Here in my Z4a Lodi is ready around mid to late Aug. I like Lodi picked just a bit early. When ripe it’s sweeter, but it’s also soft. Early it has a nice balance of sweet tart. I believe its parentage is Yellow Transparent x Montgomery (aka Autumn Bough), it is from Geneva. There is also some speculation that it’s actually from a seedling of Yellow Transparent, so one generation removed. I almost didn’t transplant it from the nursery bed to the orchard, I’m on the fence about it. I don’t have a Yellow Transparent, so I can’t compare them.
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Exactly… The one that ripens in June is Papirovka or Belyi Naliv(Both names are correct for the same apple), that could be translated as White Transparent. Antonovka ripens in September around Moscow, Russia and in August in central MA.
is white transparent different from yellow transparent? the older French here call the yellow here pomme blanc or white apple.
for processing or baking they are hard to beat. very hardy as well and its the 1st apple to ripen.
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I had yellow transparent in my old place. I think it is close, but not exactly same apple. But last time I eat papirovka was more than 20 years ago , and it was in different climate. I found that climate changes the taste of the apple a lot.
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Ok so i think at least in my part of the US… the Early Transparent are ‘June Apples’ They obviously have survived and thrived for hundreds of years… most likely planted from seed? No question they are fantastic eating apples and also for fried apples. Not for apple butter… due to them being too early and too tart.
Yellow Transparent is obviously not the same apple but its the apple that people know. Even this thread gets taken over by Yellow Transparent…its not the same. I think it is so undesirable to grow that they crossed it to make Lodi.
One of my favorite apples is Golden Delicious… not Yellow Delicious. But if im being honest a good Grimes Golden may be better than June Apples or Golden Delicious. Yet not many folks grow or talk about Grimes Golden which is likely a parent of Golden Delicious.
So for me… an Early Transparent (June Apple) in the spring and a Grimes Golden in the Fall… are my two favorite apples. Both are mostly forgotten and all talk of them gets overtaken by Yellow Transparent and Golden Delicious… which to me are both inferior.
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I believe that @AndySmith is correct on Lodi’s parentage. I was thinking of another apple (Kerr is DolgoXHaralson).
Lodi more disease resistant doesn’t really play here. I never notice any ‘disease’ issues on it… just insect damage. Once it’s through bearing for the year, it never gets another look. I picked a half-dozen apples and gave to my neighbor a week or so ago when she was here picking; mowed underneath the tree two days ago… ground was covered with rotting mealy fruits. even the deer don’t bother to eat them - but they’ve eaten every Trailman and Centennial crab fruit that they can reach. If the neighbors still had hogs, I’d have helped her pick up a few 5-gallon buckets full to feed.
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I have a graft of pristine on my early mc…
From reading reviews of it here… think pristine is going to be another nice June apple for me. My wife is a big fan of yellow/green apples… hopefully she likes Pristine.
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i just planted Williams pride and zestar this spring. w.p is considered early, zestar early to mid ripening. i tried zestar 2 years ago at a u pick orchard. its got a good sweet/ tart taste in a good sized apple. ripens late Aug. here. Skillcult gave w.p rave reviews so i figured with the amount of apples he’s tasted that says something for w.p.
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I have long thought the same. Grimes remains one of my favorite apples to pick and eat in the orchard, and while I’m no @derekamills, I do have a lot of varieties here competing with it.
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I guess Lodi was the only ‘June’-ripening apple here… still has a few hanging, but no one will be picking them. Like YT, there’s about a 15 minute of opportunity when they are tart & tasty…then they turn yellow & mealy.
Big winds a week or two back blew almost all the apples out of MonArk… it’s usually ripe here mid-July, but won’t be that ‘late’ this year.
I shook out all the Trailman crabs that would drop this morning and put them in the fridge, and will probably go back this afternoon and shake harder &/or pick everything that’s left. They’ll keep for weeks in the fridge, but 90 degree days will soon push them past prime.
How would you rate Red Astrachan as an eating or sauce apple?
Is it particularly prone to any diseases?
Vigor on a semi dwarfing rootstock?
Any info you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
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My experience with Red Astrachan:
Eating quality: similar to yellow transparent. We eat them because they are the only ones available at this time. They can’t compete with later apples. The taste is somewhat more interesting than yellow transparent, with some interesting berry notes in and unser the peel. The red of the peel bleeds into the flesh a little bit. The dominant sensation is tartness so if you don’t like that, don’t bother planting one. Like yellow transparent the texture is very light, foamy when overripe. The fruit have a berry smell when ripe. If you don’t have a keen sense of smell, maybe you have to touch the peel and then smell your fingers. The peel gets somewhat greasy, but only lightly, never as much as for example an Gravenstein.
Sauce: haven’t tested this, but I believe that the red peel could give an attractive pink sauce.
Diseases: I have seen some mild scab and powdery mildew on the leaves, but very mild under no spray conditions. Akane for example is full of powdery mildew here. The fruit have to date in the three years it has fruited never been affected. The fruit have suffered from some cracking at the blossom end, which couldlead to rot I guess, but it never did, for me.
Vigor on M26: somewhat low
Fertility: it doesn’t make very many blossoms and only few fruit, but it is still young (planted 2018)
Other: the leaves and the blossoms are quite big, the stalk is very short
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i just planted Wiliams Pride this spring. so far, its put-on good growth. might get a few fruits next year. Skillcult gave it high ratings in his taste tests so i had to get one. not as early as yellow transparent but alot earlier than others. also put in a Zestar which is a late Aug. apple.
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I picked a bucket of Red Astrachan apples from a very nice couple that lives close to me and were advertising them for sale. Their trees were large 100 year old Red Astrachan trees with little signs of disease. It has been a very dry spring/summer., so scab was non existant/very minimal. Their trees seemed very healthy and productive and were loaded with apples. I was very impressed with the appearance, size, texture, and taste of the Red Astrachan apples I picked from their trees.
Personally I do not really like yellow transparent that much for taste, and I far prefer a red apple for appearance. So in all respects I found the Red Astrachan superior to the apples we got off our families yellow transparent tree we had when I was a kid. Some of the Red Astrachan apple specimens were impressively large, while most were on the smaller side. I’m usually not that fond of early eating apples, but I’m super glad I came across this good early variety apple.
The nice owner didn’t mind me grabbing some bud sticks, so I’m hoping to get this variety growing on some M7 rootstocks I have potted.
Thanks @Oepfeli for recommending the Red Astrachan apple and all the info you provided.
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…but a much better apple in most respects, unless you’re just making applesauce.
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definitely. so far, out of the limited apples ive tried, zestar holds 1st. place for best any season apple for fresh eating. id bet it would make a darn fine sauce also. bought a half peck for my daughter the other day. her reaction to the 1st bite was the same as mine. last night she ordered a zestar tree online and asked me to plant it for her next spring.
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Just thought I’d throw my question in here, since the topic is early apples. There is a tree that I pass frequently, that loads up with green apples, but unless I really watch it, I don’t notice them turning from green to yellow. Instead, I notice they turn black on the tree. I hit the tree at a good time last summer and picked up maybe a grocery bag of fruit off the ground to cook with. They are relatively firm to start with, which makes the rot even weirder to me. This is middle Tenn, and there is a now dying Liveland Raspberry tree nearby, belonged to the same extended family. It gets rot from peck marks, and I suppose maybe some slow growing rotten spots when ripe in Aug. The LR have always been in great shape when I’d pick them up for drying and eating, considering they came from an old neglected tree and had dropped quite a ways.
My grandmother had a very nice ‘June Apple’ aka ‘Early Harvest’ tree (prob YT?) in the Tennessee Valley that I’m sure my grandfather planted in the 1960’s. We lived there in the 1980’s, and her fruit never had any rot. I’ve picked the soft early yellow “June apples” from various trees over the decades, and not one had the rot problems that one tree has. Needless to say, I have not been tempted to graft from it. But am still curious as to what it is.
I don’t like the Red June. I just don’t. Have a small Astrachan tree, hope I like those.
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There’s a sour green ‘June’ apple in some parts of Kentucky. Earlier than Red June or Early Harvest. I actually have never eaten one. But I hear people mention picking apples in early June for cooking.
I’d rather be patient and pick some that aren’t sour.
I’ve seen a LivLand Raspberry I planted in 1999 at a property I lived at 3 years…it typically has pretty apples hanging by July 4th that look unblemished…and despite the standard root, it’s not more than 10 feet tall.
Poor sandy acidic soil.
~
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Well, I never picked them off the tree, the ones on the ground needed dealing with first. Plus, I’ve had lots of people say I was welcome to whatever was on the ground, that they would pick off the tree. Here on the Cumberland Rim, healthy mature bearing apple trees are a rarity, not like the Tenn Valley where every old abandoned house site had apple trees. Where we lived, we were told the family (who were desperately poor, with 14 kids) had “dug sprouts” from established trees. That was standard back thru the 40’s and even 50’s. The trees that were grafted had been “piece root” grafted with the union underground. I’m pretty sure the Kieffer pears over there were own root too, certainly the one at our rented house had “come from a sprout”. I think that’s part of why you’d see really old Kieffers over there, but not here.
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