envy and Sugar Bee is that they are usually very consistent. Even if picked too early or stored too long, they are still OK. This is unlike Honey Crisp, which has to be picked at 5am during a full moon with temperatures between 61 and 74, and then placed in a grocer’s bin within 36 hours.
I have sampled Honey Crisp for years and bought directly from growers who said they grew the best. I take them at their word but Honeycrip’s best is simply not very good. That first crunchy bite is always memorable, but that’s the whole show. The crunch is there to distract you from the lack of flavor. It’s like a magician’s distraction trick. Once you know the trick, it’s boring. Nothing is more hyped than HC. I’ve eaten Arkansas Black apples grown all over the US under widely varying conditions and they are always awesome. Why is AB so easy to grow and HC so difficult? If HC were the better apple I could see why people would go to the extra effort, but it isn’t.
I list Envy and Sugar Bee at 6 out of 10 and Honey Crisp at 3 out of 10.
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I don’t give my Honeycrisp any supplementary N. and they are still oversized. I can’t control the water that comes from the sky, and that influences size even more than N. Some years the HC I grow gets up good sugar and sometimes not so much, regardless of size. My hunch is that cool nights when they are ripening helps because it slows down respiration that leads to vegetative growth and therefore more energy goes into sugar for the fruit. But who cares about my unproven hunches? However, I have read in university guidelines that cool nights help some apple varieties get color, and color generally coincides with brix to some degree.
It is well established that water has a big affect on brix levels, the more of the former the less of the latter. I believe that sun is also a big factor, but that’s not something well researched- probably because growers in humid regions can’t do much about it and in the most important commercial production areas, the amount of sunlight during the growing season isn’t an issue.
Last season we had too much rain most of the summer and if it held back and we got sun for just 10 days before peaches and nects ripened, they would be sweet even though the soil stayed quite wet. The relationship repeated itself a couple of times during the season, with fruit that ripened under grey skies being worthless.
Yeah, it is a well established fact that the best hard cider apples come from old orchards that have not been fertilized for a very long time. Excess nitrogen is a huge driver of water on apples which as you point out dilute the amounts of sugar and impart off flavors that people with the palate for it can detect.
I agree with almost all of the things you say about Honeycrisp, except I have had several, more than 15 years ago, that were outstanding and a revelation. Unfortunately everything I’ve had in the last 15 years or so has been disappointing.
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I assume there must be good tasting HC fruit out there somewhere because too many people I respect say they have tasted them.
But when I can’t find even one decent tasting apple after years of searching, it does show what a marginal apple HC produces. You don’t want to have to sample 100 apples to find one good one.
I live in WA state, so odds are the stores here aren’t shipping any in from Minnesota.
If I find myself in Minnesota, I will try to buy some.
Yeah, it was over 40 years ago I used to get good Red Delicious in the Yakima valley.
I have seen experiments with apples where adding high levels of N had no affect on brix and now see some that suggest it may have some, but there is no established fact that a complete lack of supplementary fertilizer leads to higher brix that I know of. Deficit irrigation is another matter.
There are lots of well established assumptions in horticulture that are either flat out wrong or highly dependent on variables. Some soils provide adequate N for established trees and some don’t, as goes for other plant nutrients.
A tree with inadequate vigor will produce inferior fruit, both small and poorly flavored, IME, and will not be adequately productive. In commercial production the trick is often to provide quick release nitrogen in late summer, early fall or early spring to serve spur leaves that serve the fruit. Fruit gets bigger in its early development by producing more cells, not larger ones bloated with water. Later large size development comes from those bloated cells which are inspired more by excess water than excess N as I understand it.
Later nitrogen is used by trees for vigorous shoot growth that shades fruit and nearby leaves reducing brix.
The idea is to find that goldilocks point of moderate vigor to achieve the highest quality fruit and good production. It is a complicated interaction between soil and tree, but if a tree is too vigorous, stop feeding it nitrogen. If shoot growth is consistently under 12" on a free standing tree, consider supplementary N.
Establishing trees, on the other hand, often benefit from a generous application of relatively quick release N (90 day coated urea is fine, or several apps of quicker release from early spring through mid-summer and another in late summer or early fall) if your goal is to achieve a productive and strong tree as soon as possible.
Picked the first and only Gala from a multi grafted tree yesterday. It was very good. Nothing unusual but sweet and good.
Sugar bee is my favorite store bought apple. They aren’t available very often though.
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I bought some more gala from the supermarket in London, I finally noticed the name is Royal Gala, they are small but sweet.
Envy and Sugar Bee worth their brandname. Honey crisp is overhyped to my taste. I tried honey crisp bought at grocery stores as well as freshly picked in an orchard, have never been impressed by it.
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I bought a full bag of envy when it was on sale. Some other people were buying several bags of envy. For me, its meat was too dense and was not crispy and juicy as I want apple to be. It may different from a different orchard though. I have not tried on sugar bee.
I thought Sugar Bee was a boring apple compared to SweeTango which were marketed side beside before Envy hit the stores.
A high quality Kanzi is in the running beside a high quality Cosmic Crisp for best grocery store apple to my taste. Both Envy and Sugar Bee are underwhelming to me, not enough acid. Both far better than a red delicious, but not ‘great’.
I didnt enjoy either of them that much after trying them for multiple seasons. Sugarbee apple is straight sugar to me, and Envy has some really interesting candied citrus flavour, but still a bit too unbalanced for me. I like a more tart apple though, and lean heavily into the aroma or flavour notes.
So much hate for honeycrisp! I have had really great ones that have a strong honey flavour and some that have the floral notes that are mind blowing. My most reliable apple for the grocery store, but can definitely be watery and bland if picked early or overcropped.