Both of my rubyrush trees i planted this year aren’t doing very well. I think it’s the climate or something since the other apples planted near them are doing fine. Bought from blue hill wildlife nursery btw.
Came across this thread while researching the Ruby Rush apple. Looks like a super interesting apple! There doesn’t seem to many online nurseries selling trees. I see it at Adams County and at Grandpa’s Orchard. Any more experience from you all this past season regarding the disease resistance, taste, etc?
I got to taste a couple this fall someone in the Richmond Va area grew and brought to a local farmer’s market.
They were really pricey at $4 a pound so I only bought 3 to try (3 apples clocked in at 2.5 pounds so I assume they were thinning their trees pretty well)
Initial taste test (early October) they tasted like a slightly more aromatic/complex Goldrush (makes sense considering the parentage). The intense sweet/tart of the goldrush was definitely there (maybe a tad less sour than a fresh picked GR, but not sure if these apples had been in storage for a week or two by the time I got them so that may not mean much)
The texture was very dense/crunchy also reminiscnet of goldrush.
I let the others age on the countertop and cut into the second one in late November. By then it had minimal sour notes left and was good and still reminiscent of GR, but did not have as noticeable of spice/anise notes as GR tends to by this point. It was also less shrivelled than a 2 month room temperature goldrush would be if you care about appearence.
I fried up half of that second apple with some butter, salt brown sugar and cinnamon to try it cooked, and it was markedly more interesting to me and my partner cooked than GR is.
Cooked it still has the unusual trait GR has of keeping a noticeable crunch to it and not turning to mush even if cooked more than might be ideal, (this might be a good or bad trait depending on your preferences and intended use for it cooked). It also had a noteworthy complexity to the flavor cooked like this that very few apples do in my limited experience (the only other I can think of off the top of my head that has a similar type of complexity to the flavor even after being cooked is Spitzenburg).
Overall my current assesment is that if you like Goldrush you will likely enjoy this apple as well.
Goldrush has a very slight edge for fresh eating for my family (but we prefer some sour to our apples, if you lean more to the sweet side RR may be a tad preferable).
But for fresh eating if you have GR, i dont see much reason to add RR except to get an earlier apple or if its more disease resisitant in practice (cant speak on that myself).
Cooked we find goldrush an interesting, but overall kind of middling apple, and this is where (for us) RR has a distinct advantage as it was one of the most enjoyable we have had (IF you dont need it to become a soft/jammy texture for the dish you are making -since it has the same cooked firmness/crunch that a cooked GR has to the texture).
If it helps to know my family’s preferred fresh/cooked apples to get an idea of our tastes, E. Spitz, Goldrush and Topaz are current top picks fresh, and Idared, Winchester and now RR would be our top cooked picks (though RR is markedly different cooked than either Idared or Winchester both flavorwise and especially texture wise, so this may be less helpful to guage for others)
The good fresh eating and surprisingly interesting cooked flavors impressed us enough (combined with the supposed as good as or better disease resistance as its parent), that I’m considering making the space to add one of these to my small backyard orchard if I can find a practicle way to source one this spring (i can squeeze in maybe 2 trees still, not ACN’s minimum required orser of 5 haha).
The third apple is still sitting on my counter top to see how it is well into the winter/spring months to see if it still compares well to GR by then.
I’m not sure it will keep as long as GR since it doesnt seem to have the same skin characteristics GR has, but it seems to be at least a respectable keeper, and for climates where GR is too late, the month or so earlier pick date may be a huge deal.
Also of note, I did not find a single vioable looking seed in the two apples i have cut into so far (all the seeds have been shrivelled and puny) which makes me wonder if this could be a triploid
(but I have no scientific evidence this is the case, so while it might be good to talk to folks growing it if you only plan to have a single polination partner with it just in case, you should take my theorizing with a
Full block of salt on just that observation)
Hope at least some of this (very limited) experience is useful. Best of luck making your decision.
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2 months room temperature? My wife would have tossed any apple out for the wildlife sitting around that long. I have maybe a half dozen RR left in my storage fridge. Nothing sour about those coming straight out to eat as they were plenty ripe when they went in.
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Haha yeah in our little taste-testing apple hobby the past two years (we’ve made it to about the mid 50s of different varieties tried in that time) we’ve typically let them rest on the counters (avoids having to splurdge on dedicated cold storage for fruit 2-3 years before we’d otherwise need it, and were curious what apples would keep well without that. (I’ve learned there was a reason Russets were in favor before cold storage became common as they tend to do much better as they usually naturally partially dry themselves instead of rotting).
Some of the apples (like roxbury russet, razor russet, E spitz and goldrush) that have at least some russeting to them tend to look pretty rough after 2-3 months (well for an apple. They don’t look but so wierd for a giant raisin haha) but peel them and they are still pretty danged good eating.
We ate the last countertop goldrush picked up from a local orchard Nov 2 of 2024, in April of 2025. Was just starting to get a tad bland, but still better than anything in the supermarket at that time, and no signs it was about to go bad (no way it could have been sold after 6 months on the counter as the skin was quite wrinkly of course, but for our own eating was fine)
In contrast, plenty of apples dont fair as well: Jonathons kept without rotting for a long time but were pretty bland and mealy by december as an example.
…and then some apples we’ve tested are really really really not ones to do that with: in particular Suncrisp was an apple my wife loved fresh, and I thought was better than average. After about 4 weeks room temp (70degrees f average) they looked fine but had developed an off taste I can only describe as akin to kerosene. Wont leave that variety on the counter ever again haha. And now
Anyone that reads this can avoid inflicting that experience on themselves as well 
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Thank you for the extremely detailed response! Gold rush is my favorite apple, so it’s good to hear that it shares a lot of the same characteristics. Right now I don’t have either GR or RR planted, but I am getting a semi-dwarf GR in the spring. Since I am just getting started, I do have the room so I will consider adding RR to get an earlier apple that I would enjoy. I’m in northern Indiana, so Grandpa’s Orchard is only an hour or so north of me. I considered getting one from them since ACN has the 5 tree minimum. I wouldn’t get one until 2027 though, probably. Considered having Grandpa’s ship to me but the shipping for two trees was more than the trees themselves…
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I noticed the shipping $$ was more than the trees the last couple of years. I just bite the bullet and pay for the shipping IF I really want the particular variety or varieties. Which I normally do. There are times when I just say " maybe next year" if I really do not want the tree that badly. Even if the trees on on sale the shipping normally stays the same. So waiting to buy the trees usually does not save that much. UNLESS, they offer free shipping.
Good to know. Perhaps I’ll just bite the bullet when the time comes. Looked like ACN offered free shipping with five trees so maybe I should spend the money on additional trees!
Not sure if anyone is interested, but I came across a grower selling Rubyrush at a local farmers market. I did not ask when they were harvested, but I’m assuming they have been stored for a couple of months by now. I don’t pick up on the nuances of different apples like a lot of you, but here was my assessment in early January:
Texture was a lot like Goldrush. Very crunchy/dense. Not a ton of juice.
Flavor was all sweetness. I did not get any of the spicy complex flavors like the Goldrush I had this year. A pretty basic sweet apple is what I got out of it.
I have to believe they will store for many months. It wasn’t rubbery or mealy. The skin was not wrinkled at all. Seemed to me like the acid in it just mellowed to an overall sweet flavor. I’ll definitely be adding these to my home orchard in the future.
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Thanks for review. That sounds a lot like its parent Enterprise to me- boring. Maybe it needs to be crossed again to Goldrush for taste.
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Of course! It was a satisfying apple to me, and it’s parentage leads me to believe it probably is a good apple to grow without any heavy spraying (something that is important to me). I don’t have any experience with Enterprise, but I would love to try one and compare.
I added some to my ACN order even though I haven’t tasted them. I’m doing a section of lower spray apples that they should work in. I come across a lot of people that want sweet firm apples with very little tart so maybe they’ll do well.
It seems like they didn’t try very hard to market and talk up this variety when releasing it.
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This seems like it will be a great variety for you then. Another thing I noticed is that all of the Rubyrush he had were very large apples. Not sure if that is the a trait of the variety or if he just thinned his trees a ton.
To your point, I had never heard of it until I stumbled across it on the ACN website, looking for scab resistant varieties.
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I will second the very large apples post. Ours have been almost all very large fruit. Seems to have a bit of a tendency towards watercore. They are mostly sweet, having just the right amount of tart to balance when fresh picked; I assume that goes away with much of any storage. Can’t vouch for storage, ours all sell out right away at the farmers market. When we run out of Honeycrisp we sold Ruby Rush at the same price (a premium over our other varieties) and people went crazy for them. Not sure why nurseries have not made more of an attempt to push them. They don’t really taste like Gold Rush or Enterprise to me. They have what I would describe as a “modern” apple flavor. More sweet than tart, aromatic, crisp, a wee bit one dimensional, but overall very pleasant to eat. They really are a very beautiful apple. Almost fully blushed pink, shading to bright crimson. The skin is a bit rough, almost russet like, which gives them a bit of a matte finish.
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Appreciate the input. I’m looking forward to growing them.
What do you notice for tree vigour? Are they smaller trees like honeycrisp or more vigorous?
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What means are you using to sell them? Trying to find things to lend to farmers markets sales.
Sounds like more work needed to equal Goldrush’s fab taste but breed out CAR and Leaf Blotch Achilles Heels. I’d like to see Goldrush x King David to get KD’s CAR resistance, assertive sweet/tart and Goldrush’s better blight resistance.
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