If you wanted a fresh eating apple, would you be happy with Chestnut crabapple?
Seems to have disease resistance and decent size apples. I’ve got / had 20 varieties of regular apples and they are mostly disappointing when grown as wildcrafted apples in Z6.
Chestnut tastes very good according to connoisseurs. It and other tasty and disease resistant crab apples are also great for your growing style
They fruit early and heavily so they runt themselves out (don’t need pruning to stay small)
They are disease resistant enough for no spray and numerically enough should escape bug damage to be edible
And they don’t need thinning to maintain fruit quality
The one knock I have heard about chestnut is that the skins split during heavy rains near harvest
Here are some others that are ultra disease resistant and tasty crabs listed in order of ripening times that would be perfect for you
I would recommend M111 rootstock
Centennial
Trailman
Whitney or chestnut
Kerr
Clark’s carb
Yes you would, at least here in z5 Maine Chestnut is delicious fresh eats
Splitting skins. Probably why Wickson will not work here. And why I will add Vixen to replace it.
I went out and picked my Chestnut so I can participate. To me it tastes like a miniature Northern Spy. Grain of salt, I don’t have a refined pallet and it’s fresh off the tree. It is crisp and sweet and tart.
Kerr is my favorite, with Centennial a close second. I have not tried Trailman or Pipsqueak, but Fedco recommends Pipsqueak from their catalog for fresh eating. Dolgo is incredible to me, but the small size excludes it from the fresh eating category I suspect.
So, do you grow all these crabs in addition to regular apples or as your main apple crop?
They look nice. I got a Gala that self-thins and drops half of its load over the summer. Do crabs have much drop to self thin?
They’re your trees, you can do whatever you want
In terms of your wildcraft there aren’t better options though
There are bigger apples that are also super disease resistant but to get the same results they will require more pruning and more thinning, which is work
Of all the apples I’ve looked into these are the lowest effort for the most results
You can also try Yates but your growing season might be just a little too short, otherwise it’s a fantastic apple, super disease resistant and tasty, stores very well
Crabs don’t need to self thin, that’s what makes them great. The smaller fruits need many fewer leaves each to reach peak sweetness and flavor than a bigger apple. That’s why you don’t need to thin them
I grow crabs primarily due to their superb pollination abilities unless they are a crazy un-sterile type or hybrid.
Also remember while crabs often have powerful flavor; they often do not store well.
But an Applecrab like Yates lasts October to April…lol
Love all my applecrabs/lunchbox apples/edible crabs.
One thing that many folks - especially neophytes - don’t take into consideration… ‘disease resistant’ does not mean ‘pest resistant’. You’re still going to have issues with OFM, apple maggot, etc., even if you have decreased need to spray for CAR, scab, etc.
But crabs also have a larger number of fruits that reach peak size and flavor (because they are way smaller) so that gives you that many more chances for an apple that isn’t rendered inedible by insects
Some crabs are much softer though, and they are easier for the bugs to drill into. I’ve had some crabs that were a mess of curculio and CM. On average though I agree.
I grew a dozen or so crabs and currently I only have Chestnut plus an unknown one for cider. Many crabs go mealy far too fast, Chestnut is more like a small apple, it doesn’t do the mealy thing. It also has a crunch more like an apple. To me it tastes a bit nutty, my guess is the person that named it also felt that way.
As I have been getting more production of it I have been liking it more and more. It and Sweet 16 are my newer favorites from the last couple years, I need to add them to my official favorites list.
Centennial definitely goes mealy too quickly.
Trailman/Bastian Orange (I still don’t know which I have!) never gets a chance to go mealy, if that is even a concern - they’re so good that we eat them very quickly - though I did keep a gallon bag of them in the crisper drawer in the fridge for a couple of months, once, before I ate them all, and they stayed crisp and flavorful.
Kerr has not displayed any ‘mealy’ tendencies for me.
Almata - the best red-fleshed crab I’ve grown, for eating out of hand, will go mealy, and seems to be more susceptible to apple scab than any others.
I just ate some of mine last night. I would absolutely grow it again.
It has some of that umami taste like wickson and it’s also spicy think cinnamon. I think it actually has some chestnut flavor in the background.
I’m not sure what you mean by wildcrafting but if you want a good crop it’s likely you will need to prune and spray it.
