Been a while since I have posted, but I am finally beginning my U-pick this year. I will have about 4000ft of 30-inch beds of annual vegetables and flowers, and will have about 4000ft of fruit as well coming into bearing in the next few years. My U-pick will primarily go from the last week of May to the first week of August, but eventually, once pawpaws and persimmons get rolling, I will open up into September. I have focused on early apples and am considering shifting even more toward the summer apples.
My question is about apple varieties; please critique what you see. I have 100 rootstocks planted out and waiting for me to order scions this spring.
Summer apples 55 trees: 30 pristine, 15 Williams Pride, 5 chestnut crab, 5 lowland/liveland raspberry (seems like it’s worth a shot for an early.)
Late summer/early Fall 45 trees: 5 Dayton, 5 Liberty, 15 Sweet Sixteen, 5 Pixie Crunch, 5 Hawaii 5 Kidds Orange Redd, 5 Grimes Golden
Some other early varieties I am considering are Mollies Delicious, Paulared, and Redfree.
Don’t have Lowland, but the others are great choices that I have. I’ve not seen it yet, but some report water core on WP.
Don’t have Dayton, but others report it’s good. Not a fan of Liberty, but some like it. The rest are great choices that I have.
Also, you can’t go wrong with classics like Fuji and Gala. Easy growing trees. Another that has been fairly trouble free for me that is popular is Ambrosia.
Just some thoughts to look into to compare with your listed apples. Have good options for people who might want to use apples for other than just eating fresh: fry/ bake with the apples or make applesauce, vinegar, dry apples for snacks, make juice or cider.
I’m intrigued by Lowland/ Liveland Raspberry, too, I’ve got that tree ordered from Century Farm Orchards to come in Nov of this year. I graft but if David at CFO has what I want, his prices / bareroot quality gives me some relief. Much success to you.
Great pick on summer apples, those are the best ones IMHO (minus the raspberry one which I know nothing about).
You should know that Grimes and Hawaii may not make your September window.
MonArk is worth considering, it’s July. Also Ginger Gold in August. People will love Ginger Gold, it’s huge and looks wonderful. It’s also a great tasting GD-type apple that keeps surprisingly well. In fact it and Williams Pride will be the biggest hits I would guess. Big, beautiful, and delicious both.
Consider Hollow Log, large sweet and spicy early summer apple. Gladstone a sweet July apple with a unique fruit taste.
William Pride and Pristine? OK flavor but the same generic style. I would look for varieties that are distinctive from average.
I second Gala. But get a spectacular Gala like Buckeye or Buckeye Prime. Eye candy for sure. Or Galarina which is dark like Pacific Gala but more disease resistant.
Most U-pick customers don’t want distinctive apples, they want the standard apples. And they want them big and beautiful. I remember @Olpea mentioning his customer’s tastes along that line, it was peaches not apples but a similar phenomenon.
That said, I wouldn’t call Williams Pride average, if well-ripened it is nothing short of extraordinary with tons of interesting flavor and spice notes. Pristine I would agree is pretty average, it’s a watered-down GD. But super early and a great keeper for how early it is.
Monark is a great summer apple here. Nice flavor, stays crisp for weeks, and also they are normally really big apples. One of my favorite apples in my orchard.
Exactly been my experience. In my area, if you can find some really nice tasting varieties and focus on those, you’ll make your customers happy. Too many varieties just confuses most customers.
Keep in mind @dsh1109 you are thrilled about all the different potential varieties of apples you could grow. But your customers are just regular people. 95% of them don’t care about apple varieties they’ve never heard of. They are just out to get on a “farm” once a year, so they can do something with their kids. If they are there because they really want apples, they will ask you for things they’ve tried that they like (i.e. Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Jonagold, etc.). Stuff pretty common.
There was an apple orchard about 30 miles from me. I think he posted here for a while. He had hundreds of apple varieties. I think his orchard lasted about 3 years once it got into commercial Upick production.
Another problem with too many varieties, is that it just becomes a nightmare to manage. My eyes glaze over pretty fast when customers start requesting certain varieties of peaches. They are either not ripe at the time they ask for them. And even if they are, there are generally quite a few other varieties ripening at the same time, there is no way I can have my pickers keep track of the different varieties they are picking.
Sometimes customers want me to call them when a certain variety is available. As I heard someone say, “I’d rather have a back alley colonoscopy” than try to get a hold of a customer, who may or may not show up, when their specific cultivar of peach is ready.
We have less than a dozen different apple varieties right now, which is too many. They are Upick. Trying to tell customers about the different varieties, and what is ready now, and where they in reference to other apple trees takes way too much time and effort. You spend 10 minutes trying to answer all their questions, then their kids go gorge themselves with apples, and they come back with 10 apples or something (sigh).
My suggestion is focus on half a dozen best tasting apples which are common for your area, and make your life easier. If you do want to try several different apple cultivars, I suggest you plant a little trial area (say 1/2 acre or less) and plant one of each apple cultivar you want to try. Plant them in order of ripening, and plant them close to your fruit stand, so you can keep an eye on the customers.
Then when the few adventurous customers come in, you can point them to the experimental area and tell them to try those. Keep in mind they will eat (or partially eat) one apple off each tree, so you’ll have more harvest loss in your experimental section.
I’m a fan of Centennial Crab as the perfect “gateway” apple for little kids. It’s spectacularly beautiful – pink and yellow, sweet and tasty. And it’s small – a perfect size for a little kid to actual hold and eat.
But it is small. I guess you wouldn’t send a family out to pick a bushel; it might take them forever. But you might sell it by the quart at the checkout counter at a premium price, targeting the children.
The EarliBlaze is a great apple but like so many early apples, it drops the day it ripens.
The Summer Banana is an ok apple, but the size is all over the place. Too many dinks. It reportedly only flavors up well in the south.
The Catawba Beauty is one to check into. Folks are now reportedly into multicolored apples. This one is a beauty if managed professionally. It has the Ambrosia look, but probably prettier.
You guys are the best. Thank you for the replies and all the food for thought. After some more thinking, I think I should focus on July apples the most. I am a teacher and will be off during that month and so I should favor most of my production for that time period when I can actually open my u-pick during the week and at the very least harvest and haul to market easy enough.
I was thinking of having some August apples mainlyto go alongside my contender peaches that would be ripening then, but I think peaches can pull their own weight if I actually can get a crop to grow.
So that leads me to make my last half of apples line up with my 50 pears, 200 pawpaws and 50 persimmons trees fruting in September to bring customers in to get some of them hooked on those. Does that sound logical or should I include an august apple like ginger gold?
A great pair of August to early September apples are King Solomon and Disharoon.
Very care free. Precocious. Great flavor. Nice medium size apples. I like that they do not require a lot of pruning once shaped up to form. Just trimming for opening the center for airflow.
An advantage over vigorous types that demand a lot of pruning.
Interesting, the pristine,Williams pride and pixie crunch dates are pulled straight from a Kentucky extension publication and says it’s a central Kentucky date which is where I am. The Monark I got off a rough estimate from another Kentucky poster here and the sweet sixteen and kidds orange red I took from inferences based off Cummins and the apples I already knew. It may be a little off but I wouldn’t think by much right?
Sweet Sixteen summer rotted badly for me last year in humid southeast VA. Almost no rot the year before. It’s an old tall tree that is hard to spray well due its location.
