Peeling off of Apple Experiences 2016, here’s a good article about Red Delicious and heirloom apples with a bit of a grower’s perspective.
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Spanish Moss is neither Spanish nor moss!
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Two more apples from my bag of RD - one wasn’t crisp, the other was awful - mushy and mealy - amazing variation in one selection
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I love Red Delicious. A good one that is. Hard to find a good one. I do have a Delicious tree in the orchard. I pick them when firm, crunchy and the flesh is white
(around October 15th most years). They taste like a potato at that time, no nice flavor at all.
I put them in cold storage and let them sit until just after Thanksgiving. The starches turn to sugar as the flesh becomes yellow but still crisp and juicy. For the month of December they are my favorite to eat.
Just hopeless buying them in the store as I get one decent bag out of many. Picked too early, picked too late (mushy not crisp) ect.
My favorite cultivars were ‘Red Prince’ which no longer seems available. It was an unusual name as the fruit was orange/red and striped but the flavor was fantastic. I have enjoyed the original "Hawkeye’ as well as thin skinned and good flavor although the skin color was more yellow with red striping.
Too bad the horrible strains selected for great shape and color seem to have ignored flavor thus killing off this fine apple in the trade. I sometimes wish Americans would be more like the Europeans who prefer fruit that “tastes good” not just fruit that “looks good”. We are getting better since Granny Smith came along. Honeycrisp too for that matter. Both have helped in turning the tide for only apples with bright red skin color being desired.
I think the ugliest apple I ever had were some 20 ounce from a local orchard. The grower even had signs up stating to try this ugly apple as it made the best pies. Great marketing as many now go there intentionally for that variety. He sells out every year.
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I recall Olpea saying something similar about a peach, saying it was a really good tasting peach, but because it was pale or otherwise wasn’t a looker, that people wouldn’t give it a try. I wish my RD apples weren’t so nice looking, it’d probably make it easier to go all George Washington on it.
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I bought and planted a RD this year with intentions of grafting it over to Ark Black. There was several long limber limbs of the RD so I bent these downward and it is now full of what will be blooms 2017. My experience with RD is that it is just another mildly sweet apple with very little else going for it… It also has a leather like skin but I have had some sports that were not so tough. I went ahead and added a few Ark Black grafts so if I want to it can easily be converted.
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Try a Hawkeye Delicious, the “original” Delicious, before it was bred for red color. I’ve yet to see an “non” red apple, be it Fuji, Gravenstein, Delicious…I could go on (and on,and on) that benefits from being “bred for red”, as I like to refer to it. "Real reds, such as Arkansas Black, Sheepnose, etc., are fine. Jesse Hiatt’s “Hawkeye”, which was the original Delicious, before they started fiddling with it, is a crisp, beautiful, tasty apple. One of the best you’ll ever taste, and becoming more available as we speak. No offense to Spartan meant AT ALL!! The “bred for red” is my opinion ONLY! Hope all have had or are still having a wonderful growing season!!! Pat in NorCal
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While the Red Delicious gets a bad rap as the poster child for bred for the grocery store, they are actually pretty good (like many apples) when picked at the peak of ripeness from the tree. My RD are crisp and sweet.
Their are many great apple varieties unsuitable for the grocery store, some better than RD (Gravenstein is my favorite). RD is no different from most fruit - good off the tree, mostly terrible after turning to mush in the system.
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I just bought a Red Prince from the grocery store. It looked somewhat like a Red Delicious. My sample is hard, but juicy. On the sweet side. At first bites, I detected some mild cotton candy aroma… I don’t know what chemical/volatile compound is responsible for this aroma… But I love when I find fruits that have it (even in small proportion like that apple). I declare it: good !
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