Codling moth hammer my Liberties if I don’t spray. I can be grateful that so far I don’t have plum curculio!
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Have not tried Kinnard’s Choice
I picked some Goldrush from a local orchard and I am impressed with them. I kinda wish I had planted my Goldrush tree back in 2023. They are still slightly green and were probably 10-14 days from fully ripe when picked. They are still testing 15.3-15.5 Brix. They are very firm, crunchy, and tart. There is good sweetness to back up the acid, but it is very acid forward. I will be heading back sometime this weekend to see if they have any riper ones hanging. The forecast is showing good temperatures for ripening, if the rain holds off.
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@alan Not discounting anyone else’s experience. It’s just surprising to me sometimes how different our experiences are. Where I live it is damp and cloudy for about 7 months straight, then we have damp mornings and blistering hot afternoons for 2 months, and dry-all-the-time for 3 months. I don’t think I have ever seen PC. I wondered about weird little moon shaped holes in the Thompkins King apples, but it turned out to be young turkey pecks. In my area Liberty gives nearly perfect apples on healthy trees, and they are tart-sweet with a rose scent. I have 2 of them, one on in the lower orchard and one on the hill.
Meanwhile, a friend at higher elevation has Ark Black with a lot of fire blight, so I have never grown it. I want to, because an orchardist I used to know when I lived in Virginia praised it highly. So I am on a quest for a different tart, mellowing to sweet, storage apple. In my experience, both Gold Rush and Hauer Puppin crack when the rains return.
I love my Glockenapfel lemon flavor, but for me it is just hammered with coddling moth. I assume it would do better elsewhere.
I have a lot of fungal issues early, and if I can control it early, little to none in August and September. Then it starts raining again and late ripeners need to hold up to it.
Coddling moth and various mammals and birds are my other big concern.
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The Ark Black is among the top most FB resistant trees in the SE. It will see strikes, but the tree contains it. The Ark Black I grow has very fine twigs. I don’t prune the blight off of my tree since it’s too large. The delicate twigs infected with blight just tend to break off. The Ark black skin is medium thickness but is stiff and somewhat bitter. It certainly tastes better peeled.
The description of the apple you’re seeking seems more like a Winesap, Stayman, or the Mammoth Black Twig Century Farms is growing and selling. The Stayman is tricky because there are many Stayman strains. I’m acquainted with three and they are quite different.
The old Stayman my wife’s grandpa planted back in the 1940s was coarse, and the flavor was more similar to the Spitz but a little gaudier. These apples could be quartered and frozen, thawed out and eaten like a fresh apple. It was red and pea green when ripe.
I believe most of what I see now is commonly referred to as a Red Stayman. The flavor of this one is more subdued. The old ones are bangers, but don’t hang on the tree well in the SE and tend to drop 10-14 days before ripening.
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Amen. I bought my first house 45 years ago, 30 miles north. There were some pears, apples and peaches on the lot at the time. The pears were both killed within a few years by FB. The apples were ravaged by insects (PC, moth) and fungi (powdery mildew). The peaches were pummeled by oriental fruit moth and trunk borers.
Here, close to the coast with a steady westerly breeze, I get much less of all that. No fireblight as yet (14 years), no oriental fruit moth, minimal mildew. Bugs are easily controlled by spray. There’s plenty of CAR, but that’s manageable. The biggest pain is black rot, which a seem to be able to manage with spraying. Ditto peach leaf curl.
Oh yeah, both places suffered black knot on plums. Forget it.
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When I lived in Virginia, I loved winesap apples. My family used to buy them from blue ridge area orchards every year. They were tart, and stored beautifully in our old green clunker of a refrigerator.
I have never heard gaudy as an adjective for taste. Spitz, as grown here is, has much more wow to my palate than old strain Stayman and old strain trees I manage tend to be pretty much alike in my region- It bears fruit in clusters if not thinned- I mean often like 6 apple clusters. it’s not an exceptionally old variety, although certainly old enough to have lots of different strains, but I’ve only seen the newer one carried by commercial nurseries I buy from, and the one on trees up to 100 years old or so that I manage at sites with very old trees. I have a big branch of it I grafted on one of my orchard trees. The newer variety is just about as tasty as the original to me- from memory, but, of course, quite a bit more solidly red. Stayman is not a tart apple and tacking Winesap to its name is confusing. I once ordered Winesap apple trees and they sent me Stayman. That was many years ago. Winesap is quite tart, of course.
In Oregon Spitz might be a very nice tart apple, but here it is susceptible to scab, which may not be an issue there. It is also pretty determined to biennial bearing- at least on free standing roots. I think I remember reading about a grower in Oregon who has great success with it- either that or WA. It ripens well before Goldrush so might be ready to harvest before the rain comes in Oregon- not that rain hurts it here. Visually, Spitz can be spetacular- very deep red speckled with white “stars”.
Stayman was first discovered in the 1860’s but not commercially distributed until the beginning of the 20th century, apparently. Starks Bros featured it then as an outstanding apple and I believe they were the first commercial source for it.
Esopus Spitzenburg is not uncommon here. It generally harvests with a lot of cosmetic defects. It undeniably develops very good flavor though.
You’re thinking of the Stayman.
The exact origins of the Winesap apple variety remain uncertain, though it is believed to have emerged as a chance seedling in New Jersey during the 18th century, predating 1800.51 The variety’s first documented mention occurred in 1804, when Dr. James Mease described it in Philadelphia as a cider apple cultivated in Moorestown, New Jersey.63 This early record highlights its recognition during the American colonial period, with no clear evidence of European importation, suggesting it developed natively in the colonies.4
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Yes, I meant to type Stayman. My mistake- I will now correct it. These small mistakes become increasingly common for me now that I’m 74. The brain is still pretty functional, but increasingly quircky.
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I find my “name to face” facility is one of the buggiest functions I have now…lol
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Alan, Danny - get used to it!
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I try to view cerebral “changes” as a source of wonder. It is all part of the process of long survival and running with it shouldn’t be too hard as long as pain doesn’t become the primary experience. Nowhere near that yet, knock on wood.
This weekend I spent the day with an old friend who lost his bladder to cancer a couple of years ago and was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He wasn’t complaining about it. How can I complain about having some minor cognitive skill readjustments and some encroachment of arthritis… but I digress.
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I have an Esopus Spitzenberg apple on Bud 9 that has borne fruit 4 years in a row. Two of the years the fruit were large and nearly blemish free other than coddling moth. Two years they were smaller. This year the fruit wasn’t very pretty and was a little soft, but it did taste good.
In the Mount Hood area, which is colder and has enormous commercial orchards, they have a few strains like “Red Spitzenberg” and “Blaxstayman” and some variation on Winesap that pretty well matched my memory of it.
Talking about cognitive changes. I often fail to notice autocorrect even though I know it’s here, and I am tech-challenged. I get endlessly annoyed instead of figuring out how to turn it off. Esopus turns into Esophagus pretty often and that’s a gross name for an apple! Maybe since I confessed I will go figure out how to disable it now.
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The other day I missed PAWPAW in the NYT Spelling Bee. I said call The Home, he’s ready.
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Here, if Spitz gets soft in the tree it was on it too long. Ripening times vary quite a bit season to season with this apple, I think. After a lifetine with fruit trees I’m an old man who is still trying to master the art of harvesting at the perfect time. None of the methods match every variety… and pears!
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Isn’t it paw paw? I’m serious and am not planning to look it up- or enter assisted liiving just yet if I happen to be wrong. .
Think both are correct; I see pawpaw used more often…
No, I was joking about The Home. Words with unusual endings, e.g. paw, tend to elude me.
Nova Mac and Nova Spy are two of my favorite disease resistant apples. Both are on the tart side. Nova Spy does get some rust, but not enough to be a deal breaker.
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