Im going all-in on very late apples this winter. Heres my list of scion wood im planning to order. Am i missing anything? Keep in mind im in 7b/8a alabama. Goldrush rgenerally ripens in mid oct for me.
Heres ones i have already
Goldrush - fruiting well
Yates - waiting for first fruit
Fuji - waiting
Sundowner- waiting
Ones i plan to get:
Black limbertwig -FB got mine in 2017. Do-over.
Red limbertwig - AKA old fashioned LT
Ark. black -FB got my tree in 2017. Trying again.
King david - maybe not super late here
Lady williams - bad fireblight?
Enterprise
Granny smith - too disease prone?
Terry winter
Pink lady -bad fireblight?
Any thoughts on these for the deep south, or other suggestions would be appreciated. I only need the very latest ones because peaches and pears have me covered through early sept. Im looking for oct-nov ripening here and long term storage.
Hauer Pippin is reliable late storage apple for me here in Northern California, but I don’t know if it can be grown successfully in the Southeast. Anyone doing that?
Albemarle/Yellow Newtown Pippin is another good late ripener here, as is Stayman.
Hauer is not one i’ve heard mentioned around here but that does not mean it wont work. I love stayman but heard it gets bad fireblight and splits bad after rain. Also not sure how late stayman would be here. Ive been to n georgia orchards that were selling loads of staymans several weeks before ripening time of goldrush and pink lady. Winesap is another one that i should look into, but also heard it has problems.
Hauer Pippin is a no spray standout success here in 7B Maryland. Precocious, great branch angles, good blight resistance- will get a bit but tolerable. And tastes good. Flies under the radar. I recommend. Less insect problems than others, it seems.
This year some local fruit stands had Stayman for sale a ~month early. They might have been OK to cook with, not good to eat out of hand though. They were probably so early they wouldn’t have improved all that much in storage either. Ones they received at the proper time are excellent, I have a bushel in the fridge now.
I have one tree that produced 2 apples and they did split. Was a drought and the splitting happened before the rains finally came. Could have just been because there were only 2 apples, or boron deficiency, or who knows… We’ll see next year… It’s the only variety I have more than 1 tree of. 5yrs and no FB either…
I see that here, too. It even seems to shrug off codling moths, for the most part, and wasps leave it alone.
For that matter, I don’t see any fungal issues with it, either. Even the birds here don’t peck at it. It’s so hard at ripening time that the drops (from my admittedly-short tree) usually aren’t bruised.
Glad to hear that you can grow it outside of Northern California. I think that it’s fairly rare outside of this area (where it supposedly originated, down near Santa Cruz). The old-timers call it “Christmas Apple” because it hangs so long.
I found the same thing…apples ripe up to 30 days ahead of “normal” in Kentucky…just as you experienced in Tennessee. (I have one tree with reddish black apples…have failed at positive identification for years…it’s “not Macintosh” that I bought it for…that I used to could pick even after a hard frost or a freeze. The bears ate them in late August this year…and yes, they were beginning to ripen. All gone from standard sized tree 29 years old in one night.)
As for latest apple? Don’t know. Of the varieties I have experience with, Rome Beauty is one of the latest.
Obviously the latest ripening apple in Southern California and the latest ripening apple in Minnesota are going to be different varieties!
I picked the last of my Yates today. Also picked my single Terry Winter. Terry sure looks a lot like Yates on outward appearance. Terry second from the left. I’ll report back once I cut up Terry and see if it’s any different inside. Maybe I have a mislabel. Anyone else fruits both of these? Yates have been pretty decent, assuming they are in fact Yates.
Still hanging: lady Williams, sundowner. old fashioned limbertwig.
Terry Winter looks like Big Yates Your Yates look exactly like mine and I’m near certain those are the right thing.
I should harvest my Yates here, the trees have mostly defoliated. We have not had a hard freeze yet so they are still hanging. I ate a few while out in the orchard today, they should be good picked now and stored for a couple months.
I was going to let em mellow a week or two before taste testing, but who am I kidding, haha. I cut them up just now. These are definitely two different apples.
Yates has a very distinctive flavor in the peel with a touch of astringency, not objectionable at all, but it’s there. I’ve been eating Yates for a couple weeks now and this one I just cut is very representative. Sweet, almost no tartness. It’s a firm apple and a little chewy - not really crunchy but a decent texture. A few of them have been really sweet, this one less so. I like yates but I could see some people not being into it.
Terry has a thinner skin, no astringency. Basic apple flavor more similar to grocery store types, similar amount of sweet but a little more acidity than Yates. Keep in mind I picked it yesterday so it may sweeten up in storage a little. It’s a crunchy apple, much harder than Yates. Overall kind of reminds me of Crimson crisp but less explosively crunchy than CC. If this single Terry is representative of the variety, and I had one bag of Terry and one bag of Yates, I’d eat all the Terry winters before I touched the yates, but of course taste is so subjective.
I’m just glad I don’t have a mislabel. Ripening time seems nearly identical. I wonder if they could be related in some way. They both come from the GA Piedmont.
Your Yates look exactly like mine and I’m near certain those are the right thing.