Warm,
Ifyou have never checked out Orangepippin site, you should. It has tons of info on all kinds of apples.
Runinette is an antique apple. On Schlabach catalog, it is put in a cider category though it is rated very high for fresh eating. I ordered one.
Mamuang, I think you typed “runinette” for "rubinette. If so, I should correct the idea that it’s an antique apple, as it was developed in 1964 by Walter Hauenstein in Switzerland, according to The Orange Pippin.
I have only a tiny crop of a few apples on my Frankentree, and it is a fight to keep the squirrels from them. Curiously, they have not colored up much at all this year, in spite of some chilly nights recently. I may have to harvest them prematurely, I’m sorry to say.
Here’s a link to the Orange Pippin article. (If you visit their site you might also read their entry about Karmijn de’ Sonneville, another great apple by all accounts.)
I’m excited to hear how your tree does.
Speaking of Rubinette, I had my last one today. They are more a September apple for me. I dried a bunch and WOW, were they good that way! Sometimes they can be a little strong-flavored so its not always the one I want the most. Apples are very diverse genetically and there is a huge range of flavors. This year my flavor surprise was Lady Sweet, it was very low acid and added a very different dimension to what an apple tastes like. Overall I would agree with Alan that there are many great apples and I have a hard time saying one is best.
Mark,
Schlabach nursery put it under Olde Ebglish/Apple Cider Varieties so I assume it was antique type. Thanks for the correction.
I am fine with this variety since it is good for cider, too.
Mamuang, they’re all wonderful, each in their time! Good fruit makes me smile.
M
I wish I have more space. Since I have far more success with apples and pears than stone fruits, that is where my concentration will be. Add a few, and graft a lot.
Sorry for a lot of typos.
Hello, I am recently retired and trying to get good at grafting. This fall I was scouting an old mountain road near Albuquerque and found these road apples. They are sweet, mildly tart, and full of what I remember as apple taste. They are waxy and quite firm. Next February I hope to get some scionwood and might even be successful grafting them.
Compared to all the store apples I’ve eaten the last few decades, this is a really delicious alternative.
Fun stuff- hope your grafts succeed.
Road apples had a different def in my day.
while there are certain elements of modern society I can’t stand, one of the huge benefits is access to apples I would have never been able to try in the past…my wife came home the other day with a bag of Ruby Frost…I know they have been out for a couple of years, but I had never had them…great apple to eat right out of hand…straight down to the core…there is something about the crisp texture with a little bite that I really enjoy…found my new favorite…
Yes me for sure right next to Melrose,my alltime favorite!!!
LOL Alan they still have that meaning here.
Pacific rose.
Anything like Jon A Red?
Finally got to try Ruby Frost apple. For me it was good but nothing special. I’m not sure why Cornell bothered to release it. There are already so many similar apples.
This is an old topic, but it came live again so I read it through. One of the motivations of the OP was to have apples for gifts.
I certainly would make some different choices, from what I first planted, if I had to do it all over again. I’m glad I learned grafting, which lets me try new cultivars without always buying new trees.
If I was to do it over again, I’d get Gravenstein and Pristine as my earlies. They are both delicious and come into ripeness before most others. They need a pollinator (Gravenstein is triplpoid), something equally early blooming. Maybe Dolgo?
For mid season, I’d go with Jonagold, although mine is alternate year bearing. Again, triploid. For novelty, since part of the OP relates to gifts, I’d grow Airlie Red Flesh, which I think is very tasty and that pink flesh is fun especially for people who don’t grow apples. Liberty is easy, disease resistant, and I think delicious. For me it bears annually. We love our Liberty apples.
For late apples, I think Goldrush is a good choice. Also disease resistant and a keeper.
Somewhere in there, Rubinette has great flavor. Mine seem to be mid season. That one is starting to bloom now in my orchard, and Gravenstein is in mid bloom, so that might work out. Plus, the OP writer already has some apple trees. On the same tree is Queen Cox, which has a nice Cox’s Orange Pippin English apple flavor.
From what I read, there are apples with unusual flavors that might be nice for gifts, but I have not had any bear yet. I’m thinking, Milo Gibson, Granite Beauty, or another red flesh that are advertised for unusual flavor, such as Redlove Era. Those might be worth a try, to have something very different from the usual grocery store apples.
I though all of the responses were great. Maybe this 2 cents is worth adding. Something early, something mid, something late; remember pollinators that bloom at the same time; throw in something unusual for extra fun. And there are some good disease resistant choices for those who are interested in that.
Regarding Redlove Era - yes, the flavor is different than the “standard” apples, it has the “berry” flavor, but to me, it has just an OK overall taste.
Ha, thanks Guys! yes I enjoy gifting apples as much (or more?) than I actually care for myself.
I have a bigger variety than I had three years ago but still care about what you think the neighbor would like the best.
Zestar is a tasty early bloomer, and bears early as well. Alkmene and William’s Pride (disease resistant) also. I have the first two, the Alkie has always bloomed first for me, profusely this year, and Z has a couple blooms on it for the first time this year.
Subdood, Today I also noted that my Rubinette and Goldrush branches are blooming. Not full bloom, but getting there, while Gravenstein is still in full bloom. So we have some nice options.
I would love to try Williams Pride. I already have Pristine, Priscilla, Goldrush, Winecrisp, and a new graft of Prima, so I’m obviously into PRI apples. Not PRI, but we also really like the disease resistant Liberty. I just added the reportedly disease resistant Tasty Red, Golden Treat, and that Redlove Era. I want to give my trees the best chance I can, and being somewhat disease resistant is a nice bonus for me.
I wont say that every fruit from my own orchard is always great, but I do feel like most of them taste much better than what I buy. And I just feel good about them. That’s why Im sometimes more flexible about the cultivar’s flavor reports than other characteristics. For example, a lot of people really love Karmijn, but mine were always cracked and woody. And my Golden Delicious was a fireblight and scab magnet. So I culled them. And sometimes the history. I love the idea of eating an apple of the same cultivar that Thomas Jefferson, or Queen Victoria, or ordinary people in 1860 liked. We have mostly better apples now, and there is somatic genetic drift and terroir, but I still like the idea.
I have all of those, except Prima and Priscilla, mainly for their disease resistance, and that they have pretty good flavor, from what I’ve read. I have tasted Winecrisp, Liberty and Goldrush from a local orchard, and based on what we’ve sampled, think they are very good. Winecrisp was OK, but that was a small sample.
I just picked Pristine because supposedly it is one of the best early varieties, and has a decent shelf life compared with others in its window. Haven’t been able to find any to try, but our tree has a few blooms, so we might get lucky this year.
I picked a couple russets, Golden and Roxbury based on their history, and mostly flavor. We have also been able to sample these at the same orchard, and I have to say GR may be one of my three favorites, up there with Goldrush and Honeycrisp. Very tart and sweet, and crunchy, and the russet adds to the character of the apple.
The Roxbury samples weren’t that good, IMO, but they were prob not the best examples, the ones we picked seemed to be past their prime, somewhat mealy, almost soft. Interesting flavor, but the texture was off-putting. Hopefully our big tree will give us a chance this year of trying them at their peak.
We added Zestar and Suncrisp the next year as a result of our sampling from the orchard. Z is like Honeycrisp lite, and SC has a varied flavor profile that is hard to pin down, but it’s mostly sweet, with almost a banana flavor to it, among others.
When I was narrowing down our choices, Rubinette was one of the contenders, but went with something else. That may be why I picked Alkmene, because I wanted a Cox’s Orange Pippin offspring, and it’s supposedly easier to grow than Rubinette.
Gravenstein sounds very interesting, I may have to try grafting that variety in the future. Right now, I have three bench grafts from last year that I need to find a place for, a couple of them (Suncrisp and Goldrush) are getting a bit too big for their pots.
