I just had my first tree-ripened Golden Delicious today, and it was amazing. On another level from any Golden Delicious that I’ve ever had from the grocery store. Even some of the under-ripe ones my son picked were great. The aroma also reminded me of honey, just as your first Hooples did. I also tried a Honeycrisp right after eating one of these and it was just boring in comparison. There was russeting on some their apples so I suspect it’s an older strain they’ve just been propagating for decades at this PYO farm.
The description of Hooples here that says Hooples is crisper and has a more intense flavor than the original GD and seeing this at the top of @scottfsmith’s list makes me want to grow this. I see @alan left a comment below pointing out that GD, which Hooples is a sport of, is grower-friendly. Sounds like a no-brainer!
I guess I’ll call up Cummins tomorrow and have them take the Honeycrisp out of the order and try to figure out which outfit I’ll obtain Hooples from. Honeycrisp can always find itself on the Crimson Crisp frankentree down the road.
Hoople’s this year did not taste anywhere near as good as the ones I had last year. Rain will do that to our fruit.
I’ve never had GD that I like. We have several PYO around here. I picked them in the past. My guess is it depends on what strain you get the fruit from.
For it’s clear complexion, brix was sacrificed in newer varieties of Yellow Delicious, I think. Newer varieties also ripen a bit sooner. My conclusion at the moment is that older strain YD deserves some space in every orchard that uses fruit for varied purposes.
Too many of my apples this year have been bland due to lack of blue sky days and too much water in the soil- my somewhat russeted YD, at least, has enough sugar to be useful and tasty.
My theory is that YD is the progeny of Golden Russet, perhaps with a smooth skinned second parent and that it gets its high sugar from GR.
When I asked David last year if his Hopples were the same apple as Hooplels he responded as follows.
“Paul, Thanks. It’s actually the same tree. An older gentleman who first gave me the scions misspelled the name many years ago and I have simply not changed it since. Take another look at the attached image of my apple and compare it to whatever forum you are using. I feel confident it is the same. It is the same apple as the one in Tom Burford’s book, Apples of North America.”
2019 Update: Having lots of fire blight problems with my Hooples Antique Gold here in 7B. Other forum members seem to have much better disease experience with it than I do.
I am late to this thread but I share @smsmith surprise Alan, I think deer around my area hear the apples and come running when they fall. Of Coarse sometimes they’d just rather eat the tree. Consider yourself lucky!
My Hooples has apples this year (and last) but unfortunately many other varieties have few or none. I don’t have the greatest sun in spots and that probably makes the biennial behavior more pronounced.
So far the only fireblight issues in my orchard are on a new cider variety I am trying, Gnarled Chapman. I don’t think its going to last long based on how sensitive to FB it appears to be.
It seems to me that any issue affecting energy reserves influences the consistency of bearing. This includes sun exposure (including % of blue sky days), previous crop load, water-oxygen balance of soil and the consistency thereof, nutrient deficiencies, of course, how long fruit remains on the tree, how open it is pruned and if it is kept open, how early thinning is done and, of course, the tendencies of any given variety.
It’s amazing to me how much difference a couple extra hours of sun exposure can make, perhaps because apple trees function better when it isn’t too hot, so early morning and late afternoon sun can create conditions more favorable to photosynthesis. I wish someone would do a study that specifically charts the temps when apple trees produce the most energy.
There is probably an interesting dynamic pertaining to average daily temps and how that affects an apple trees ability to create energy. Every species has a point where photosynthesis shuts down when temps become high, but it is also related to humidity. What I wonder about is what temps are ideal for max energy harvest for the various species and varieties I grow.
The conventional wisdom is that the apple tree decides well before summer whether to invest in flower buds for the next season, although I attended a lecture of a commercial fruit grower in Santa Cruz years ago who made a pretty convincing argument that high heat in late summer drastically reduced the following years crop.
I had 4 hooples apples on two 2-yr old grafts. Two rotted, one got bad sunburn and the other just dropped in a sort of ripe tasting state, but not very good. Kind of like grocery store YD. But again i dont think it ripened properly. There was no russet at all on them. Bloom came early this year but i didnt expect to have any of these ripen and drop for another month or so. Anyone else have these growing in the deep south? Im in east central AL. I got the scion from singing tree. Im wondering if it was mislabeled. I have no photos. Identiftying features are that the friits had big “shoulders” especially early on, and the flower buds are very round -almost spherical. Fruit is green.
Are you sure you have Hoople’s. Mine have turned russeted after about 6-8 weeks of fruit setting. I took this pic today to show you. I took a bag out so you can see clearly. The others in bags also turned russeted. Mine ripen in Oct so it is a long way to go.
I may not have hooples. Zero russet. Heres the unique looking buds. Maybe it does not show in the photo but they are distinctly round. I have a couple dozen varieties grafted and none look like this. Just wondering if anyone elses hooples has that feature. I wonder if its possible they russet less here in AL. Although my gold rush is plenty russeted.
BHC had most of the scions I wanted, but Hooples wasn’t on their list. Anyone know how I could get a scion? And back to the CAR, I don’t grow anything sensitive to CAR because too many cedars around us. There was a nice GD tree in town that I used to pick up apples from (converted to college student housing, they didn’t care). I grafted a potted rootstock and planned to plant it at our then newly bought property. Then I stopped by the tree one day and saw that it had a section of each branch with all the leaves covered in CAR. I looked all around and didn’t see a single cedar tree. I assumed there was a small one had come up somewhere, and that during a rainy spell in that rather sunny spring the new growth of those weeks had been infected. So I gave my tree away to someone in town.
And back when you could find the old russeted GD’s, I always sought them out in the bin, as they were the best flavored. So I know if I can grow Hooples, I will like it. I find it odd that a GD sport has only one person complaining about CAR, which implies that with the russeting there is some other change in the plant.
