Picked my 3 Wealthy apples this morning off the ground. Looked at them 2 days ago and they were still hanging.
Ate one immediately, not bad, not as crispy as I like but certainly edible. This is a 5 year old tree on Antonovka rootstock. Apples were bagged, tree had no spray.
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I’ve read here recently a similar description of Wealthy. For me, not being crispy, completely rules it out. They are beautiful apples you have there though. The deep and rich coloring is very appealing.
Here in Montana Wealthy does well, with decent firmness and crispiness on the few I’ve had from a friend’s tree. I don’t have it as it’s known to be fireblight susceptible and my frankentree can only handle so many!
And I agree, very lovely apples.
I think you picked them too late. Here in zone 10a they ripen in 100F+ heat and are crisp, juicy, and spicy, but not nearly as well-colored. Wealthy seems to grow almost anywhere, and is very productive in a low to no-chill environment.
Thanks for the “heads up” applenut. I’ll make a note to pick them sooner next year.
Wealthy is a great late summer apple here in Maine. Dropping fruit as it ripens is one of the few pitfalls of the variety, and with the crop ripening over a window of several weeks, one has to be pretty attuned to the fruit color shift if you want to get them before they hit the ground.
Well, I’ll be the odd one out here. I harvested the first Wealthy off a couple of trees and I didn’t like them. But there is a caveat. I don’t like anything but crunchy very sweet apples. I don’t like popular apples like Gala. Zestar is only OK, IMO. Has a lot of crunch but not sweet enough. Same with a later apple, Pink Lady (although when first introduced to it years ago I loved it for the crunch alone).
Some people like the “zestier” apples, but not me. An ideal apple is very sweet with a lot of crunch and juice. Swiss Gormet was the best summer apple this year, and the best summer apple when I tried it from another apple grower before I decided to grow it. It ranked high with all of my family members in a blind taste test.
I like Fuji apples (homegrown ones are better than store-bought) for a great fall apple, so you know what my tastes are like.
I compare the supersweet apples to white peaches. The sweet apples (like most white peaches) have more sugar and less flavor. However, for some reason I don’t generally like the sweet cloying taste of white peaches, but I do like the very sweet apples, (even though they don’t generally have as complex flavors).
“De gustibus non est disputatum” or, roughly, there’s no arguing with taste.
: -)M
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When do your Wealthy apples ripen? Do they have red stain flesh when overripe? We have 3 trees planted in the late 70’s that till last year thought were Prairie Spy. Then I read a description and saw some photos – they aren’t. I’m renovating these old mostly unpruned large trees and don’t have fruit this year. The only photo I have is of a basket of them in the root cellar. But when I saw @greyphase beautiful photos and his and others comments I thought – that might be them! Ours gave us bushels of wonderful tasting apples over the years, ripening in Sept. (z3) for fresh eating, drying, sauce and sweet cider. And also bushels to dump in the compost or woods as they weren’t the most disease free. I can’t wait for them to start bearing again.
Maybe it is Wealthy. It is known as one of the most cold-hardy apples.
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