I’m not really an apple fan. The only apple tree I have is for my wife who likes all things crunchy. But since nothing grown locally is really in season, I reached for a bag of Jazz apples from Trader Joe’s. What a great tasting fruit! It starts off with a bubblegum flavor and has the perfect sweet and tart balance. Who grows this variety here?
I’m not sure individuals can grow it.
It’s a great apple. We often buy them, especially later in the season. They’re never particularly cheap in the stores, but always worth your attention. We’ll often go for Jonagold too. Pink Lady and Cameo can be good here later on, but to my mind they are poor seconds to the other two.
I’m excited to see how Karmijn de’ Sonneville and Rubinette do over the winter too. But I don’t have enough to save, and I’m going to eat them all pretty early. Prairie Spy is another I would like to have enough of to carry for a few weeks, but we’ll see. Last year they were very disappointing, but I’ve had some good ones. My Liberties aren’t keeping very well at all this year, and I don’t know if I have time/interest enough to sauce 'em. As I say so often, "we’ll see … "
: -)M
I hope you do sauce your Liberties Mark, I’d really like to know how they do for sauce. The wood you so generously provided me has grown very well and sauce making is something I’ve scheduled for the near future. I still owe you one for the wood…I haven’t forgotten about it.
Marknmt,
You are one of the few people i know of besides me that grows prarie spy. The apples as you know when cooked are second to none. They are good for fresh eating also. My trees took years to come into bearing. They are a summer apple for us in Kansas and a very welcomed fruit in late Jul or early Aug. They ripen within 2-3 weeks of honeycrisp for us. I have two trees of each that are in full production.
Clark, my ps just came off the tree about three weeks ago! I only had a half dozen of them.
I’ve never baked them- but I’m awful glad you mentioned that, as now I’m going to. No hurry as they’re such good keepers.
I don’t know that I’ll get to all I need to do with apples (and a few other things) before I leave for hunting camp Sunday. I’ll be gone a week for that; it’s unlikely that we’ll shoot anything, but if somebody should we’d have that to deal with too. (I gave up wanting to harvest my own meat years ago, but I still love going.)
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Prarie spy turn a red color when cooked. Once you have had them cooked other apples don’t stack up against them. The quality surpasses any cooked apple we have ever had in this area.
I suggest all club apples be avoided. These apple varieties are available only to certain large commercial growers. Unless something changes in a big way, you will never be able to purchase apple trees of any of the club apples. Patented variety are fine and should no be confused with club apples.
Hummm. So effectively a club apple is also protected by a trademarked name, like Pink Lady. But like Pink Lady, while the patent has expired and the cultivar is now available, it is marketed under the name Cripps Pink. And usually in parenthesis “Pink Lady.”
So unless there is a agreement not to propagate or distribute scion material past its patent I am not sure what happens when the patent expires and the scion material gets out (gets distributed one way or the other). I guess if the supplier is identified they can get sued or banned from the club. Or someone propagates from the fruit via tissue culture or claims they did.
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Good point.
My understanding is that Cripps Pink and Pink Lady are genetically identical, but that in order to use the “Pink Lady” name the fruit has to have at least some minimum amount of color; there are probably other requirements that I’m not aware of. I know that we often have apples with PL stickers, but the label on the box says “CP”. So what you say is what I think is true.
You can sell all the Cripps Pink wood that you want, and if the purchasing grower is willing to sign onto the Pink Lady agreement he can market it as PL so long as it meets the contract standards. (Disclaimer: This is what I surmise is true, and I don’t know for sure.)
I think club apples impose other restrictions in their contracts, i.e., growers cannot sell their wood; I would imagine that if they develop any sports or new crosses they are restricted from marketing those, as well, but again, I don’t know. Just my wannabe lawyer rambling on …
they are one and the same
as for minimum amount of pink, trees need to be planted far apart and with reflective foil beneath the trees, to permit a good amount of sunlight being ricocheted from a wide angle, to induce maxing out pigment formation.
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It’s my understanding that there are a number of apple varieties that may be marketed as “Pink Lady”, such as “lady in red” and “rosy glow”, along with “Cripps Pink”
I have Kanzi apple. Never tasted Jazz but think they are similar since they are both crosses of Gala and Braeburn. I am in Europe though so not sure if you can get it in USA (If so, it might be a good alternative to Jazz)
I just finished off the last Jazz in my frig. Been in there for several weeks…still amazing taste and texture after all this time.
I prefer the taste of Jazz to Kanzi though it is as you say very similar cultivar parents. [Royal Gala x Braeburn versus Gala x Braeburn respectively.] Kanzi’s show up in my market about a month or more after Jazz.
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I have had Jazz before and while good, it was just average or maybe a tick above. I just purchased some more though and they were INCREDIBLE! Super crisp / crunchy and amazingly juicy. I’d give anything for a piece of wood, but I suppose I’ll have to wait 20 years or so.
It is reportedly a cross between Royal Gala and Braeburn, but Axel at Cloud Forest claims it is a cross between Red Dougherty and Golden Delicious. In any case it’s a monumentally better apple than any of those single varieties.
Jazz is apparently just the brand name, the original cultivar name was Scifresh. Scifresh sounds like a apple that was developed in a test tube…lol.
I actually taste a note of grape Kool-Aid in it. Just went and bought some more at the same store. Was on sale for .99 lb too. Awesome apple!
I bought a bag of Jazz at Walmart the other day. I thought they were excellent. Kids loved them too. They were small.
I’ve had the same experience with jazz. Do you think it might be related to how long they’ve been in storage?
Rob,
What do you think of Envy apple. My wife asked me to try one and it was crunchy and real sweet with a Fuji like aroma. One of the top apple in my opinion.
Tony
Haldog…I think storage time along with other factors are almost always the reasons for vastly differing opinions on certain varieties. People imo generally DO like mostly the same apples. Crunchy, crisp, balanced (probably leaning towards sweet) and always juicy for the super premium category. My tastes (and that of my wife) are probably pretty much in line with the mainstream and there are really only a handful of apples that I’ve had that fit that criteria, with just a few other possibilities I haven’t had the opportunity to try yet. I continue to search the antiques, but so far I, nor anyone else, that I know of has found any real competitors to the new modern apples. Sadly, the new “thing” is to syndicate.
Tony, I have had Envy and it was good. It was not what I’d consider great though, but again, I thought the same thing about Jazz, so who knows. It too is a product of a Royal Gala X Braeburn cross, and also a ENZA / Oppenheimer group introduction. One of our posters, Paul has written here about Kanzi, which is also a Braeburn X Royal Gala cross as a Belgian introduction and it was actually voted higher than Jazz.
I wonder, how is it that so many are using these two apples in their breeding programs all of a sudden. What do they know that we here at growing fruit clearly do not?
Honeycrisp is rightfully receiving most of the play here, but I’m shocked that such great offspring is produced from what is a very good variety crossed with a obscure almost antique.