I think it is OK to talk about “club apples” in the main forum. We are a lot of new members, some may not know what club apples are.
Also, there more and more new varieties of club apples. I don’t mind learning what new varieties are club, what not.
Not everyone achieves a Lounge level. Even if members who reach the level could have an access dropped if they are unable to read or post often enough to keep up. In other word, keeping things in Lounge will limit many members’ access to the info. Lounge should be for other things that are not about fruit IMHO.
@alan I respect your point of view as well (and you had already voiced that opinion earlier in this thread) but as @murky said, patents unlike diamonds, aren’t forever. In 20 years, having a record of each club apple will be beneficial for us to fall back upon, assuming this forum still exists then. I hope it will, and by us, I mean the collective community, not necessarily “us”.
Apples like cosmic crisp are basically “club apples” as only Washington state has access. I’m still interested in learning more about them in the off chance I end up there or again for when patents expire. Additionally, there is nothing stopping those club growers from joining our forum, even if they haven’t yet. This may actually be an interesting avenue to pursue if anyone is connected in the industry to said growers.
I’d also argue that discussions of some of the club apples - and where they collectively fall short (generally in that they’re so reduced to appeal to the widest number of people as to lose any interesting apple falvor) - is also a good jumping off point for discussing apple breeding in general. There is absolutely no reason for those of use with some land to NOT be able to breed our own apples. And, since we have very different end goals than the commercial guys, we’d do it differently.
So, while any of us could try to create something similar to a club apple at home, there are lots of reasons to NOT do that. And, studying the pedigrees of some of these to learn how they got there is sometimes a roadmap of what NOT to do if you’re looking for something that is more suited to a specific climate, situation, and palate.
Is anybody else following the apple breeding project at SkillCult? I admit, his ebay auctions of his new scion wood got too rich for my blood, although I think a lot of it was about interested individuals supporting his work. He’s breeding for Cali, and I’m not sure how well his stuff would do in the great white North, but I like to see what he’s up to. He also offers pollen from his trees for sale for those who would like to breed their own trees. For that matter, USDA GRIN also offers apple pollen. That might be available this year, in spite of the fireblight issues, where scion wood was not?
I ranted on this topic a little on my podcast recently, and will probably do a follow-up at some point, as it’s a bit of a hot-button issue for me.
So… crisp like honeycrisp, but definitely sweeter with a tad more flavor, but I definitely wouldn’t go as far as saying it is tart in any way. Overall a solid apple. I’ve been planting the seeds at my jobsite in hopes that I’ll get a harvest sometime while I am doing maintenance in the future
I just got one tonight, forgot I’d had it before and found this thread (that I started) in a Google search. This one was excellent. I want more. I got one along with 20 or 25 Evercrisp on an outing.
This one has good sugar but I think its a little bit more tart than sweet. Reminds me a lot of Pink Lady, including some hardness, but not quite as dense and more crisp.
This is early February. Perhaps they were more mellowed later in the year like when the ones we talked about before were eaten.
I got a bunch from QFC, a local Kroger grocery store. The texture and flavor are good, except some of these have that same bitterness that has been turning me off of Cosmic Crisp. It must be a treatment for storage. I hate it.
Like with saccharin, I’m convinced that I taste this sort of bitterness more strongly than most people. Otherwise there’s no way they’d think it okay, let alone desirable, to use. It tastes like poison to me.
The local produce store had some today. I got two. The flavor was really good, the texture was only pretty good. I expected, if anything, the opposite with the first apples of the season.
I’m not opposed to people wanting to make a living and promoting their products in the context of at least some profit motive. But I really prefer the idea of this forum being focused on amateur growers helping other amateurs as a community effort.
Commercialization comes with a certain amount of peril in terms of making exaggeration profitable whether that motivation is conscious or subconscious.
Breeders of commercial apples do have somewhat different goals than someone breeding specifically for home growers, but their funding and the scale of their research completely dwarfs someone’s individual efforts done on their spare time.
Thousands and thousands of varieties are attempted and discarded every year in the vast, global breeding efforts of commercial apple production, and believe it or not, a lot of these breeders love fruit in the same way we do. I learned that early in my profession when consulting with Jim Cummins and Roger Way- two men who devoted their professional lives to Cornell breeding projects- full time breeding projects with great resources.
It seems to me that the genepool available here would give any backyard grower all the material they need to do their own thing as far as breeding. Combining newer varieties with special heirlooms would seem to give you all you would need to work with without spending extra money on someone selling their own idea of magical scion wood or pollen.
I love growing fruit and growing apples. I learned about club apples here, about the whole concept, why they are available or unavailable and that was very useful information for me when deciding to try to grow some apples from seed for myself and to get an idea of what my goals would be for such a project. The information in the videos of Skillcult was also incredibly informative and helped me continue and develop my own way to grow, breed and think about growing fruit.
And when you share your opinion on why you don’t like club apples, @alan , I learn and develop a lot more from your experience and views than if we wouldn’t discuss them. I value your opinion and agree that anyone can start breeding by crossing heirlooms that are all available to you. But the fact that this complicated structure as club apples arose for new apples to get to market is interesting in itself. It is also the product of breeding and evolution in our society and market structures and therefore very relevant.
I would absolutely be disappointed if these things could not be discussed on this forum. I would also have missed all your objections and opinions about these club apples and never thought about it.
I never suggested that the discussion of club fruits be banned from this forum, my point was only that if we cannot grow them maybe they don’t belong on the fruit growing topic.
Very few members are engaged in breeding projects, but that is a kind of fruit growing sub-topic, so I see how the discussion of club apples can be appropriate in that context, however, when club apples are brought up, that is usually not the context of the discussion.
That said, it is not a very important issue to me in the first place, and my last comment had nothing to do with that. If people want to talk about fruit they purchased I don’t think it should be limited to the lounge only because not all members can go there.
A forum can only have so many categories so it’s probably in the best interest of members to stretch them a bit. I will no longer post negative comments about discussing club varieties, having thought this through.
I like hearing from people on this forum about the different Club apples they taste. Some readers here may go on to start PYO orchards themselves. I think club apples would be a must plant as soccer moms are buying them in stores.
I can go to Reddit and read plenty about Club apples but I want opinions from experienced growers like we have on here who can compare them to apples we can plant.
I love my Crimes Goldens and Staymans but I do have one shelf in my fridge already filled with SweeTangos for a modern apple treat. Thank you Kroger for their 99 cent sale last week.
I’m going back through old topics I created and see I didn’t acknowledge your post.
You’ve probably since had more Wild Twist and I guessing much better flavored ones than the first you had. It has plenty of flavor to my palate, I’m guessing from the Cripp’s Pink parent.
And I agree that it has a near optimal texture. Although I also don’t mind hard and dense, which I prefer to overly airy.
The texture was the selling point for me. I prefer more on the dense side of the texture spectrum and i found these to be. Flavor was a bit lackluster but enjoyable enough to eat.
I just don’t like club apples but I don’t care if others want to discuss them. There are so many varieties that can be grown many of which are far superior to any of them.
I just dislike the entire idea behind club apples especially varieties bred by public universities. Everyone pays taxes and tuition to support public universities and the results of their breeding programs should be open to everyone.
Federal legislation was passed in 1978 to steer state funded university research towards corporate interests- that is research that leads to patents owned by the corporations that partly fund the research- the public pays and the investors collect. Corporations are not required to reimburse the government or taxpayers for the public part of the investment. Then they profit from the patents off the public dollar. This is not a partisan interpretation, it is just how it works, whether or not it is the best system for all of us. I’m not saying one way or the other.