I wanted to share my experiences with apples ripening a month or so before main crop apples. If other readers have suggestions for early apples that they have good luck with, I would appreciate it. I live in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which has an oddball 5A climate. The summers are shorter and cooler here than on the prairie. Often my apples are not blooming until mid May, and snow at the end of September and mid May is not unusual. My plot of trees is at 4800 feet of elevation. The legendary Deadwood is a few miles away, and it has snowed on the 4th of July there.
Kindercrisp- This offspring of Honeycrisp is a reliable producer of small to medium sized apples with a rich sweet flavor and of course are quite crisp. I would recommend growers keep track of the date that fruit ripens, because they hang on the tree a long time and the flavors will become unappealing if you don’t pick them. I pick one on September 1st each year to get an idea when they will be ripe. In a hot year, they will be ripe September 1st, this year was cool and September 15 was the day. They are excellent fresh eating for about 2-3 weeks. I picked my last one October 1st this year, and the flavor was a little bland but still very crisp. They keep about 2 weeks in the fridge before they shrivel and lose their flavor. There doesn’t seem to be a benefit to picking them and storing them, I pick them off the tree as needed. This apple is popular with everyone I give them too. I keep my tree at about 7 feet, which gives me about 20-30 apples a year.
Pipsqueak
I got scionwood from Fedco for this one, apparently it is popular in Maine. Frostbite is one of its parents. Being a crab sized apple it is quite vigorous and annually productive. I have not quite figured this one out. My apples fell off the tree in unison on about September 15, but didn’t have a lot of flavor. They were quite crisp and dense like frostbite. I put them in the fridge and ate them over a 2 week period. The flavor got better each time I ate one. The last one was quite enjoyable with complex fruity flavor. I look forward to experimenting with this one more as my graft gets bigger.
Zestar
Other members seem to like this apple a lot, but is either not right for my climate or I am doing something wrong. The apple size is quite variable, with large ones getting really big and often cracking, others being like a large crab. Early drops are common. They seem to ripen about September 15th here, and they have a rich complex flavor, but by then they are soft and mealy. I determine ripeness for most apples by lifting the apple at a 90 degree angle to see if it breaks off the branch. Next year I will treat it like Kindercrisp and just pick based on date, not when they come of the tree. Any tips on this one would be appreciated.
zestar here ripens about the same time in z4a n. Maine. it’s one if not the 1 favorite apple growing here that I’ve tasted. much better than the honeycrisps I’ve tasted here as well. they seem to be best when there’s a little green still in their color. i have frostbite and sweet 16 grafted but they havent produced yet.
Thank you for your experience with zestar. Frostbite is my all around favorite apple. For me it ripens about 2-4 weeks after zestar. I bag my apples on the tree in zip lock sandwich bags for protection, then store them in the same bags with the top slightly open, either in a cool garage or the fridge. Stored this way, Frostbite stays fairly crisp for about 3 months, and the flavor seems to get better with time. They are very popular with friends and family, so that is the longest they have lasted. Frostbite is precocious, both my trees bearing in the 3rd year from bare root, and have had apples every year for 10 years. I stored one for 5 months last year to see what longer storage would be like. It wasn’t crisp anymore but the flavor was still great.
My family and I love the cherry flavor of Sweet Sixteen, but it seems to fade after a couple weeks in storage, and the crispness fades as well. It ripens a week or two before frostbite and other main crop apples though, so it’s a nice variety to have a small tree of or just one branch with grafting.
Back in May 2023, I planted a Zestar and a Scarlet Crush apple tree in my backyard from Stark Bros. Nursery. Despite watering both adequately (or so I thought), the Zestar appeared to die and the Scarlet Crush will spur some leaves on its small branches and then the leaves will die soon after and regrow a bit. I’ll definitely replace the Zestar soon, but would it be better to replace the Scarlet Crush tree as well so both can become established in the winter without the potential heat stress? I’m in East Tennessee, Zone 7a.
@TobyFlenderson Do you have any updated experiences with Pipsqueak crab you can tell us about? I also have a tree I grafted this week from Fedco scion and this one sounds really cool. Thanks!
Unfortunately, I don’t have anything more about pipsqueak’s fruit qualities yet, I didn’t get any apples from my graft last year.
I noticed this year that unlike frostbite, pipsqueak buds out very early. In fact, of the 100 or so varieties I grow, pipsqueak and trailman bud out the earliest. I checked on everything about March 25, and there were tiny leaves poking out of those 2 grafts only. That is pretty early for South Dakota. That probably will negatively affect fruit production for those, as we have a lot of freeze/thaw in my area.
It appears pipsqueak is probably fairly susceptible to fire blight, as one of my grafts got it last year. We have light fire blight pressure here I believe. I have about 40 total apple trees and 20 pears, with about 150 total varieties on them, and pipsqueak is the only variety to get fire blight for me in the last few years.
Having said all that, I hope to be able to try pipsqueak again this year. I am a big fan of frostbite and its offspring.
Well shoot, the FB is a bummer. I’m going to take a crack at it anyways and see what I get but I just grafted one on a G11 rootstock hoping to find out in the next 2-3 years how it will fare. FB sucks
