PRIMA: One of the first disease-resistant varieties to hit the market, now resides among the tried and true. Medium-large roundish fruit has rich yellow skin with a striking orange-red blush. Resembles Jonathan, which is buried somewhere in its convoluted parentage. Mildly subacid juicy white flesh provides excellent fresh eating and makes good cider. Keeps a couple of months.
Open spreading tree bears annually if kept thinned. Proving to be hardier than anyone had thought. Scab immune and resistant to fireblight, cedar apple rust and mildew. Blooms early. Z4. Maine Grown.BACK! (Standard: 3–6’ bare-root trees; dwarf: 2½–5’ bare-root trees)
PINOVA: Delicious and highly attractive apple bred for three important characteristics: disease resistance, shelf life and flavor. Pinova excels at all three. Medium-sized conic fruit is bright yellow with a pinkish-orange blush and crimson striping. Great fresh eating, it combines the sweetness of Golden Delicious and the complex flavors of Cox. Flesh stays white when sliced, making this a good choice for lunchbox snacks and salads.
Scionwood courtesy of Fedco growers at the Wild Mountain Cooperative in Greene, ME, who highly recommend Pinova as an easy-to-grow annual producer. Scab and fireblight resistant. Blooms midseason. Z4. Maine Grown.
PIPSQUEAK: Small russeted dessert apple with a long stem and a few faint pinkish-orange stripes. The rough skin almost feels like a kiwi. A large pipsqueak might approach 2" in diameter. For such a diminutive fruit it packs a lot of flavor. We eat them raw or baked whole rolled in cinnamon and sugar. One of our friends called it “the best apple I’ve ever eaten.” It’s surprisingly juicy, full of good flavor—tropical like a piña colada. Great fresh-eating crabapple—rivals Trailman. Ripens around October 1 in central Maine. A favorite of the kids at the Community School on Mount Desert Island in the fall of 2015.
SEARSBURG CHERRYBOMB: Abundant small bright red crabapples almost look like ripe cherries on the tree. Surprising orange flesh is tart with sharp bright acidity, but also packs a lot of sugar. The best thing about this apple is that the trees are “absolutely clean of foliage blemishes with no spray!” according to Shatt. Cedar apple rust can be a huge problem in New York orchards and Cherrybomb has had no issues.
On trial here in Maine. Seems like a good candidate to use as a parent in the quest to breed climate-resilient and naturally disease-resistant apple varieties. Midseason bloom. Z4.
I have a single branch of Pinova. I don’t get much from it, but the fruit is welcome in the late season. It’s supposed to be pineapple flavored. It does have that sweet over tart aspect.
I spray for fungi, codling moth, apple maggot, … and squirrels .
Pinova is synonymous w Piñata and may have another European name as well. I worked at an orchard where we grew it, precocious and heavy bearer of attractive fruit.
I think it is interesting that SEARSBURG CHERRYBOMB is said to have “Surprising orange flesh”. I wonder how that orange compares to the Fat boy aka butterball orange flesh crabapple The really unique apples
I’ve decided, I’m going to order a Seasburg Cherrybomb on M111 and make it a multi-grafted crab apple tree. I think it will be fun to have a big sturdy tree with the major scaffolds all different colored, highly disease resistant and delicious crabs.
I’ve fruited all 3 varieties and for me Chestnut and Pipsqueak are comparable in many ways but Trailman has different characteristics.
Trailman is my first to wake up in the spring and also first fruit to ripen. It is an egg shaped apple with thin, smooth, shiny skin and juicy mostly sweet flesh with a slightly crabapple background flavor. It is interesting to watch it go from a darker color to that of yellow with red blush when it ripens.
Chestnut and Pipsqueak are more closely comparable in that they ripen relatively close to one another with Pipsqueak coming in sooner than Chestnut for me. They are of similar size and shape but Pipsqueak is mostly russeted whereas Chestnut has some russeting mostly around the stemwell. Pipsqueak has been more productive than Chestnut thus far. I look forward to the more complex flavors of Chestnut (even a slight cherry flavor in 2023) to that of Pipsqueak (more apple cider flavor) but I’ve greatly enjoyed both and will graft/plant/recommend both when asked which varieties I favor.
I have some Sonata scionwood on order. Ive tasted it before and it is quite good, although a bit sweeter than my ideal preference. I want to cross it with scarlett surprise- an early ripening red fleshed apple that has good favor but is very tart.
The searsburg crab also sounds interesting enough to try growing a branch of, but they dont have scionwood of it, just full sized trees.
I think I also have otterson, black oxford and ananas reinnette scionwood on order from them. Fedco has definitely done right by me over the years.
I think @roth2000 was spot on with his descriptions of Trailman / Chestnut / Pipsqueak. Muscat de Venus has been a great crab for me as well. It’s got a ton of flavor that’s almost like a really good sweet broth, in a way. Very richly flavored with a lot of depth. Whitney and Pixie Crunch are good too, but both have a lot of traditional apple flavors. Ivan is a very good early crab that’s similar to Trailman but without any of the astringency. I’ve tasted Skillcult’s Cherub and thought that was excellent. … that might be about it.
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