I’m planning to add 5 or 6 apple trees (along 5 peach) to My Home orchard this spring. I live on the edge of zone 5/6 in northeast Pennsylvania. These apples compile my prospect list and I’m having a tough time narrowing it down. Please let me know your experiences with these varieties. Feel free to recommend any others you don’t see on the list
My focus is fresh, eating with cider/baking as a secondary. Varied harvest times would be great
Belle de Boskoop
Black Oxford
Canadian strawberry
Coral
Court pendu plat
Creston
D’arcy Spice
Granite Beauty
Green Newtown Pippin
Grimes
Haralson
Jonagold
Jonathan
Karmijn de Sonnaville
Keener Seedling
King David
Lamb Abbey Pearmain
Lubsk Queen
Lyscom
Northern Spy
Pitmaston Pineapple
Pixie Crunch
Reine des Reinettes
SweeTango
Westfield seek no further
Wickson
Zestar
Here is what I would pick if I lived in your climate.
King David - choose this over Jonathan, more flavor here
Northern Spy - unique flavor more like other fruits (a fruit cocktail of something like grape, kiwi, passionfruit) that I really wish I could grow
Pitmaston Pineapple - choose over Court Penny Plat, similar flavor russets but this one is more intense
Pixie Crunch - this apple also has a unique flavor, I haven’t eaten it in a few years though so I can’t describe so well now.
Reine des Reinettes - very rich flavor, also one of the best cooking apples.
Zestar! - a very nice aromatic early apple.
If you plan on making a sweet cider and drinking that - I suspect more or less anything will do.
If you plan on fermenting into a hard cider, it gets a little more complicated. Most dessert/eating/baking apples don’t make a good cider on their own because they tend to ferment to something flat-tasing - when all the sugar is gone you get a weird caricature of apple flavor (I have tried more than once, sometimes you get something good, more often it seems to be a disappointment), although there are some exceptions I have encountered, non-exhaustive: Golden Russet (fermented at home), Northern Spy (Eve’s cidery), Macintosh (several ciders from Artifact), Cortland (from West County Cider). The common explanation I’ve heard for this is that they lack tannins. If hard cider is an important goal of yours, I’d suggest adding an apple with some tannins (this could be feral apples, this could be something you buy, this could be a productive grafted branch). If it’s not, I’d role the dice on seeing if your cider ferments to something you enjoy (I think your list has promise) and then see about adding some tannins afterwards (e.g. wine tannins; I’ve used a Spanish chestnut wine tannin with pleasing results, other possibilities include aging on oak, you have options here).
Then again I don’t have an orchard and have just gotten to being able to grind and press whatever apples I can forage.