Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Is Your Favorite Apple

Gala are my new favorite. Not too sweet, nice and crunchy!

Last Apple I had was a II-GS with two 5-1/4" drives, amber monitor, and a 12bps modem...SMOKIN!!

I know, admitting that puts me well into the Cretaceous Period.

Oh, you were talking fruit...Well, the redder the bedder!!

I like Braeburns and Fujis for eating. Granny Smiths for cooking.

We had a couple Wolf River trees that my dad planted on our property in WV. They were supposedly ideal for cooking down into apple butter. My brother and I basically ate them off the tree and threw them at each other.

IPOD

As long as the apple is sweet, juicy, and crisp they're all good. I hate biting into one only to find it dry and mealy (usually Washington Delicious) - may as well just throw it away.

I have several trees. For flavor and good eating, I prefer the Gala. However, it has it's problems. They don't store well at all and they tend to get cracks around the stem that allow bugs and disease to get in. They also make great applesauce.

I had a red delicious from Stark Bros called a Starcrimson. It was one of the best reds that I've eaten. I lost the tree to some kind of disease, though. I have another one growing, but it'll be 4 or 5 years before it bears.

Dick

iMAC

I tried a Pacific Rose a couple days ago, and it was great. Fujis are good, too. "Grapples" do, indeed, smell and taste like grapes. Galas are good, as well. I do not like Red Delicious, as they are mealy and grainy. Granny Smiths are good if you like tart apples.

If you want to grow a GREAT apple tree then look no further than an edible crab called CHESNUT. I was raised eating apples in my grandfather's orchard and remember eating lot's of the old varieties. The Chesnut is every bit as good as any I have had. They are about 1/2 the size of a regular apple but are very crisp, tart and juicy. We have a mature tree here in the yard in SW Montana and it produces bumper crops every year with a little care. You do have to enjoy them while they are pretty fresh. They don't hold up well in storage. This year we ate as many as we could off our one tree then made 15 pies from the rest. If you want to plant an apple tree on your property this is a great choice!

Red delicous look good but taste like crap. Yellow delicous are good but don't keep like many other apples.

Bullwnkl.

I love the old June apples we have in Ky.
For store apples, Fuji's are pretty good.

+1 for Fuji.

Ida Red's are my apple of choice. Living near Romeo gives me the choice of many apple and fruit varieties.

And to Idahochucker the green"apples" you asked about are called pear apples, they're really pears. I have a tree in my yard, and they're delicious. The ones they sell in Korea are from China and look great but are lacking in taste.

AdkBueford-

Actually Hicks orchard is in MIDDLE Granville, NY. Ha, just being a wise acre. My grandparents had a farm 5 or so miles from there. For a long time the Hicks also had a farm stand that we made trips to frequently in the summer for sweet corn. The best.

My grandmother had two ancient apple trees behind the house, and to her apple pie was it own food group. Transparents and Duchess were the varieties. The transparents ripened early, last week of August or so. When the first cool fall like weather arrived the transparents would be ready for baking. Grandpa always had someone press a barrel of cider for him and let it harden in the cellar. When I was twelve he started letting me have a glass until my mother found out and put the kibosh to that. We still have the trees but they haven't produced in the past few years.

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Southerntier8 Yea Middle Granville sorry. They Hick's have added a winery to their adventure wasn't up and running when I was there in Oct but were promising a great apple wine next season I was just asking about hard cider The barrel frozen in the tool shed. Did your Grampa add anything to the cider? My grampa called it apple jack and yeah gramma didn't allow any of us to taste.
Thanks in advance
ADK

Southerntier8,

Try an aggressive pruning and fertilize. You can probably Google search the best way to prune fruit trees. I use a 15-15-15 pellet fertilizer around the drip edge of the tree. The best time to prune is early spring.

We have many varieties of apple trees.

Of the ones we grow, I like Gold Rush, Liberty and Jonafree best.

Sweet 16 and Keepsake can also be excellent.

Gold Rush is a very late ripener for us. It is barely edible when picked and developes great nose and mellows after 4 weeks of basement storage. We have stored it, in the basement, until late April and still had them be better than ALL store apples except for Fuji and new-crop, Southern hemisphere Gala.

Gold Rush is a very heavy bearer. The apples hang well....Some of the apples are too high to pick. They drop through the course of the winter, a few each night. Those apples are much loved by the local wildlife.

Rumor has it that black bears will destroy the tree by climbing to get those apples. Obviously, we do not have black bears in our neighborhood.

I have not fruited enough Nova Spy to make a claim. It appears to improve a lot as it ripens. It is a promising variety but is nowhere nearly as productive as the others mentioned.

We also have about 50 seedlings growing out back to feed the wildlife. Some of them are excellent. They are seedlings of Jonafree, and a few Sweet 16 seedlings.

I was only kidding about the exact location of Hicks. My grandfather didn't add anything to his cider. He put it into an old wooden barrel and left it in the cellar. The natural yeasts did all the work. He may or may not have rinsed the barrel out between seasons. Some folks do add sugar and ferment it with champagne yeast. Like most things, one can make as much of a project out of it as is desired.

You are not from around Granville, are you?

Honcz-

Thanks for the tip. I haven't pursued revitalizing the trees because I am not there at harvest time. Not worth the trouble to feed the deer.