We were out doing our first picking on our Goldrush apple trees a couple days ago. These will go in the cooler for farmers market sales in Nov-Dec. With these smaller trees, on emla 26, we usually do 2 picks. We also have a few much bigger trees on m7 that aren’t even ready yet and we may do several picks into Nov.
Up here in Portland Oregon they are doing great. Just now starting to get some yellow orange coloring. Virtually no insect damage or disease. No spray. They are very sweet and juicy from our early taste tests.
Do you have enough to sell some? I haven’t had Goldrush picked yellow with blush, only shades of green. I’d love to try a ripe one.
They look nice! How do you determine that they are fully ripe? Somebody on this forum said no green around the stem.
Like @murky Mine don’t get enough sun to have red blush. The good news is that a few I have this year have turned yellow at varying degrees. I don’t like picking green ones. They don’t taste that good even after turning yellow in storage.
I agree about the green ones. We inevitably leave too many apples on our M7 trees and the ones that havent started to break to yellow by now wont ever. Picking green ones is like picking green tomatoes, what stage of green are they?
We find that Goldrush is a very heavy setting variety for us and we put a lot of effort into thinning. I will be eventually removing my M7 trees as they are just not compatible with the 7’ trellis system.
Determining ripeness is certainly going to vary by location and growing conditions but for us we are able to use color as a pretty good indicator. Recent years have given us fairly dry and warm Sep and early Oct weather. Our Goldrush goes from green to fully yellow over about a 3 week window.
Really, the bite test is the final determination of an apple for tree ripe. Choosing a representative example apple to sample is important. You dont want to sample the most beautiful apple on the tree, have it taste great, then pick all the apples only to find out later that there was only one apple on the tree that was ready.
Goldrush is a sweet/tart apple with being more on the tart side when fresh off the tree. This combination can change with location and conditions AND an individuals taste buds.
As I said in earlier post we pick our M7 trees multiple times. We also do this with Braeburn, which we havent done last pick on yet.
Because you have an orchard and several Gold Rush, biennialing probably is not an issue for you. Gold Rush, mine is on M 7, has a tendency to be biennial. Last year it set a lot of fruit. I thinned but obviously was not enough. This year, I may have a total of 10 Gold Rush on that tree.
Thats interesting. I have not experienced biennialism in Goldrush myself but if M7 is prone to it then thats just another good reason to get rid of the trees.
I’m going to try to keep mine on the tree until at least Nov 15 if I can. But if we get a lot of rain I pick early to avoid cracking. (Same with Hauer Pippin)
In addition to the rootstocks you use, the trellis system probably is a bigger reason why biennialing does not happen. With a systematic branch bending like that, apple trees are likely to be able to produce consistently each year.
Got down to 28 last night we’ll see if they hold up. Also have some pink lady, king David, granny, Mutzu I’m hoping are ok. Eggplant and zucchinis are toast this morning. Nothing under freezing in the forecast for at least 10 days so I’m hoping they can hang unaffected for awhile longer. Flavor was mediocre a couple days ago.
Mine just have a hint of blush. They seem to store well at this stage. They are tart but also have lots of sugar.
Looks good! From appearance alone i would say you were right on for storage harvest.
I have one tree on M7, it’s a bench graft I did maybe 5 years ago, it stayed in a pot a couple years before I planted it out 3 years ago. It’s reached about 10ft tall and had a good fruit set this year. Unfortunately deer and ultimately squirrels stripped it clean this year.
I planted another GR from Cummins 9 years ago, but it died about 4 years ago from some root disease. I didn’t get any fruit off it either.
My wife went up to Ohio yesterday and picked up some GR from an orchard just across the Ohio River. They are mostly green but still are very good as usual. They were “seconds”, or not pristine fruit, but we don’t care about their looks.
I harvested maybe a third of mine yesterday. My harvest point is no green at all on the bottoms so I only picked those ones. I tasted a few and they are yummy! They will be good for a couple months.
I could have picked them all for storage until spring but I’ve found them better harvested later and not stored that long.
I totally agree. They certainly can be picked when they break from dark green to light green , better to do a starch test, but letting them get that full flavor on the tree is really worth it.
It being a shorter storage life.
They were my last apples hanging in my orchard and much of my late season heirloom cider apples that hang longer than these were a couple weeks early this year here in upstate NY. I would normally let the gold rush hang longer but they were dropping and ready to pick. It’s really a great apple and the finger lakes cider house made a single variety traditional method cider from it that was in my opinion the best cider I’ve ever had from them. This apple has a lot of potential as a cider apple.
Those look outstanding. Mine are usually like the green near the stem.
I have young GR trees which have not as of yet fruited. I saw some at a fruit stand type place in North Carolina recently. I thought they looked a bit under-ripe… But having never tasted them bought some anyway. They’re very good, I see what the hype is about… I look forward to my own trees producing and preferably being allowed to hang until they are properly ripe!
