Visit with Scott Smith!

[Matt_in_Maryland]

Today I visited the king-daddy of all fruit forum progenitors-- our fearless leader @scottfsmith!

I couldn’t show up without bringing some goodies: Stayman apples and Magness pears from a local orchard.

I went right into the belly of the beast. Scott lives in a terraced neighborhood at the northern end of Baltimore.

Scott greeted me upon arrival, along with his lovely wife, Julia. He told me @mamuang beat me to the punch. Tippy had visited him a month prior.

We started in on Scott’s persimmons. We sampled 20th Century (top, nice mild flavor) and Aizu Michirazu (bottom, a little washed out, but still pleasant).

We also ate some Darlene muscadines (bronze with great flavor but skin a little bitter), along with an Abbondanza (red apple at right). Goldrush apple pictured at center.

We also munched a yummy Suncrisp (an apple with pear flavor) and some delicious Ison muscadines, and another purple variety I can’t remember (Black Beauty?). We also found a Honey Jar jujube dried on the tree (tastes like a spongy date).

Scott is getting rather excited about the Yates apple. It is growing well for him, and hangs quite late to extend the season. They are the stars of his cider plantings and have a nice fruity flavor.

Scott picking Yates.

He also gifted me a Crispin apple (aka Mutsu). This is one of my wife’s favorites, so I brought it home for her to eat.

I had a blast and could go on and on about how much fun I had on my visit, but I won’t. I really appreciate Scott taking the time to be so hospitable.

Thanks, Scott! You are welcome at my place in Frederick anytime. Same goes for my orchard in the Catoctin mountains. Come and visit anytime!

[mamuang]

Matt,
Glad you took pictures. Somehow, I did not take pics of Scott’s orchard, or @BobVance’s , or @mrsg47’s or @SMC_zone6’s or @galinas’s. You see the trend here

I enjoyed talking to the orchard owners asking questions, listening to their answers, checking out their trees, tasting some fruit, etc. Those visits were wonderful. They gave me the opportunities to learn and exchange ideas with the hosts/hostess who are passionate about fruit growing as I am. So much fun.

Every orchard I visited, I have learned something. More importantly, the hosts/hostess and their families were so friendly and gracious.

Thanks for posting pics of Scott’s place, Matt.
P.S. When I was at Scott’s, it was a peach time.

[Olpea]

I love these topics of home orchard visits. They are sort of like small consummations of the forum, to me.

[mamuang]

Mark,
Only if you lived closer, I’d beat Matt to visit you first

[Matt_in_Maryland]

Peach time? I’m jealous.

Yes. Despite Scott’s graciousness, a visit to his place remains an intimidating pilgrimage. But I tried to keep the presence of mind to take pictures. I even asked for permission first! You all know how pushy I can be. Seriously, if you don’t take pictures, you forgot so quickly all of the wonderful things seen.

Here’s Scott’s Abbondanza apple after I removed most of the sooty blotch using a sophisticated method-- simply rubbing it with a damp paper towel.

[Olpea]

Of course you or Matt would be welcome! But I’ll offer this disclaimer, my orchard isn’t near as well kept as any of the pics of home orchards I see on the forum. The pictures I see of other’s orchards easily humble me.

Right now, the farm is a muddy mess. I wanted to get a nitrogen spray on and had to drag the sprayer over wet ground. Mud everywhere.

[BobVance]

@Olpea

my orchard isn’t near as well kept as any of the pics of home orchards I see on the forum

Given that there are only so many hours in the day, the more ambitious you get, the more you need to sacrifice things like neatness. Its the old “fast, cheap, good- pick 2 (at best)”. And the scale you are operating on is pretty ambitious. Anytime growing fruit becomes a career, making it look like a manicured garden isn’t near the top of the list. And I don’t even have that excuse!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it- Scott’s places looks great. It’s all the more surprising, as we know the scope of it. I’m impressed with Tippy and MrsG’s neat/elegant orchards, but Scott is taking it to the next level by scaling it to hundreds of trees. All while working and maintaining to forum.

[Palmer]

Matt, you’re the master orchard visit sharer. Thanks!

[jujubemulberry]

nice to see our fearless leader’s orchard, and thanks to @Matt_in_Maryland for sharing!

[scottfsmith]

It was great to finally meet you in person Matt! It was also a good excuse to spend a few hours in my orchard - we found a bunch of things ripe that I didn’t notice before.

If Matt had taken some pictures of my veggie garden you would know how messy some parts of my yard are - its just a pile of weeds now. The blackberries I also have not trellised, they are a big mess.

[Drew51]

You guys look like brothers!

@scottfsmith

The blackberries I also have not trellised, they are a big mess.

Mine are too, and I removed a bunch of them, just swd magnets anyway. I had over 10 types, so not like I got rid of them all. I kept the early ones, wyeberry, boysen, and tay (man these are great!-more like raspberries than blackberries).
I also kept New Berry and a couple others. Suckers were all over the place, crazy! Glad they are gone. Although I have a friends who loves them, they’re going to be super bummed I can’t provide gallons to them yearly.
I hate killing plants, it was kinda hard to do, but it had to be done.
I’m going to put in honeyberries where they were and also a small serviceberry. Northline which is supposed to only grow 7 feet tall, and suckers I guess, so will have some for trade.

[Barkslip]

Great job once again, Matt.

We need at least 10-50 more pictures

Dax

[alan]

Just saw this for the first time and pictures are really interesting. Scott’s orchard is much more sprawling then I imagined and more orderly (actual rows, and weed free!). I expected things to be pressed to close.

It looks like most of the apple trees are not nearly at major production size- in a few years the crop may be a crushing burden when every tree carries bushels of fruit. Deer will probably become a blessing, especially as trees start bearing a large proportion of crop above the normal browse line. It can be useful when they consume the drops promptly- something they’ve stopped doing for me in recent years for some reason. Drops often have destructive larva.

[scottfsmith]

The area by the Yates tree is a new stand on MM111 at around 10’ spacing, those indeed are nowhere near production. But thats only 9 trees in one spot in the front yard. They are for cider so I am hoping for a big crop.

The back yard trees behind our heads are all M9 B9 at tight spacing, they have stopped growing. I also have some M7/M26/MM106 in the rows to the left of that picture at tight spacing. Those are fine except the ones I put many varieties on, there isn’t enough room for that. So I have been playing pick-a-winner and reducing the number of varieties on them. Two varieties is easy to do, one coming out of each side of the row, but more than that is hard.

In my winter pruning this year I am going to be removing many of the lower branches. Hopefully all the deer are doing in a few years is eating the drops…

[alan]

It’s certainly an ongoing process as the weight of cropload works against us. I’m amazed that even 10" diameter + scaffolds of ancient apple trees bend under the weight of heavy crops- this can be helpful for ancient and overly tall apples, but mostly it merely increases the struggle. I’m always crutching up a lot of branches on years with a bountiful crop and in mature orchards pruning is done to encourage upward growth of scaffolds.

[Matt_in_Maryland]

Yesterday I attended a networking event in Balt’o. I decided to pair this with a follow-up visit to Scott’s and take advantage of his recent offer to taste some of his storage apples.

We opened his basement refrigerator to peep his stash of ciders, bagged apples, and home-brew experiments.

This year was among the rainiest in Maryland in recorded history (and may yet become the rainiest ever for some spots). It’s raining right now as I type this.

The dank conditions of 2018 made growing anything very difficult, and fungal disease was rampant.

Scott’s apples have their fair share of sooty blotch (cosmetic/ rubs off/ no big deal), but the apples are also suffering from higher susceptibility to bitter-pit and fungal rots.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of sound samples to be salvaged from the bunch after some cleaning in the wash basin.

The winner of last night’s beauty contest was this flawless Hoople Antique Gold. Eating as late as December, it retained good texture and a balanced flavor, which we enjoyed.

Probably the highlight of the visit was my first taste of Rubinette. This thing was delicious. The variety has a unique complex pleasing but subdued tanginess that we imagine must be the flavor associated with its venerated parent, Cox’s Orange Pippin. I grafted a stick of Rubinette from Scott into my orchard 2 years ago, but the fruit is routinely stolen by critters. No wonder the varmints want to eat it. Yum!

This is Clochard. This had a grapey vinious wine-like flavor, if I remember correctly.

Some of the apples we could not identify. We believe this to be Pomme Gris. It has a crisp texture with savory/ pear flavor components, and a coconutty aftertaste.

We sliced up a Hunge- an apple with a strongly pronounced nutty aftertaste that hits you late in the game.

We also knoshed on a Blenheim Orange that had a sour zippiness, and a Suncrisp, which I’ve tried before, and always tastes like pears to my palate.

We tried an Aromatic Pippin, which was delicious. It has soft fine-grained flesh redeemed with a unique pleasing twangy flavor I cannot explain.

We also had a Crispin - always a solid apple - and a Spigold (sweet Honeycrisp lite-like flavor) as well as a Wagoner were somewhere in the mix.

The following photos: I cannot remember the apples to which these correspond.

Lots of new tastes for me, each of which constitute a rare and special privilege. Scott is very nice for putting up with me.

[Palmer]

Your visitation reports always make me happy, Matt.
And great looking apples, Scott!

[scottfsmith]

Matt it was great you could come by, its always fun to taste apples with someone else!

I am pretty sure Pomme Gris is correct, its either that or Swayzie. I think the one you called Hunge above is Swayzie. The 2nd to last one is Hubbardston Nonesuch, and Hunge is the last one. I think Aromatic Russet (not Aromatic Pippin) was the really mealy one. Or something like that … we needed a notes taker!

A couple things I found interesting in this tasting… Wagener is not a keeper apple but I stored some anyway. The skin got all gross and mushy, but oddly enough if you cut it off there was a nice white-fleshed apple underneath. Blenheim was surprisingly good, its also not the best keeper but they were still good. I had picked the Blenheim too early since the tree is too low and the deer were getting them all. It made them more of a citrus type flavor, not the usual Blenheim taste for me but still great! Hunge is a good keeper, it had lost its crispness but other than that was in excellent shape. Suncrisp was the only one I would say could use more storage time, it was still a touch starchy.

All of these apples were 3-5 brix below their usual, between the constant clouds in the fall and picking early to beat the deer I lost a lot of flavor. They were still good though.

One thing we talked about was how many of these older apples are not crisp. While there are some old varieties that are crisp its pretty uncommon, and some are downright soft (Mother comes to mind there). Of the ones we tasted my memory was only Suncrisp and Rubinette were crisp. Hooples and Mutsu are crisp earlier but they were losing their crispness. The Pomme Gris and Swayzie are “coconutty”, they have a hard bite which is something like crisp (but, they had lost a good share of that). Anyway if you are growing some of these old apples but you like 'em crisp its something to keep in mind, especially if you are storing them.

By the way Rubinette continues to store well, as long as I put them in plastic they are not getting soft-skinned at all and they are staying crisp. Overall it was my best apple this year by a good margin. Another advantage it has is the tree is big and tall (for my orchard), the deer got the lower half but there was still a bushel left higher up which had a good long period to ripen in.

[Johnthecook]

I’ve got a couple of grafted limbs of Rubinette, no apples yet. Nice to hear it’s a good Apple. I was thinking of changing over my Gala to it if it’s that good