Will Cosmic Crisp be sold to the East Coast this year?
If not, is scion sharing available or is it protected?
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It is protected. Only reisidents of Washington State can purchase it.
But can they share scions? Or protected?
It is a violation of the contract the growers sign for them to share scionwood. That’s a big point of the club system- to control the patent. Small commercial growers are pretty hard to police. I remember being at a farmers market in Santa Monica CA where a grower boasted of grafting his entire stonefruit orchard to patented varieties without compensating the patent holders.
Breeders have to be compensated to pay for their research, but I hate the club system as a non-commercial grower. However, private money is the name of U.S. capitalism and publicly funding breeding has been in decline for decades in this country.
I don’t know what is best for society, but in this case, it may be privatization because the quest for the dollar may produce more bang for the buck than taxpayer funded university breeding programs. However, how can we know?
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Just graft Enterprise and refer to it as CoZmic CriZp. Then you will have nearly the same thick skin apple with better disease resistance at a fraction of the cost!
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I was personally very underwhelmed by Cosmic Crisp. I tried several different apples at different times from a couple of different stores, but nope, not impressed.
The reason I tried a couple of different stores is that sometimes the quality of apples will vary. At one Vons store, they always carried the super large Honey Crisp apples that always had a washed out taste. A different Vons just down the road carried normal sized HC apples that were very good.
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Yeah, it all depends on the department manager, in my experience.
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I too have found different Cosmic Crisp that taste different. I had some small ones that were not very good. Then I had some larger ones that were very good. Like Honey Crisp, the ones I grow here in Ohio are great! The ones I get from the store are not as good.
I would love to have several CC if they grow as we here as the Honey Crisp.
Here in WA state we only get the washed out Honeycrisp, and/or early picked and sour. If I hadn’t had outstanding ones over a decade ago when it was relatively new, I’d think it a subpar apple.
The Cosmic Crisp I had for the first time this past winter, were quite variable from batch to batch. Some were very good, and some were sour or unremarkable. The good ones weren’t better than than an above average Opal or Golden Russet or Lady Alice. But the trees are still young, hopefully they’ll get better and not worse like Honeycrisp did.
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The first Cosmic Crisp to hit the market were great. The acid seemed to drop in later batches. I find it preferable to Red Delicious. If they continue to sell them at a premium price, I will probably not buy them. It is a good apple, but I don’t see it winning many blind taste tests. At least not based on the ones I have tried. If it keeps as well as advertised, it can stay in the orchard.
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Why are the people that oversee the club system only obsessed with protecting their patents and pay no attention to the value of their brand? Growers that harvest the fruit too green or over irrigate to get more bins per acre at the expense of brix per apple should be kicked out of the club.
What makes fruit so unappetizing in America is that there are no quality controls related to levels of sugar. The reason pluots were able to penetrate the market and given shelf space was their unusual ability to sweeten up while still crisp, giving them much longer shelf life and the possibility to either eat firm or soft.
This is the first year in a while that I didn’t have all the stone fruit I could use on my own trees, which has allowed me to see what kind of such fruit consumers have access to. I’ve found huge variation in brix levels even in pluots. The truth is only revealed after purchase. There is no other consumer product so unpredictable because there are no standard controls for fruit, beyond appearance, which only compounds the problem of identifying fruit worth buying.
I sell instant orchards and manage them for my living- higher commercial fruit growing standards would be a mixed blessing for me. My customers love the satisfaction of getting from their trees what they can’t consistently get elsewhere.
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I’m trying to grow HC, but I’m zone 10b and the tree just will not tolerate the heat and low chill. So it’s coming out this winter. I’ll have to make do with my Pixie Crunch and Gala.
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I have Pixie planted, just waiting for them to fruit. Hope they like Ohio.
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I was going to post this in one of the jujube threads, but it fits too perfectly here. My wife got these from a Korean grocery store in New Jersey a few days ago. Note the name on the box is “Hi Brix Organic Jujube”.
I tested one and it was off the scale on my refractomer (above 32). They aren’t the crispest jujube, but that is higher brix than most of what I grow. Of course, I still prefer the crisper ones that I grow, when they are only in the upper 20’s and sometimes low 30’s. 
Of course, they aren’t cheap at $15 for 2 lbs. At other times of the year I’d be happy to buy them, but now is actually the peak in my own jujube season. We’ll have to see if they are still for sale in a couple months (or next August before they ripen here).
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What variety would that be, Bob?
I’m actually not sure what kind they are. I’ll post it in one of the jujube threads and see if someone who grows in a CA-like climate can ID them. My first thought based on the some of them being a bit squat was Chico. But the flavor didn’t seem to match (not acid enough). I think Li is likelier. Especially since none of the pits had viable seeds, a quality of Li.
From NMSU:
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