Sorry Blueberry but Honeycrisp is way over 15 years old! I lived in Minnesota when it was released. One of the people from U of MN came out to the nursery I worked at and asked us to propagate it. It was not yet named except with a number and was to be officially released 3 years later. He provided us with scionwood and we we were the 5th nursery in the U.S. to offer Honeycrisp trees. I don’t recall the exact date on this but that was roughly 30 years ago . He brought us sample apples to eat that day in January and I had to marvel at how crisp they still were since only kept in a normal refrigerator after being picked the previous September.
I sold many of our first small crop of honeycrisp trees to a friend who planted them at his orchard based on my suggestion on how good they really tasted. He was the first source offering Honeycrisp apples for sale at the St. Paul farmer’s market. Said they sold out fast and he made good profit on them.
It is my wife’s favorite apple. I have two trees in my orchard. While good to eat, it is the worst apple I have ever grown. Slow to bear fruit, biennial bearing, wimpy grower ect. I am holding out that perhaps one of the newer honeycrisp hybrids will be just as tasty to eat yet be more grower friendly.
I tried to get irish peach from corvallis and they never sent it! Im stoked if you have it, when does it bloom for you compared to your other apples as the only thing i was concerned with is it may bloom early?
I should have added jazz to that list but maybe that was an australian introduction? Sweet tango is good and would be 5th on that list for me. Also i want to make sure we are only talking new apples and basically all of these i have only tried from the grocery store and the fact that they are good from the store makes me assume they will be great tree ripened.
How would you guys compare pristine or williams pride to sansa and akane? They are my best early apples its hard to say which one i love more.
Williams’ Pride is one of my top early apples here, too. My Pristine graft has never been happy and barely produces. It experiences an early die-back every season. Not sure what’s going on with it, but I’m replacing it with something else next week.
Is that where they came from? I really like topaz. Especially when it’s really fresh. It has a lot of interesting flavors and a nice texture.
It’s still okay a few weeks later, but not nearly as good.
My favorite of the “newer” apples is crimson crisp, and I’m puzzled why i never see it mentioned. It’s sweet, tart, crunchy, and has an okay apple flavor, too. It’s not Ashmeads Kernal, but it’s supposed to be fairly easy to grow, and it’s pretty.
It is also better fresh. Weirdly, it holds is texture fairly well in the fridge, but the flavor gets blander. We still enjoyed some pretty late into the season, though.
Sansa is excellent. I think Sansa is probably more consistent and definitely more aromatic than Pristine. I’m not sure that I’ve had Akane, I had a graft of it at my old place but it hadn’t bore fruit.
I would say if you can really wait on Williams Pride and let it get dark and even some water core, it is very good then too. But we get Sansa from a local orchard and it has been more consistent than Williams Pride I’ve grown.
Yeah opal and topaz are from the czech institute of experimental botany and they supposedly are about to release a ton of good tasting DR varieties soon. What I love about opal and topaz is when they are nice and ripe they have some of that old strain golden delicious flavour.
Markus kobelt of Switzerland is breeding the redlove apples and I hope to have calypso be my first red apple that can handle no spray for fireblight!
Then there was some German breeder (can’t find right now) breeding DR and taste as well as other unique characteristics back into apples. Lots of good stuff on the horizon
I will have to try crimson crisp, I get it confused with crimson delight that was a real sweet and blah apple for me
I just went to the store and while they had autumn glory and juici and a few others the best apple at he store was amazing organic honey crisps for 1.99lb. Still have organic cosmic crisps for 2.99lb. This batch of cosmics are very good but the honeycrisps are just fantastic right now and it’s probably all downhill for now until California early apples hit in early summer or me getting lucky for Sansa or Akane off my trees.
My first one came from a roadside orchard in Hendersonville NC in 2007 I think…and at that point I had never seen a HoneyCrisp at Kroger or any other market in Kentucky.
But, I don’t doubt but what the release by U of Minnesota was a good deal earlier…it took time to gain fame.
