The Liberty appeared to drop from being ripe. Don’t know why the Yates dropped. I picked the damaged Gold Rush.
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First year our Honeycrisp fruited. Only two apples. Yesterday I found one of the two had dropped. We had high winds and heavy rains the day before, so that was my guess for the cause. Hoping the remaining one will hang in there for a couple more weeks.
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I don’t mind a few drops if the tree has several more. At my location this appears to be when most of the Liberty ripens. My area is typically so hot and the season is long which seems to cause more of my late varieties to ripen early. Most of my Goldrush are holding on the tree well this year.
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I had some Libertys drop a couple of weeks ago, picked a few, and have one remaining on the tree. This is my first year it has fruited significantly, and I’m surprised at the early ripening date and the lack of color on mine. The taste and texture have been very good. How do yours taste?
My Goldrush tend to get that same disease, one of the summer rots, which I haven’t sprayed for this year. I’m grafting a gold rush to my absolute sunniest spot and hoping that will help.
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My goldrush get full sun all day long and still over 90% will rot unless i ziploc bag them. With bags im only losing 5-10% to rot which is fine with me. Like auburn’s GR, mine are still hanging and even getting some yellow. I tasted a few of the rotters and they were pretty sweet already. Im getting optimistic about having a good crop to harvest in a few weeks. They appear on track to ripen 2-3 weeks early this year. They are usually ready mid oct here at least from my limited experience.
I picked a couple about a week ago that was very good to me. Sweet with a little tart. Also had a little wine taste. The one today was slightly past prime but still good.
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I think I intended to spray captan all summer on my goldrush, but a combination of laziness and tree location (it’s right by my neighbors fence and when I go out her dog comes to see me, so few opportunities to spray) kept me from doing it. The green ones i’ve picked because of rot do taste pretty good.
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My results are similar to yours 5-10% rot. The few that rot seems to stay isolated to the one bag. The one I picked today was starting to sweeten. I haven’t figured out when the GR should ripen here.
My next years plans are to continue bagging GR as I do now but get an early spray of immunox on for CAR.
Im wondering if i should pick some now that have the hints of yellow and store for a month or so. They never really get great color here. Ive left some hang until mostly yellow in late oct early nov and the flavor intensity was not there and texture was a little softer. Maybe they are better here if not left to hang in this heat for that long. But id bet the non rotters are not going to taste great off the tree now. Maybe the fridge will help.
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The ones I tested off the tree this time of the year were not very good. One year I picked a few early and they stayed in bagged in the refrigerator until late winter and they ended up pretty sweet and good tasting. The few that stays on the tree until golden are outstanding freshly picked.
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I bought a bushel of them a few years ago from a local grower and stored them until spring the following year. The green ones never developed a great flavor, the gold ones went from excellent to fantastic: intensely sweet, complex, with a changing texture from crisp in the fall to sort of chewy as the months went by, but never mealy.
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Bill sent me GR scions two (?) years ago and they have taken off nicely. They’re spurring up and I hope to get a chance to try them next year -given, with out short season it’s something of a crap shoot!
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When this typically happens for you?
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Wish I knew. This might be the year to get a fix on when GR ripens at my location.
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I just ate one GR apple today, it had a nice dark golden blush on the sunny side. Small (it’s from a potted tree), but flavor was pretty good.
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I have a few trees in a shaded area that I have several grafts as backups. One wasn’t labeled. Picked yesterday and this mornings test indicated it to be a liberty. Very good but probable it would have been even better picked 2-3 days sooner. Nice to get an ID.
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This Gold Rush dropped from about 4’ last night. These apples are so dense I didn’t see a bruise on it. Really getting a good sweet/tart taste but this one is going into a cobbler.
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I picked a couple yesterday that had some yellow like yours. I put them in storage. They came off the tree very easily. Just a gentle lift and they came right off.
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Another drop found this morning convinced me it was time to pick the Detroit Reds. Grown by Thomas Jefferson, it has the distinction of consistently finishing at the bottom in taste tests held at Monticello. However, being principally a culinary and early cider apple, that’s not fair. I wouldn’t rate it high in a fresh eating taste test either. We’ll have to try an apple taste after baking several single varieties in several different apple crisps. Anyone done that?
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