I’ve got room to put two fan-espallier apple trees at my home in the SF Bay Area (cool summers, lots of morning overcast, with a burst of high 70s/low 80s heat in Sept). Because of limited space, and the investment of several years to reach fruit-production, I really want to make a good selection but am spinning with the choices! I figure I should select varieties that are well suited to local climate, have the sweet moderately-tart flavor that my family likes, and aren’t already widely available in local markets. Pink Lady, Jonagold, Gala are well liked by my family, but either don’t grow well here or are already widely available.
Among the varieties offered by our excellent local nursery are a fair number that I’m not familiar with. Would anyone like to comment on how well these varieties might meet my goals?
Anna
Cox Orange Pippin
Empire
Gordon
Gravenstein (have only had mealy supermarket version, yuck!)
White Winter Pearmain
Where are you in the Bay Area? There are lots of micro-climes. You can grow a banana in parts of Oakland and Berkeley.
I can second Gordon and you can’t really go wrong with Anna. Anna will give you yields very early if that is a concern. Pearmain is more of an ‘antique’ apple, not really like the store bought apples you mention, but it will work in your climate. COP, Empire and Gravenstein are not low chill apples, but are great too.
Gordon, Anna, and White Winter Pearmain should all bear multiple crops per year in your environment, on average 3 to 4 times every two years. Anna is not as flavorful as the other two. WW Pearmain is a bit tarter – a bit on the Granny Smith side. Gordon is what my homeowner customers in your environment like the most.
El Cerrito, a bit north of Berkeley … similar climate, a bit more fog and chill. I’m trusting Berkeley Hort Nursery to mostly carry varieties that do well in the local environment, so probably thinking mostly about flavor (and disease resistance, to the extent that there’s big differences). I’ve never heard about Gordon before; what’s the flavor like?
A great balance of “apple” flavor, sweetness, and tart – when home grown and not picked too early. I’ll take it over anything in a supermarket. Here’s a description from Dave Wilson:
I grow Anna here in grey Los Osos and it does well, though I only allow one crop. Hawaii does well and is delicious, but late–as late as Anna is early. Mutsu is also OK, but again very late. I have friends a block away who grow Gravenstein and they are very good (but sterile, like Mutsu). Their Gordons are not very productive.
What I lack is the in-between apples to fill in from Anna to Hawaii, etc.
Oh, and Anna really needs some kind of pollinator, like a branch of Dorset Golden, to produce reasonable apples. Dorset Golden grows fine here but I find the apples a bit sour. Also these two apples don’t really keep so you need to eat them up quickly.
I’m not too far from El Cerrito - Point Reyes Station, out in West Marin - and I inherited happy, mature examples of (in ripening order):
Green (striped) Gravenstein
Winter Banana
Golden Delicious
Stayman
Albemarle/Yellow Newtown Pippin
Hauer Pippin
plus a couple of not-too-inspiring varieties that I’ve never identified. (I’ve since added thirty more young trees, and converted the unidentified ones to Frankentrees.)
These are pretty common apples in older orchards in this area, and they produce reliably. Grav and Stayman are triploid, but Winter Banana and Golden are excellent pollen sources. If you have room for two trees and/or have other pollen sources nearby, I’d definitely try a Grav - they really are terrific in this climate.
I have a neighbor with a young Anna/Dorsett Golden pair, and I believe that they ripen in late June here. I’ve decided to try a Shell (of Alabama) myself this year; it ought to bear at a similar time. You might check into that one as well if you’re looking for a very early apple.
I’ve only sampled Gordon at my sister’s orchard, just north of Eureka (within walking distance to the beach). As grown there, I wouldn’t call it a balanced apple, more of a really good Fuji type- sweet crisp and juicy, but not aromatically distinctive with much acid punch. One of her outstanding performers for another sweet type but with some of yellow delicious aromatics that I grafted there is Mutsu. When I grafted it 20 years ago, Mutsu was not well known on the West Coast, but in her area it has since become a favorite commercial apple.
Once you grow your own apples it may become decreasingly irrelevant whether a type you grow is widely available or not because you will only want to eat your own apples and it’s not very hard to grow all you need as long as you produce mostly good storage apples. Yours will taste different and better than any you can buy- even of same varieties.
As far as making recommendations, some people love tart apples (as in Granny Smith) some like very sweet, low acid apples like Fuji and some want a wide range to keep surprising their palate and also to use for cooking. What are your favorite apples that you can name?
I agree with the grafting idea, even if it may seem intimidating to you. It is much easier than you can imagine and youtube provides lots of visual tutorials. We need to have a grafting section here in the guides.
Oooh, that’s a good warning, I really don’t care for Fuji; much too bland, and often a bit too hard.
Family favorites from the supermarket are Pink Lady, Gala, Braeburn, Jazz. I recently had some Jonagold that I loved, and liked a Sierra Beauty. My son loved some Gravenstein from the supermarket, but I found it horribly mealy and soft … presumably they’re better when fresh from the tree.
Yes to grafting; I definitely intend to give that a shot!
BTW, I am in Sunset Zone 17. Ridiculously narrow temperature band. Winter lows almost never below 40, summer highs almost never above 75.
Not all that different from my sister’s climate in Trinidad above Eureka, but I’m sure your site gets more overall warmth. She can’t even get adequate sugar from her Satsuma plum tree.
I wonder if Goldrush would thrive there, it does alright in her orchard and provides hard crisp apples into spring form storage- but it might be too hard for you- good storage apples tend to be hard, which isn’t a trait most oppose (up to a point somewhere past Fuji, maybe to Ark. Black). You would likely like Gravenstein fine for 3 or 4 weeks- I remember finding one someone left on the beach at Big Sur 40+ years ago after hiking for a couple of days- all I need to say is that I still remember that wonderful apple. They aren’t world class here in SE NY where I now live, according to my palate.
I expect you can also grow Jonagold there as my sister does. I would try Esopus Spitz, at least as a graft in the future. That is a very lively tart off the tree with extremely high brix to go with the acid. Granny Smith might be much different than the WA version, because you could pick it fully ripe even if it takes until Dec. to get there. It is typically picked quite green by commercial growers.
I question the idea that you could get double crops there, probably not enough warmth during the cool months, but my guess probably isn’t worth a lot. My entire experience of managing apples in a warm climate was two Beverly Hill apple trees in S, CA, several decades ago. People didn’t grow a lot of apples in the Los Angeles area (Topanga Canyon) back then.
I wonder the same thing since your family likes the sweet-tart flavor. The Goldrush apples harvested from the branch I grafted a few years ago are not hard. It’s very close to Honeycrisp texture, with high sugar and moderately high acid flavor. I always feel that if I can have Goldrush, I don’t need Honeycrisp. One does have to wait till the color of the entire fruit to turn light yellow (if not golden yellow) at least for best flavor which is around end of Oct or early November for me. I find that for some reason (sunlight probably), not all fruits will turn golden yellow.
Goldrush also seems to not require so many chill hours.
Another variety which I like is Pink Pearl. The flavor I have tasted is like a milder version of Goldrush. It has a crisp texture when picked at the right time. It does not keep long though. It bloomed early and readily this year from a branch I grafted last year, when I believe our chill hour was around 500. I also noticed that it forms fruiting spurs readily as well. If you’re only going to have two trees, this one is probably not a good choice because of the early bloom time. But if you plan to graft some branches to other variety, this might be a candidate. Another plus is that if your summer is cool enough, you might see a bright pink flesh.
I fully agree. Pink Lady is a reliable cropper for me with a low chill requirement and is an annual cropper. When harvested at the right time, it not hard and dense like the store bought apples. The only downside for me is its susceptibility to FB. But because it blooms so heavily, I can afford to cut off the infected clusters and still have a good yield. I’m not sure how it will do in your climate though.
Yes, for a late, Pink Lady seems very reliable as an annual bearer, even here in SE NY where it has apples pulling energy from the tree right up until mid-Nov harvest. My problem on the tree I have it on is corking, probably because it needs some calcium sprays. Goldrush never has any destructive issues if you don’t mind UUUgly sooty blotch too much. I get similar corking on some of my Jonagold as well and haven’t figured out how to solve the problem without having to do a bunch of extra calcium sprays.
