Help me pick a new early-mid apple

Centennial crab was mentioned above and I agree it is a great little apple. No real disease issues, no real pest pressure, etc. Not sure if the ripening is on the early side for you, though.

If you do consider it, remember it is naturally a small tree so allow for that when choosing rootstock.

In defence of the Dolgo. In highschool we would stuff all our pockets with them. If you catch them just right they are awesome to eat.

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apparently i need to grow a crab apple. they must come into bearing sooner than a regular semi dwarf?

Summer Rambo thrives here in hot, humid, steamy Chesapeake Bay area. Proven disease resistance over several centuries. I see old, old trees of SR here.

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A couple earlier apples that do nicely in the PNW are Discovery (has been disease resistant and can be sublime with strawberry overtones) and Buckley Giant (gets bitter pit, tastes like a weak Honeycrisp). I don’t think either keep very long. My Zestar! has not produced yet but I think I read it keeps better than most earlies. You could check with Joanie @ TOC and ask her for recommendations. There may be a great local underutilized option.

thanks for all the suggestions. I’ll keep thinking about this, I won’t graft till next spring unless I can get summer budwood somehow. I didn’t know that william’s pride was a good hanger, that will probably make it work. that was my favorite on my original list since I’ve been so impressed with PRI’s pristine, but I thought at only pristine +15 days it wouldn’t make sense.

I’m still interested in the crabapples, does codling moth go after them? There’s a massive feral apple tree two doors down that keeps moths around, currently I bag apples but I don’t think I’d want to spend the time on crabapples because their small size would make it inefficient.

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Ive had good luck with budwood from Singing Tree. I believe theres a scan of the paper order sheet floating around on this forum. Lots of varieties to choose from.

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Unfortunately it does, at least in my orchard.

Re Williams Pride it might still be a touch early compared to your ideal, but is well worth it.

I’ll make my regular plug for MonArk. Best early-season apple I’ve ever grown, and one of only about a half-dozen apples (from an original 60 or so) that I still bother to maintain. No disease issues that I’ve ever noticed in the 25 yrs I’ve had it.
Ripe early to mid-July here; big round/flat red over green apple with crisp white flesh, good for fresh eating, cooking, drying. Ripens over several week period. Unlike most early apples, it will keep 6 weeks or more under refrigeration without going mealy.
I need to graft another one and put it in a better location… my original has been overtopped by two huge IE mulberries, and 2 rows of 20-yr old seedling pecans on 3 sides.

Crabs… hard to beat. Like others here, Dolgo is readily munched by everyone in my family. Centennial & Kerr - both Dolgo offspring - are very tasty, disease and pest resistant. Jim Bastian’s Orange crab is probably the favorite here.
I’ve had hard time getting Chestnut started… I know I’ve grafted it on at least 3 occasions… but still don’t have one. Started Wickson (again) last year, and at least have one survivor, but it looks like CAR is gonna be tough on it. Almata is the best ‘eating’ of the half-dozen or so redflesh apples I’ve had survive for any length of time.

I see all the ‘deer habitat’ folks in northern climes planting Kerr, Bastian Orange, Chestnut, and a growing number of crab selections on hunting properties, and touting late or prolonged ‘drop times’ well into hunting season… but mine are all pretty much ripe in July or early August. There is no apple here that will have fruit beyond September - deer, crows, or European hornets will eat all fruits that ripen any later than August long before winter is on the horizon.

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We ate raw rhubarb straight from the plant, stalk after stalk, when we were kids. I humbly hypothesize that sour and pectiny fruit does appeal to semi-feral kids, less so to fully domesticated, adults.

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thanks. monark led me to this report that had ripening dates and notes for a lot of the varieties I was interested in. they have galarina (rezista gala) with crimson crisp at about +38. William’s pride at only +2 for them but with a long harvest time

scab pressure is very high here, it’s not just a leaf disease it’ll cover the whole fruit. so proven scab resistance, ideally in the form of a controlled test by a land grant, is the main criteria after ripening date

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Scott I am developing an interest in summer rots and summer rot resistance apples. You talk about summer rots a lot. Have you identified what summer rots you have problems with? Is your main problem bitter rot, black rot, white rot or something else? Does the rot appear on it’s own or is it preceeded by other damage scab, CAR, wind damage, etc?

I was looking at a small book called “The Best Apples to Buy and Grow” edited by Beth Hanson. It’s a good beginner book and covers a lot of information. I found it interesting that the book has a disease resistance chart which actually includes the resistance of the apples to summer rots.

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Good, maybe you will be able to tell me what kind of rots I have when you are done. I think that I mainly have white rot, as it goes to the core and looks like white rot pictures. But the stone fruit brown rot (m. fructicola) is also found on apples and it could be that I have some of that. I don’t get the brown rot spores though which is what makes me think it is white rot. On top of that I believe I have some black rot and bitter rot, just not in large quantity.

It is great to hear someone is putting together some information on rot susceptibility. I could personally classify at least a hundred varieties based on my own experiences dealing with rots.

The main reason why this is not a big deal for the researchers/breeders is commercial orchards are doing regular cover sprays all summer and those appear to be highly effective. For me the idea of going out in 90+F weather in July/August and spraying is something I really would rather avoid. In general for home growing it is critical to minimize the number of sprays to make it worth our time/hassle. I am doing something like six per year now, nearly all before June 1. With my current spray program I don’t have bad rots on any of my “keeper” apples, but have removed what seems like hundreds of varieties that didn’t cut it. This spring I finally removed Wagener, one of my favorite apples for taste but it was too prone to rot.

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Good book, refer to it often.

Scott-

I started a thread with some links to summer rot diseases and that list of apples I mentioned in my post. Could you may be post a list of apples you tried and rate then as far as resistance in the thread?

Cool, I will try to cook up a list. It will take awhile though since I have a lot of logs to go through. For hot weather it is also important to rate susceptibility to water core and also on some apples they go mealy too fast in hot weather even if they don’t rot.

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