I’m in zone 5a @1700’ and I can fully ripen Granny Smith on the tree before the freezes below 20ºF in the beginning of November. My last spring hard frost (below 30ºF) last year was on the last weekend of May. My Goldrush aren’t producing yet, but I’m not expecting any issues with ripening it.
The further north you go the longer the days during most of the growing season, which seems to allow the north to catch up with more southern areas on later ripening varieties. Early peach varieties ripen much earlier on the calendar in Kansas than here in NY, but by Sept, we catch up. I’ve never seen this mentioned in the literature, but comparing notes with other growers here convinced me of this.
4 Likes
I was just thinking that sun-hours might be more important than temperature for apples. That could be an issue for areas that get a lot of cloudy/rainy days. Summer at my location has been very dry and sunny in recent decades.
2 Likes
I have been trying to find information on this very topic,but I can’t seem to find any studies done on it though. I have always wondered if our long days, especially when it gets hot and sunny, makes any difference to the ripening of fruit.
I was under the impression that all fruit had to be picked before the first fall frost. In fact, most gardeners up here do just that, we seem to be afraid to let the fruit hang and assume that any amount of frost would damage it. I will certainly harvest differently next fall.
3 Likes
Growing degree days are probably the better measure here, rather than frost free days. Maybe? We have ~3000 GDD(base 50F) from Apr 1 to Nov 1 here in E-C Iowa.
Folks in the US can calculate their average GDD with whatever base temperature they want here: US Degree-Day Map Maker
For reference Layfayette, IN gets about 3200 GDD50 between 4/1 and 11/1. That is where most of the PRI apple selections like GR were made, from what I can tell (Purdue U.).
2 Likes
Yes, its amazing how little info there is on both points. Goodfruit, a trade magazine, had an article a while back suggesting that many varieties thought to require a longer growing season actually ripen further north than general belief. As far as the temps that damage apples, I suppose there is so much variability between varieties that it is difficult for academia to deal with the subject, but it is amazing how little guidance there is on how low temps affect unharvested apples. You worry that even if the apples are still firm after hard frost they will break down quickly in storage. From my experience, they don’t.
3 Likes
Thanks for linking Garden Register. I tried keeping records on orangepippin.com and it won’t allow me to post new data. I just make comments on the review section now.
Having bookmarked garden register I’ll create an account next chance I get and go from there.
Thanks again
Hmm, looks as though I get encouragement to try GoldRush even after I say I won’t. Alright, will stuff my prejudice against Golden Delicious progeny (it is pretty strong) and give it a try. Three long keeping apples out back would be welcome.
Thanks for your two cents-worth!
2 Likes
Not fan of Jonagold or any of the more exotic Golden Delicious crosses? Well, the eating quality of Goldrush is much different as GD is an exceptionally low-acid apple with softish flesh- GR is quite the opposite. Funny how orangpippin rates GR as on the sweet side- maybe… out of about 4 months storage, but the ones I’m eating now still are not sweets- they are a mouthful of acid zing and crunch. Most years they mellow more, though.
Just FWIW, the list of apples that show GD in their heritage is pretty long:
1 Like
Well, I must bow to greater experience and persuasive argument, and give GoldRush a try. I tasted it just this winter, from a box originating from Scott Farm, VT. (It must be Winesap trumping GD for flavor, plus something latent from another source: hard, sharp and arresting.)
Perhaps I shall thank you all the more in a few years.
This is proving a useful and informative forum; glad I posted the question.
4 Likes
RE: Garden Register. The fun thing is that you can plug in your flowering date and harvest dates and it will use an algorithm to start predicting harvest dates for you. As more data is entered I believe it can start doing that for varieties you have not even harvested yet.
I early on caught the heirloom bug and am still drawn to that aspect. It was in reading about Edelborsdorfer apple that I encountered a posting by suttonelms.org, “Inbreeding/genetic narrowing of modern apple cultivars” that I learned just how heavily the breeding industry leans on Golden Delicious. The author of that piece, a German by the name of Dr. Hans-Joachim Bannier, attached a listing of 500 recent cultivars and the parentage used to derive them. It only reinforced my resolve to seek heirloom apples with native resistance to disease and other strengths.
I recommend reading his monograph to anyone who wishes to raise their own apples.
Edelborsdorfer BTW, is not only the most ancient apple I know so far with a date attached to it - 1175, Pforta Abbey - it is very durable in every sense, if not hardiness. I do not know just how hardy it might prove to be, but is clearly able to thrive in z5/6. Zone 4 seems likely. I bought one from Cummins in '15 and hope it will bloom next year. It may ripen mid-October here and offer mildly sweet, tart and spicy fruit keeping until January or Feb. Mid-late bloom.
I do not spray chemicals on my trees. When keeping ducks, it would destroy them. I have been hit directly with Malathion once in my life by a crop duster. Weeks passed before I began to fell well again. I am trying to keep myself healthy as long as possible, which is part of the motive to grow my own fruit.
2 Likes
We are all trying to keep as healthy as possible. Some of us probably aren’t so allergic to malathion. Because you live in the west, growing without insecticide is possible, but I wouldn’t want everyone reading your post to think that using synthetic pesticides is necessarily damaging to one’s health. I believe I can provide serious evidence that farmers exposed to a great deal of pesticide don’t have health profiles that indicate significant damage to their health. If you are interested in this info, send me a private note and I well send you a very interesting and massive epidemiological study on the subject.
1 Like
Wasn’t quite ripe here in 150 day growing season in southern Rockies.
And did you wait until danger of a 20 degree hard frost before harvest. Is the tree in all day sun and properly thinned?
I waited long enough. It was in full sun. No, I didn’t thin enough. ‘Goldrush’ tends to overbear and is not so vigorous.
I figured it was topic drift to suggest go for a more vigorous than usual rootstock.
2 Likes
Yes, because GoldRush is rather small in vigor (per literature) I plan to put it on Bud118.
Two successful grafts of GoldRush onto Bud118! It is on the way now! I’ve decided to keep 'em both and need to tear down a building in time to transplant one of them. (At least that gives me a couple years.) Of course I will keep you posted in years to come.
Thanks again.
3 Likes
(here for anyone interested: http://www.suttonelms.org.uk/apple-vitality.html )
I found myself quite skeptical of his claims. Certainly he raised valid points about genetic diversity and the tendency of recent breeders to focus on a relative handful of varieties, but I question his pictures/description of beautiful grocery store quality fruit without any use of fungicides, even when a tree is literally standing next to a badly infected tree of more modern lineage.
Red Delicious, McIntosh, Jonathan, Cox Orange Pippin, and James Grieve are all 19th century apples and Golden Delicious is only slightly younger… and all were initially selected because they performed well in one respect or another relative to the older varieties they displaced. If these varieties really performed so poorly relative to apples that were common in their day, why did they ever achieve notoriety in the first place? Additionally, while it is never ideal to cross and re-cross within the same lineage, most or all of these varieties were chance seedlings and likely represent a pretty diverse genetic background as a starting point. In many cases they also haven’t been crossed and re-crossed that many times. (a few generations isn’t that big a deal, especially if you are also introducing other apples into the breeding)
1 Like