Low care apples for Kansas, feedback?

Dependable and disease resistant are two very different things. Golden Delicious is a very dependable producer but is susceptible to all of the major apple diseases and some of the minor ones as well. And the minor diseases may not be minor if you live in an area where the minor disease is prevalent and you don’t do plenty of cover sprays after bloom.

I have a couple of suggestions. One is to look at the Purdue chart for disease resistance of major apple cultivars. Second look at the forum thread on Summer rots of apples. Summer rots can be a problem especially in areas with humid, wet conditions. Scott has had to remove plenty of trees due to fruit rotting problems and I have had some issues as well.

Jonagold, Mollies Delicious, and Granny Smith aren’t very disease resistant. Yellow transparent is fairly disease resistant. The list you have may be dependable in Kansas but it looks like you need a good spray program.

If you want low spray apples I think you would be better looking at PRI disease resistant apples and heirlooms that have good disease resistance ( some heirlooms don’t have good disease resistance or the resistance is narrow in scope).

I would suggest looking at the following:

Enterprise
Winecrisp
Goldrush
William’s Pride
Pristine
Ashmead’s Kernel
Pitmaston Pineapple
Grimes Golden
Jonagrimes

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