I am in SW Arkansas. Many 100 degree days and high humidity. Everything here requires sprayng to produce a fruit. Even at that, the later the ripening time, the more work repelling fruit predators, the more watering, and yes - the more spraying. I have raised decent looking Bevin’s and Williams Favorites this year
I have a few King David that looks like I might harvest - after losing most to the brown rot. This is my biggest problem (besides fruit predators) as summer progresses
I did get some blacktwig last year and may get a few this year. I have an AR Black and a Granny Smith with branches breaking from fruit load - but loosing a few apples each day due to brown rot. I have never got a ripe fruit off either tree. I tend to let my spray schedule wane as the summer goes on. I did just spray last week - we will see if it slows the brown rot
I’ve had to cut down my Williams Favorite this year due to persistent blight issues. I love the apple.
My Ark black tends to see a lot of Calyx end rot. I’m thinking about using a myclobutanil instead of Captan next year. Ark blacks are great apples to have around since they keep so long and are worth fighting for. They’re great for pie filling and frying with pork sirloins.
A single list does not make a lot of sense to me, because there are regional differences with their specific challenges. For example, Liberty is susceptible to sunscald, so in a full sun location in CA, you may only get small and many scalded apples. Other varieties like Hudson’s and Redfield would not hold up to hot and humid south, where you have fruit rots as a major issue. Also does not make sense to disregard fire blight if you live in an area with high disease pressure.
Redfree is a disease-resistant variety that ripens quite early. I picked roughly half of mine today. I wouldn’t call it “No Spray” because we still have to kill bugs. But with a simple spray routine April - June, I end up with 100% blemish-free fruit. I don’t think I have any other variety (I grow >30) that is so trouble-free.
The apple is decent, not especially sweet or tart (sub-acid) but still worth eating. My wife likes it a lot.
Are you saying that these Apples will likely produce fruit and i don’t have to spray? i’d like one or two bullet proof Apple trees; i’m 100% no spray (because i’m lazy
I’ve always had my eye on this list (THANK YOU Scott for all that you do!!). heck, it’s bookmarked! I’m in Fort Washington MD, probably just a hair south of you.
i have one Apple variety – June. from Cliff England. it finally started fruiting (no spray) but the poor fruit are all funky shaped.
I’m a little over an hour south west of you. No spray apples do not exist here. The best you can get no spray is a percentage of the crop that looks good. Like you I’m lazy and don’t spray the apples either. I just try to collect the varieties that I can get the greatest amount of the crop no spray. The crop usually has some perfect, a lot dented, and more destroyed. Later when the entire orchard is cropping I intend to sell them and will be forced to spray to make them desirable.
Yes @Robert is right. The funky shape is from plum curculio damage. I have occasionally bumped into a feral apple tree in our area with decent apples on it, but it’s very uncommon. If you want to not spray you will be getting funky shaped apples.
BTW I need to edit that post, Reine des Reinettes is not bulletproof at all. Maybe it was for a few years but its not any more.
@Robert and @scottfsmith thank you.
Ok – wishful thinking on my part. if i spray something it’ll be leaf-feed!
there was a variety of Apple at EL – darn near bought it for the flowers! very attractive.
after 8 years i live with the diseases (eg, European Pear) and plant more of what tolerates the local / regional diseases. 4-5 more varieties of Jujube, Persimmon and Pawpaw are atop my buy list. My Carmine Jewel Bush Cherry fruited for the first time and wow, like a Cherry!
Thanks for the feedback on the Apples.
You should know that it didn’t work out for me no-spray. It got powdery mildew really badly and then it got all the same bugs that my cherries got: curculio and OFM and SWD. Montmorency is strictly easier to grow and more tasty to boot so I pulled all my bush cherries. The main advantages of bush cherries is they are bushes which can be easier to maintain (its bad for me since a bush is harder to protect from deer and squirrels), and they can take really cold climates.
Right, those were the only differences I noticed. Since you already have it you may as well keep it and it might be able to dodge the bugs and diseases. I personally felt a bit cheated though, they are mentioned as no-spray but they were far from that for me.
well, I’ll take this as a win for me (that, so far, my Carmine Jewel Bush Cherry is looking good). sorta weird because i’m in a soupy location, 20’ above the Potomac (200 yards away).
you know, i plowed SOOO many hours into list edible plants that grow in zone 7 (heppy.org/plants) but finally, i got pooped and stopped building the list. my master list is on a spreadsheet and i’m up to 500. for Persimmon, Pawpaw, Pear, Jujube, etc., i list what i found to be stand-out varieties.
my point: i got a bit burned out because i just … keep … finding more edible plants. enter, Montmorency, Prunus cerasus ‘Montmorency’.
this is a remarkable forum Scott – thank you for your time!
Probably true. But that’s not exactly what I meant. To me “no spray” means “no work.” For example, my pears and persimmons are “no spray” in the sense that there’s no serious disease and no serious bugs even though I never do anything to deter anything. Apples are different. Many of my apples are resistant to serious disease. But pretty much all of them are susceptible to bugs – plum curculio, aphids, codling moth. . . . With a LOT of work (e.g., various traps) I might control these insects without spray. Technically that’d be no spray, but it’d still be a lot of work.
Here, apple leaf blotch shows more yellow color and yellow varieties almost all tend to be highly susceptible- Macintosh is not. I’ve been dealing with it since it was first identified on apples from my sample by Cornell something like 10 years ago- it has transformed my spray program by forcing an additional 2 summer sprays on most of the orchards I manage… at least the apples are a lot prettier now. It seems that what stops Marsonnina, AKA apple leaf blotch also stops flyspeck and sooty blotch.
As far as I know, the only organic solution is to plant resistant varieties, but, to my knowledge, that hasn’t been researched… in the northeast, only organic orchards suffer from it- conventional commercial growers already keep active fungicide on their trees all summer, and organic apple production is too tiny an industry to garnish research grants. Most of them are cider makers.
As far as no-spray apples, they are not often practical to grow in humid regions- once in a while you can get a decent crop when pressure is exceptionally low. I’m seeing a pretty good crop on some unsprayed orchards this season- where leaf blotch or CAR hasn’t taken down the leaf canopy.
I had CHAT compile a list based on the limited research about relative susceptibility to ALB of various cultivars.
Relative Susceptibility of Apple Cultivars to Marssonina Leaf Blotch
Category
Cultivars
Sources
Least Susceptible (relatively more resistant)
Granny Smith, Pink Lady (Cripps Pink), McIntosh, Pinova, Gibson’s Golden (Golden clone), Rewena (slightly better in some German trials but often still hit)
VT 2023; Cornell ENYCH; German/Swiss extension reports; Fruit Genebank 2024
Moderate Susceptibility
Fuji (esp. in Asia), Gala (some trials put here, some call high), Idared, Empire
Cornell ENYCH 2018; European trials
Highly Susceptible
Rome, Mutsu (Crispin), Royal Gala, Golden Delicious (all strains), Jonagold & Jonagored, Topaz, Luna, Rewena/Reglindis (in many trials), James Grieve
VT 2023; Cornell ENYCH; European extension; German Fruit Genebank
Extremely Susceptible / Consistently Flagged
Golden Delicious (baseline “worst”), Rome, Topaz, Jonagored
VT, Cornell, European sources
Key Takeaways
Golden Delicious and its offspring (Jonagold, Gala, Mutsu, etc.) consistently rank among the worst.
Topaz (widely planted in Europe as a “disease-resistant” apple) is very vulnerable to MLB, undermining its eco-orchard utility.
Granny Smith and Pink Lady show relatively better field performance, but “less susceptible” ≠ “resistant.”
McIntosh (not usually praised for scab/fire blight resistance) appears to hold up better than many modern commercial types against MLB in European and some U.S. observations.
Based on this, no-spray apples might work best in the humid region using Granny Smith, Pink Lady (short seasons, use the Gibson strain from Adams) and Fuji. All have a modicum of resistance to PC IME.
