My first potential apple from my yard is a Razor Russet known for long hanging and improved flavor after storage. It’s still not yielding to a gentle tug, but I have to think it has to be done soon. I am fairly confident that the top got sunburned, and I am not sure how much that damages the whole fruit.
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Not from our orchard, but my wife was out today, and found this apple at a local mart that was selling these. She just picked up one, but said they had lots for sale. She says the sign said Cortland, but this doesn’t look like one to me. It almost looks like pics of Macoun’s that I’ve seen online, but not in real life. What say y’all? It has a very lopsided profile to it, and is purpleish.
What say y’all?
We’ll give it a taste, and report on the flavor.
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Looks like a Cortland that got good sun. Mine didn’t get great sun, but tasted like a Cortland should.
Looks too round for a Macoun to me.
It was pretty tart, not a lot of sweetness or other noticeable flavors. The texture was pretty crisp, almost hard. It did not brown after cutting up, like a Cortland does. It did kinda taste like the Cortland’s we got from an orchard last year.
Maybe if it sat for a couple weeks it might develop a bit more sweetness. My wife liked it, but I was kinda meh about it.
Went running in the woods and decided to swing by an old pasture site where I remembered seeing some apple trees. It’s hard to tell whether the trees were planted deliberately in the first place. There’s a bunch of them there, but they’re kind of scattered around, not planted in orchard rows or anything. Some of the trees looked to be dead or barely hanging on, and few seemed to be carrying any fruit, but I did find a couple with some apples on them.
The first tree I sampled from actually had a good number of crab-sized yellow fruit (visually similar to Golden Hornet), but unfortunately the apples were over-ripe and gone soft. Gave one a try anyway, for the sake of science, but it was too tart-and-nothing-but-tart for my taste.
Then I found these guys.
They’re about two inches in diameter, and prettier in person than they look in the pictures. As you can see, there’s orange-red striping over yellow, with minimal russet. More red on the ones that were getting more sun. There was a fair amount of sooty blotch, which I wiped off for the big photo shoot, and what looks like it might be some minor scab damage. Some of the ones that I didn’t take home had some fairly minor bug damage, but overall they looked pretty good for a completely untended tree. The tree itself was kind of broken down, but appeared to be one of the healthier ones out there.
Do these apples look like anyone you know? If they’re a wild crab, as they probably are, they’re by far the best wild crabs that I’ve ever tried. (Not that I can claim to have particularly wide experience in that area.) For me, there’s something compulsively bite-able about wild crabs, even if you know you’re going to want to spit them out almost immediately. Kind of like the pleasurable pain of eating a hot pepper or jumping in a cold lake. These apples had the qualities I connect with that experience (hardness, tartness, and - in this case slight - teeth-tingling astringency), but tempered by enough sweetness and character of flavor to make them genuinely enjoyable to eat, not just fun to bite into.
Of course, this review is wildly biased by the fact that I climbed a rickety old tree on a beautiful fall day to snag them. That being said, I think I may need to get some tips on collecting scion wood next spring!
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Look up Crimson Gold. There’s two apples with that name. One is a crab apple relative, maybe a little bit bigger.
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Thanks for that suggestion, John. Took a look and the Crimson Gold story was worth the price of admission in itself. And you’re right, the apple I stumbled across does seem to share a general profile with Crimson Gold, or Wickson. (It sounds like CG and Wickson are sometimes confused? I’ve never tasted either, so I’m going by reputation here).
That being said, I confess I’m skeptical about the likelihood of it being Crimson Gold. From the looks of it, the tree may be simply too old. And how would an apple that was almost lost at its home in CA end up in an abandoned pasture in MA?
I’ll have to go back and look more closely for any sign of an old graft, but at this point my best guess is that it was a seedling.
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Finally my long waiting apples are ready. Last year I grafted Reinette Simirenko and this year the grafts produced several fruits. Reinette Simirenko is a famous in Russia commercially grown winter apple. It looks like Granny Smith, but it is sweeter, less acidic and it has very pleasant aftertaste that as far as I know no other apples have. At first I kept buying Granny Smith apples in the hope that they’ll taste similar to Reinette Simirenko since they look alike, but no, they are completely different. This variety of apple is successfully grown in the Southern Ukraine and Russia, they are said to be drought and wind resistant, so they should fit good for Nebraska climate. Right now the apples are very firm, I’ll keep them in the fridge for a month and then try them.
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Very nice and clean looking apples.
Tony
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Harvested my Black Oxfords yesterday. The fruit is firm but sweet flavor is there and the seeds fairly dark. I didn’t know just when to harvest for storage but it was a beautiful Oct. day so I decided to do it. I expected a small crop of mainly small apples, some mediums, hopefully some good ones to store – that’s what I saw when I looked at the tree. But when I got in there and started picking this is what I found…!
The most beautiful, clean, good sized apple harvest I’ve ever had from any tree. Yes, there were smalls with a little scab, still on the tree for later snacking. But the main crop was so much better than I expected. I admired each and every apple as I picked them. Just a very few had a little scab, fewer with any insect damage, a couple with a little bird bites. There are advantages to have just a few bearing trees – one can take the time to appreciate individual apples as one picks. This is just the second harvest year for this tree (last year a flock of blue jays ate a good portion of the crop), no spray or amendments or anything. Just happy apples, and orchardist!
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It is a little early to pick Goldrush apples but I had one that was distinctly more yellow than all the others so I went ahead and gave it a test. Surprise it was totally absent from the battery acid taste that many people refer to. It was firm, sweet, with just a little tartness to add some interest to it. Overall a great tasting apple and rapidly going to the top of my preferred list. I’m starting to wonder if our long season combined with bagging reduces the battery acid taste. I have a few more so I will see if the trend continues.
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Nice haul!
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jinma:
Your crabapples look to me like possibly chestnut crab?
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I don’t know what some people mean by battery acid taste, I’ve never thought that about them. Picked early they have some kick, but nothing bad, in fact just intense flavor in my opinion. And left to ripen change onto a good flavored sweeter apple.
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I just ate a goldrush off my tree, lots of golden background color, big dark cheek on it, absolutely delicious apple. Lots of Sugar, lots of flavor. Let them color up like that and you will be in for a treat. Also been very dry here, almost no rain since July
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How does your B.O. taste?
Been enjoying Fuji (3rd & 4th leaf), Braeburn (6th leaf combo tree) & Ambrosia (1st leaf). All delicious although Braeburn browns quickly. Ambrosia still our favourite.
Anthony
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Steve, Right now they are just gently sweet and quite firm, not much tartness, not juicy but not disageeably dry either. But last year even with having to pick them too early they developed more flavor, sweetness, and a nice touch of tartness in storage. Ate the last one the end of Nov. and it was quite good in spite of being a little bit rubbery due to warm storage (record warm fall so my root cellar didn’t cool off till Dec.). We liked them. It’ll be interesting to see how they are this year with harvesting at a later date and with better storage temps. Not an exceptional flavor just a very pleasant one. I haven’t cooked any for sauce yet so no experience that way. Even at the current not quite fully ripe stage we’re enjoying them. They’re a nice contrast to the decidedly tart-sweet Dudleys. Sort of a gentle waltz vs a lively polka.
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Posted this in another thread, but we went to an orchard in central Kentucky today. To our surprise, just about all of their apples were ready to pick, except Pink Lady’s. This includes Fuji, Goldrush, Granny Smith, Arkansas Black and Suncrisp, which usually aren’t ready until later in October.
They, and we, have had a very dry and warm last 6 weeks, so I imagine that really does speed up the ripening process.
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