Honeycrisp never reach their best quality here either. It has nothing to do with higher moisture levels at my location. They are an apple I can buy sometimes better from the store.
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Before I went down the rabbit hole here at Growing Fruit I bought a fairly large, established Honeycrisp from a local nursery. In retrospect I really wish I had chosen a different apple…
I have no idea what rootstock it is on, but I’m guessing a semi-dwarf. Initially I had a number of apples on the tree, but it’s second year it got fireblight pretty bad (and looking online to see what exactly it was led me to this website, so that’s a positive I guess!). Anyways, for the past four years I have had next to nothing in terms of blooms or actual apples. It’s not biannual - we’re going on quadannual, if that’s even a word. Last year it put out a few blooms but not a single apple stuck. This year it put out exactly one cluster of flowers.
In addition to not producing fruit, it is an absolute Japanese beetle magnet and looks horrible from about July on, with leaves that are all mottled and look like they have a virus, but it seems that that’s just what Honeycrisp looks like.
I’m sure it has to do a lot with my location (Denver - 90’s and 100’s throughout the summer) but I’m aggressively trying to graft it over with other varieties. I put on two Williams Pride grafts on to the tree two years ago and those branches have already put out about five times as many blooms in one year as the Honeycrisp put out in the last two years.
Anyways, that’s my two cents.
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True. They are a usually lot bigger in the store than what I have been able to grow here. I know the orchards irrigate and that is probably one of the reasons they are a lot bigger.
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@clarkinks,
For the 7-8 years since the tree has set fruit, there was one year that the apples were excellent. All the elements (earth, wind, fire and water) must have aligned perfectly that year. They were as good as the hype. Unfortunately, other years, the fruit quality has not been consistent.
@Scooter - I assume you fought fire blight by hacking off fire blight damaged limbs of the tree. Severe pruning will set fruit production back.
I had two William’s Pride trees because at that time, I loved the apples very much. Now I removed both trees (bad locations, too crowded) and has kept one graft.
Look into russeted apples. Several of them are more interesting than non-russeted ones.
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Denver Colorado should be super good for growing apples. Applewood CO used to be a apple Orchard and is only about 17 miles from Denver. Even now we have plenty of apple trees and crab apple trees here. Nearly every house in Applewood has a apple tree planted. My house has two crab apples in ground and we don’t even have to water it. They just thrive here. Only apple trees that has not thrived here was a apple tree with 5 varieties those being honey crisp (the apple we are discussing), Braeburn, yellow transparent, a unknown fuji cultivar and Granny Smith. The other apple trees (Pink Lady, Zestar! spitzenberg and Mountain Rose apple) are all doing quite well. Heck Spitxenberg is known not to be disease resistant and is doing better than my honey crisp.
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Certainly starting as sonn as I get scions of other varieties i will graft each scaffold with something else: ordered these today as ones I do not yet grow:
Golden Reinette 1 ea
Red Gravenstein (Olga Strain) 1 ea
Royal Gala Apple scionwood. 1 ea
Belle de Boskoop 1 ea
Dennis
Kent wa
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Belle de Boskoop and Gravenstein are both triploid. I hope you have enough other varieties to help pollinate these two.
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I have had decent luck going Honey crisp. Maybe it’s because I live in Iowa where the climate is close to where the Honey crisp were developed. (Minnesota). I do have problems with them being biannual. But they do get rather large here. I have had some get as large as .8 pound and the taste is a lot better than grocery store apples.
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You have the red strain. I have the stripey one.
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My HC are the stripy ones too.
Stamper your HC look great! Do you know what strain those are?
I just planted a red version about a week ago- Roseland.
We will see if that makes a difference or not…in about 3-4 years that is.
Mine have mis-behaved!!
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@mamuang - Yes, I wouldn’t call the pruning severe, but it was a pretty good whack on a number of branches. I understand how that could set it back a year, maybe two, but four?!
@elivings1 - Ya, although the late frosts can nip apples we actually do have pretty decent weather for apple production. I’m actually quite surprised how few apple orchards there are here nowadays compared to other states. Gotta be a culture thing - you never hear people going apple picking in the fall like you do east of us.
That said, either I’m going something really wrong with this Honeycrisp or I think it just doesn’t like our long, hot summers, being that it was developed for colder climates.
Like I mentioned the only apple tree that has not performed for me is my 5 in 1 tree with a honey crisp on it and that is out of 5 other apple varieties and two crabapples. There used to be a place to pick apples in Applewood when I was a kid. I think that place is gone now. Like others said honey crisp is known to be a stinker apple. Many buy honey crisp trees because they try them at the grocery store but they are not the best trees to grow. Having tried other apples like Fuji from the grocery store I would say Fuji tastes hands down better than honey crisp. I used to eat honey crisp apples when my mom first introduced me to apples from the grocery store but have since switched to fuji. Even online states fuji is America’s favorite apple. Sadly there are just other varieties of apples that will blow honeycrisp outside the water. I remember reading one website and the website said it best when they said is honey crisp just too popular for it’s own good with all the hype around it when there is better stuff around.
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My Pristine took a year off after three good years of fruiting. I was a bit greedy and all of the apples were of good size. By the fourth year of fruiting, I had maybe 15 apples on the tree. Thank you for all of your answers, Alan too.
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I wish they didn’t get so big here, and that is just from weather that keeps soil moist through most of the growing season. The quality issue may also have to do with ripening in the right temperatures. Cooler nights and clear warm, but not hot days seem to be the ticket for this Minnesota bred apple. They did a good job in breeding an apple perfect for northern, mid-western climates, I guess. Too bad the university never got much of a pay-back as they weren’t able to popularize it soon enough to benefit from its patent.
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I have Tomkins King close to my Cortland. I am pretty sure the King relies on Cortland as its always a big producer. I have to thin it.
The HC sits midway between them so I should have enough pollinators. Thanks for the heads up. If I can find Asmead I would add it
Dennis
I’ve manage TK next to Cortlandts that consistently produce light crops, but it is a site with shade that interferes with early morning and late afternoon sun- but the variety generally tends towards biennial production, although, until it fell down, I managed a huge one at one site that bore heavy crops every year without thinning. Big old trees on seedling rootstocks in the full sun and pruned right tend to be more consistent than same varieties on younger trees with size reducing rootstocks- speaking with considerable anecdote, which doesn’t make it true.
There are so many variables, including ones we may not know, but I don’t believe apples to be terribly particular about pollinators as long as there is reasonable bloom overlap. TK is an early bloomer- I can’t remember about Cortlandt, but Macintosh is later and they are relatives.
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I first became familiar with Tompkins King when I moved here around 1994. There was a huge tree at the edge of the city where I worked that was always loaded with huge apples, so I ordered one to plant. I have not ever seen a biennial production, could be because I have the Chehallis and Cortland close by? The old tree in Auburn also produced every year. So I suppose it could be related to location. It’s a family favorite since I found a solution for the codling moth and fly maggots, the two most persistent pests here.
Dennis
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