They may be correct where you are, but in Va they are about 2-3 weeks later. Easiest way to find out is find someone on the forum near you and see when things are ripening for them.
I am strictly speaking as a consumer. Do not know when PInk Lady is ripe . However, it is my favorite grocery store. Apple i think it is very underrated for flavor.
Here Cripps Pink is ready to pick in early October. A bit earlier then mid October to early November in cooler places.
A fresh picked Cripps Pink (Pink lady) is great. Even better stored a month. Way better then store bought.
I feel like apples have a lot more variability year to year than peaches for when they ripen. And while mine seem to have a general order itās not as strict as the peach ordering seems to be.
Some also have really long periods of ripening and not all on a tree will be ripe at once and then some all ripen at once. I feel like there should be more notes about this for common varieties, and sometimes you can find info if you search, but thereās not really a place with all of that.
Commercial growers tend to like them to all ripen at once so that they can all get picked and you donāt have to keep returning to the tree or figuring out which are ripe. I would have to imagine this would also be the case if you had a you-pick where you wanted people to only pick ripe apples.
About this:
I went to two you-pick places last fall. One is of the agritourism type that definitely catered to people who once or twice a year wanted to bring kids to pick some apples for an experience. I thought it was pretty great and the kids had fun. However, the apples were not very good. They cost quite a bit more than any grocery store apple but were not as good. They were totally unthinned to a sort of ridiculous extent (and Iām not good about thinning anything) and they were all shading each other out.
There were LOTS of apples on the ground. And I watched for quite a while. I didnāt see people knocking the trees around or throwing fruit on the ground. I did see people eating apples, but didnāt see people being crazy about it. I did see lots of people trying to pick apples and because they were so dense, even if you managed to catch 2-3 some could fall.
The second place was very much more focused on the fruit which was high quality. However, there were no frills at all. It was just get the fruit and get out of our field. It was also pretty great. The two places were just different.
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Great reply and excellent information, suggestions, and real life experiences to convey.
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I think there are ripening differences even in the same area that are probably + or - a week to ten days. I have a person that lives about 5 minutes away. He has a couple of hundred of apple trees and even our ripening dates are different at times. Frost pockets , micro climates, winds, drought types times, more rain, and even soil condition differences makes the ripening dates a little different.
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Yeah, I am really hoping I have some pink ladies in about 2 more years my tree is 3 years old .
We have tons of apples on the ground too. Gobs of them. Customers (particularly kids) knock a lot of apples off. Once an apple hits the ground, almost nobody picks them up.
We do thin and our apples are nice sized (except for Pixie Crunch which of course are supposed to be small - hence the name).
My gut feeling is that if customers see a lot of apples on the ground below the tree, they will be more inclined care less if they or their kids knock more off. For that reason, I let some of my best repeat customers come and pick up drops for their livestock for free (mostly chickens, sometimes pigs). I let one lady who used to work for me (hard worker) pick up drops for free. She squeezes them an bottles the juice for her and her kids, but everyone else I specifically request they feed the drops to their livestock, and if they want any to eat, to pick some and buy them.
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@Robert After a little more looking and considering, Iām on a nice cool north slope. I bet you are right, my dates may be a little early, but hopefully not by too much. If my summer apples happen to go into august a little bit it wonāt be the end of the world I can sell them at a farmers market on Saturdays and open the u-pick on up on the weekend if need be, but the earlier the better. and I imagine Iāll have some pawpaws and persimmons still ripening in October even if I choose the earliest varieties of those.
ughhh I feel like selecting apple varieties in large quantities for a farm is like marrying somebody youāve only speed dated lol the commitment scares me, but I definitely see the value of selecting only a few varieties as you mentioned @Olpea I highly value your advice since youāre running a u-pick. If this were your farm and you wanted most of your apples to be in July when customers were already there picking veggies to scratch their fruit itch would you pick something other than the three I have or focus more on one of them? And again, if you wanted to get some folks in during September to try to hook some on pawpaws and persimmons and pears and make some fans, are the three I chose good choices, or would you pick something else?
| Apples | Ripening date | trees |
|---|---|---|
| Pristine | July 10 | 30 |
| Williams Pride | July 20 | 20 |
| Monark | July 15 | 20 |
| Pixie Crunch | September 5 | 10 |
| Sweet Sixteen | September 8 | 10 |
| Kidds orange red | September 8 | 10 |
Also just to share with a fellow U-Picker, I am running my farm exactly like this lady does. https://purelandorganic.com/ I took her online course and itās been huge. I didnāt have enough acreage to really make fruit reliable and productive enough to make some decent money so we are doing half veggies and half fruit. My favorite thing is being small enough that we wonāt need a thousand people to show up, but I can pre-sell 30 tickets each for 3 one hour timeslots (they can be there up until 30 minutes after the last hour) and not have everybody and their mother trying to come to my farm at any given time. Here is a pic of what we will have ready this year, worst case scenario I will still have a booth at a local farmers market if the u-pick is a flop, and a couple hogs to feed excess too.
@scottfsmith The idea for sweet sixteen and kidds orange red comes mainly from them making your list. Would consider them good u-pick apples, or is there another in that ripening period you would bet your money on?
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Iāve got a good number of pawpaw varieties and they all ripen august and september. There are a few that are said to ripen in october, but I donāt have any. Asian persimmon will be mostly be october and november. American varieties run all the way from august to november.
Keep in mind while focusing on those really early apples they donāt generally have the same quality as later apples. People paying for them may pick up on that. I have a for sale orchard as well and work a job. I tried to stretch the variety ripening gap as far as it would go from really early to really late. That way I was not overloaded at any particular time and would be able to get rid of it with the least amount of loss. There is nothing wrong with just being a weekend warrior with the orchard. Most people are going to buy over the weekend. Bribing family members to help can sometimes be beneficial also.
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Looking at Blake from peaceful heritages website, who is pretty close to me, I think mine will all be september and the really late ones hit October.
Yep, you know all my fears lol I am worried about quality and having too much as well. I do have a 2-week break as a teacher the first couple of weeks of October, but I think I want to be done by then and be able to go on vacation with my family since I will be working all summer. I could split 100 trees a little more evenly 1/3 july 1/3 august 1/3 September, 2 varieties for each period, trying to go for each half of the month. I may like that better in the long run
A question for someone more knowledgeable than me, these trees are high-density, 4ft spacing, and trellised on g214. Once they are in production, if I decide a variety is not worth it, am I able to top work a high-density tree, and if so, how many years would that tree be out of production?
What I do is to let the neighboring varieties grow into that space, you can fill a space in a year or two that way. The only issue for you is for a Uāpick you want the same varieties in blocks so that may not work so well. But if you are doing some test varieties it would work there. If you top-work it you can expect 3-4 years before production is really going again.
Re: Kidds and Sweet 16, they seem like they would be fine to me as a U-pick. Sweet 16 is too easy to pick early but you can keep them out of the block until they are ready.
Good questions. I can give you advice from my perspective of my operation and operations around here (south of Kansas City on the KS/MO line). I donāt know your location. Things may be a little bit different where you are, or a lot different.
We donāt do any farmerās markets anymore. Farmerās markets take a ton of extra work. You race like #$%& to get everything picked for the day, then have to pack up all your crap (tables, popup, boxes chairs, signage, credit card processing equip. etc.), Then drive to the market early enough to set up. Set up, sell, then pack everything back up. Drive home. Unpack everything.
At one time we did three farmerās markets a week. Makes for really long days.
Upick is way easier. We do Upick on everything except peaches. Itās more challenging for customers to pick good peaches. They bruise them, they drop easier than apples (so lots of droppage waste) and they pick a lot of peaches not ready or in the middle of the tree, which taste not the greatest.
We let them pick donut peaches because the donut peaches we grow pretty much all taste good on the whole tree. Pretty much.
All that said, I plan to start doing more Upick on the globose peaches too. It just takes a ton of labor to pick all the peaches. We only had a 20% peach crop last year and experimented with letting customers pick more of their own globose peaches, and even though I could see they picked some garbage, it mostly worked out. Iād sorted out the bad ones they picked and just give those to the customers. And I tried to school them not to pick the lower center part of the tree.
Anyway, back to your questions. Of the apples on your apple schedule, Iāve only tried 3. Pristine, Williams Pride, and Pixie Crunch. Pristine is good (for a summer apple). Pixie Crunch is excellent. Williams Pride isnāt that great. Itās more of a balanced apple, and most customers (read almost all) want the sweetest crunchiest apples they can find (remember your fruits are competing with candy bars and soft drinks 
).
Sansa is another good summer apple that people here like.
As Robert points out, fall apples taste better and store longer. One other thing about fall apples. People expect to pick apples in the fall. Generations of programming have trained people, you pick apples in the fall. It takes a while to overcome that programming. Plus, people donāt want to take their kids out to go pick apples when you wake up and itās 70 degrees by 6am. By 9am itās already in the 80s. Moms would rather take their kids to the pool than go pick apples (Iām talking in generalities here). You may live in a cooler climate.
My experience also matches Roberts in terms of length of season open. The longer you can stay open, generally the more revenue. Trying to pack in a yearās worth of revenue in just a few months is harder to do, and takes a heck of a lot more labor. Iāll give you a real world example.
Last year we grossed about $80K. That was gross, not profit, which is the part you get to keep for your own labor. We were open almost 6 months, say 150 days because itās hard to be open for a full 6 months, plus you have some rainy days you close for. So $80K divided by 150 days = about $500 revenue per day.
If you are only open 3 months, you have to average about double. That means you have to have twice the customers, twice the parking, twice the labor per day, and twice the rush in managing everything. Itās just a lot harder to manage a $1000 dollar day, vs. a $500 day.
Plus good labor is hard to find. Most people who want summer jobs are kids, and 9 out of 10 of them want to work the least amount they can, and just collect their check. Theyāll tell you in an interview how hard a worker they are, but after the first couple days they get bored and start dinking around, especially if they have to work by themselves (unsupervised). Iām not dissing kids. I like kids. But almost all are lazy. Kids just want to have fun (that was almost a song). If you can find that one in ten kid who will work without you having to watch them, that kid is gold, and do whatever you can to keep him/her.
My operation is too small for migrant labor, which you must provide housing for. My best help has mostly been adult women working a summer until they can find some full time work.
Anyway, you will find there will be only some much of you to āgo aroundā on those $1000 days, and only so much good help to āgo aroundā. Also only so much customers to go around to meet that $1000 day.
I understand you are a teacher and want to keep teaching, which I would recommend, so you and your family donāt starve to death while you are building your business. But I would recommend you extend your season and just be open on the weekends in the later season, if you can.
We sell pumpkins, tomatoes and apples at the end of the season. Most of that business comes on the weekends anyway. You mention vacations. Forget that. Your life is over once you start a Upick. Just kidding (sort of). The winter months are much slower. I sleep in when I want, during the winter, but still have quite a surprising amount of work to do.
Around here veggies take more labor per $ received. Quite a bit more than fruit. And they wonāt draw people to your farm the way fruit does. It just doesnāt have quite the same ring to it, āHey kids, lets go out to the farm and pick some green beans, wonāt that be fun?ā vs. āKids, letās go pick some strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, apples, etc.ā The fruit will be the draw, the veggies will be an more of an afterthought (theyāll pick some veggies while they are there for the fruit) for most customers.
If you are in a dry place in TX like the ladyās farm who has the online course, then veggies are a much better choice for organic vs. fruits. But if you are in a wet place the vegetables will need lots of spraying to get good quality. Broccoli will be wormy without sprays, green beans will be buggy, cucumbers and squash will be decimated by squash bugs and cucumber beetles. Of course your high tunnel crops will be much more protected against pests. But if you are in a wet/humid climate, your outdoor vegetables will require plenty of sprays. I would definitely recommend growing the vegetables on plastic for the stuff outdoors, so you arenāt killing yourself trying to control weeds.
Lastly, unless you plan to do all credit card sales, since you are a small operation, I would recommend considering carrying a gun at your stand. Some goofball stabbed a lady at her fruit stand quite a few years back in a town about 45 minutes away from me. Stabbed her to get her cash.
I carry concealed at my fruit stand. Concealed because I donāt want soccer moms freaking out, when they bring their kids. But Iām pretty sure that weapon has saved me from being robbed more than once. There have been some sketch customers over the years. High on something, asking strange questions, like, are you here all alone, what time do you leave, ācan you leave your stand and drive me down the road because I donāt want to get my truck dirtyā - not kidding. When that kind of thing happens, I turn away on the pretense of grabbing something, take the bottom end of my shirt which is normally draped over my firearm, and pull it up over my holstered firearm, so itās no longer concealed. Eventually, their eyes will drift to my sidearm, and I can almost instantly read a change on their face.
Thieves want easy targets, and nothing is easier than a man/woman by himself a couple thieves can overpower and take his cash, if they know he has enough cash to make it worth their while. Or just stab the person and take the cash. Or just stick a gun in their face and say, āhand it overā.
It changes the dynamic, if the bad guys know they could be seriously injured or killed during the robbery for a small sum of money. Much better risk/reward ratio to just go hold up a grocery store after hours, or try to pull up an ATM with their pickup in the middle of the night.
Anyway, Iām sure I answered more than you asked, but there you have it.
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Just an idea for you. About halfway into putting my orchard in I started to go in a different direction and included nut trees. Nuts may not be as popular, but they require hardly any input on your part and they store much longer giving you more time to get rid of them. I grow hazelnut, walnut, small amount of pecan, and almond. The first three are almost set it and forget it easy. Almond crops really quick, but also has to be sprayed.
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@scottfsmith Thank you for the knowledge on topworking and the opinion on those two apples. Your threads, along with university publications, have been my go-to sources.
@Olpea You have no idea how grateful I am for such a thorough response. All of it. I know that took alot of time and experience to learn and then time and kindess to write down as a reply!
Yes I am all for 100% u-pick, I did farmers markets last year and just twice a week was exhausting. I am holding onto the market at least for this first year in case something goes awry with my U-pick or I canāt get customers to come out. I hope to abandon the farmersā market next year or even mid-year if things are going well enough.
I think I like your suggestion of Sansa, and that could replace Williams Pride and get me a good August apple.
Right now, I am looking at balancing things more, so maybe something like:
20 pristine 20 Monark 15 Sansa 15 Ginger gold 15 Pixie Crunch 15 Sweet Sixteen.
I think Iām going to hold off extending the season into October for now, unless some things just run over like sweet sixteen unexpectedly etc. Thankfully, my teaching job pays the bills, and this farm would be just extra cash, so I need to break even atleast.
The texas u-pick farm does gross like 150k in 8 weeks on 2 acres of veggies and 2 acres of blackberries with only her and her Dad and some cashiers. Itās pretty amazing. I will be armed well like her with plenty of sprays, beneficial bugs, bird boxes, and a plastic mulch layer to hopefully have some pretty veggies. I also will be charging the same price at the u-pick as I do at the farmers market (on par with grocery store organic is what I shoot for) on everything except maybe raspberries, since I charge $5 a half pint for those.
I really appreciate the safety advice as well. I am going to be pretty strict about the pre-purchased online tickets only policy, so hopefully that will turn away some shady characters. Also being open only 3-4 days a week for 3 hour chunks will make it so enough people are present it would discourage much funny business, but concealed carry or at least some pepper spray is going to be on my checklist.
@Robert Youāre tempting me lol. Blake Cothron had me really leaning toward chestnuts when I did a consultation with him a couple of years ago, they just take up so much space, and I am only working with 2-3 acres. I would hate to shade out other stuff.
Hazelnut take hardly any space. I have roughly 50 of them packed in an area not much more than an eighth acre. And they do great in areas that do not get a ton of sun. I put mine along my neighbors wood line where fruit trees would not fair so well.