The best apple - we need your help!

[Laura Hillier]

Hi Everyone,

Here in the GYO office, we can't wait to start harvesting apples - from large cookers for pies and crumbles, to sweet eaters to brighten up lunch time.

We have decided to try to find the 10 best apple varieties and were hoping that you would all help! So, what is your favourite apple and why?

Answers may be edited and published in the September issue of Grow Your Own.


Laura

[FB.]

Before we get into apple varieties, I think I'll add some ways in which we might judge "the best":

Fruit quantity.
Regularity of cropping.
Ability to produce good fruit in difficult growing conditions.
Bearing habit and tree growth habit (tip-bearer, spur-bearer, upright tree, spreading tree)
Blossom attractiveness and tree suitability for ornamental purposes
Triploid or diploid and pollination requirements.
Fruit flavour.
Fruit storage life.
Harvesting season.
Resistance to wet-weather diseases of Western UK (scab, canker).
Resistance to dry-weather diseases of Eastern/South-Eastern England: (mildew, woolly aphid).
Resistance to fruit pests (codling moth, wasps, bird damage)
Resistance to fruit disorders (bitter pit)
Tree tolerance of certain soil types (alkaline, acid, wet, dry)
Tree tolerance of lack of care by its owner

[FB.]

Oh - and it's not just the variety that's important.
The rootstock is overlooked by most people, but without good root function a tree will die.

Most people consider rootstocks to simply control the size of the tree and the age at which it crops.
But rootstocks are much more than that - they also have their own preferences for soil and climate, their own strengths and weaknesses in their ability to provide water and nutrients to the canopy under various conditions, and their own resistances or susceptibilities to pests and diseases - including pests and diseases which live in the soil and which are conveniently ignored by "the books" which focus only on the resistances and tolerances of what has been grafted onto the roots.

I've sometimes used the phrase "hit below the belt" to refer to a disease-resistant variety which was defeated and killed by disease entering the rootstock at or below ground level.

[Laura Hillier]

Thanks FB - all great points for people to consider when picking a favourite. Do you have a preferred variety? Also, what do you personally consider to be the most important qualities? (difficult I know, as all are important!)

Laura

[FB.]

favourite. Do you have a preferred variety? Also, what do you personally consider to be the most important qualities? (difficult I know, as all are important!)
Laura

I originally planned to simply answer the opening question with Ashmead's Kernel.
But as I wrote a more detailed reply to explain why (which I saved to a Word document on my computer - see below) I realised that what suits one person's needs will not necessarily suit others.
So I decided that I'd put up some thought-provoking comments for others to read before they make up their mind, and I decided to go away and think about it a bit more, with a view to replying later or tomorrow.

I originally wrote:

Ashmead's Kernel.
It is very tasty (aromatic with sweet-sharp balance which sweetens in storage), apples store well through winter, the tree is fairly vigorous and doesn't suffer too much from pests and diseases. Grew and cropped well during the cool, dull, damp summer of 2012. Attractive blossom. Triploid - not suitable as a pollinator for any apple variety.
Crops best when grown on very vigorous rootstock, as a large tree, with minimal pruning, in relatively infertile neutral to slightly alkaline soil - including coping well with chalk. Bitter pit may be a problem on fertile soils, or acidic soils, on hard-pruned trees or when grown on dwarfing rootstocks without calcium sprays.

-

Or for those wanting to grow a dwarf tree:
Winter Gem.
As per Ashmead's Kernel above: It is very tasty (aromatic with sweet-sharp balance which sweetens in storage), apples store well through winter, the tree is fairly vigorous and doesn't suffer too much from pests and diseases. Grew and cropped well during the cool, dull, damp summer of 2012.
Winter Gem doesn't seem to suffer the bitter pit problems seen in many other apple varieties and copes well with less-than-ideal soil, although does seem to be developing a biennial tendency as it gets older.

-

[FB.]

what do you personally consider to be the most important qualities? (difficult I know, as all are important!)

From my earlier list, I'd rate the order of importance (for me) as:

----------------------

Tree tolerance of lack of care by its owner

Ability to produce good fruit in difficult growing conditions.

Resistance to dry-weather diseases of Eastern/South-Eastern England: (mildew, woolly aphid).

Resistance to fruit pests (codling moth, wasps, bird damage)

Tree tolerance of certain soil types (alkaline, acid, wet, dry)

Resistance to wet-weather diseases of Western UK (scab, canker). [sometimes we have prolonged wet spells in this usually-dry area]

Fruit flavour.

Blossom attractiveness and tree suitability for ornamental purposes [part-tip-bearers are a fairly safe bet for usually being more attractive than average]

Fruit storage life.

Resistance to fruit disorders (bitter pit) [bitter pit can be managed quite well by choosing suitable rootstocks to match the soil - dwarf in good soil and vigorous in poor soil where dwarfs can't nourish the fruit properly]

Harvesting season.

Bearing habit and tree growth habit (tip-bearer, spur-bearer, upright tree, spreading tree)

Fruit quantity.

Regularity of cropping.

Triploid or diploid and pollination requirements.

------------------

I suppose a short-and-sweet summary would be:

1. Dig hole.
2. Chuck tree in hole.
3. Kick soil back into hole.
4. Abandon tree to get on with life and do its thing.
5. Come back a few years later to harvest pest-free and disease-free fruit.



For some people, it's not as easy as we're led to believe. Only a few hours ago I was out for a walk and saw a couple of apple trees (MM106 half-standards) planted in someone's front garden a few of years ago (about 6-7ft tall, 3-4ft spread but barely grown since planted).
Both are not coping well - showing severe drought stress, leaves are small and now browning and falling, small/sparse fruit and considerable woolly aphid infestation causing deformities and sucking the life out of the tree.
Death looks likely within a few weeks I would say - I almost knocked on the person's door to warn them of their looming crisis but feared that they'd tell me not to be rude and not interfere.

[FB.]

And what drives me to seek relatively unusual features in my trees?

Firstly, I don't like the idea of my food having been sprayed with chemicals. Chemicals are poisons designed to kill things - it's even possible for patients to suffer severe complications from antibiotic treatments (ranging from anaphylactic shock to nerve damage), so it should be easily possible for excess chemicals in our food to have an effect, even if it is only minor or cumulative over many years.
It's actually quite common for foods to contain unsatisfactory levels of chemicals (river water contains lots of hormones from the urine of women "on the pill" which affects fertility of many creatures in the water or even those consuming the water), but the cost to test every food for every chemical is so great that we just have to accept that many of us will ingest a little more than we should from time to time.

Secondly, even if chemicals were carefully policed, we'll no doubt find that pests and diseases gradually become resistant, while the European Union continue to limit the use of sprays as they more and more realise the toxic side effects or the collateral damage to beneficial creatures such as bees.

Thirdly: given our total dependence of chemical-treated foods, what happens when the chemical sprays used on our food are met by the evolution of the equivalent of "antibiotic superbugs" similar to the well-known MRSA bacteria but which instead specialise in attacking the commercial varieties of fruit trees? Fungicide resistance among plant fungi is known and shows signs of progression to more and more fungicide-resistant strains.

Given the unusual apple varieties which I grow (most of which are old and forgotten varieties which were grown spray-free by our ancestors so have excellent pest and disease resistance, and are unrelated to the sickly commercial varieties - including a preference for the more rugged triploids), and given that I grow my trees on strong roots and without more than a light annual prune, I'm pretty confident that my trees will carry on producing good crops of clean fruit under the most demanding conditions of pest and disease attack or difficult growing conditions.

[orangepippin]

Notwithstanding all the good points made by FB I would like to put forward Rubinette as a candidate for best apple.

Why? Well there is only one reason - flavour. The flavour of Rubinette is outstanding, probably the best balance of sweet and sharp of any variety. If you come across it at an apple day event and try a comparative tasting, you will find that beside Rubinette, all the others immediately taste like cardboard! It really is in a different league.

There is some more info on our website - Apple - Rubinette - tasting notes, identification, reviews

[FB.]

Hi Richard.

I appreciate that we all have our different requirements - some want taste and are prepared to spray to achieve it.

I notice two drawbacks with Rubinette:

1. It's bred from the very common Golden Delicious x Cox's Orange Pippin, which means that it'll be easier for the pests and diseases to break through the re-combined but defeated genes in Cox and GD.

2. The number of suppliers in the UK seems to be few due to licensing requirements to propagate this variety. Some of us have our "favourite" "trusted" suppliers and it may not be available if we wanted one (I'll stick with the ruf 'n tuf, rare, ancient triploids despite the grumbles that some people have about them).

[orangepippin]

Rubinette has many of the same disease issues that Cox has.

It's not that well-known in the UK, but I've seen apples in shops on the continent.

However for me this is irrelevant, because as I said, my emphasis is 100% about flavour and there is no doubt Rubinette scores very highly on that criteria.

[Laura Hillier]

Thank you both for your detailed points and input - certainly a lot of food for thought when it comes to apple choices and this information is very helpful.

Now we wait to see what else makes the top 10...

Laura

[boundtothesoil]

I'd put Sunset in the top 10. It's easy to grow, on both M26 and MM106 rootstocks. It's crisp and fairly juicy, regular shaped, tasting quite like a cox, can be eaten straight off the tree, or stored for a few weeks without much loss of flavour. In West Wales, at least, it yields consistently well from year to year, although it may need thinning. Disease wise, it doesn't suffer much from canker, codling moth or aphids over here. Plus, usually it is scab free, although I've noticed some this year. All in all a reliably good egg.

[yummersetter]

I'd add Orleans Reinette and Kidd's Orange Red to the list. Flavour, health, usefulness and length of season count highly with me. Being beautiful as well takes these to to the top of my favourites.

[chris]

Seem to have missed this thread..

Flavour wise, for me it has to be Discovery. It's not much of a keeper, but straight from the tree it's one of the best tasting apples I've ever had.

I quite like Red Windsor too, and have a dwarf tree that always crops very well. It's the only apple tree out of 5 that doesn't suffer with scab in my garden. Again not much of a storing apple, but fruit in my household with two young children doesn't last more than a day or two at most anyway - they're the perfect size for little ones though, as they're a smaller size.

It looks like I'm going to have to construct some sort of child-proof fence to keep them away from the trees until the apples are ready to be picked as I've already seen them eying the swelling fruit up

[scarey55]

I don't actually grow many apples but my favourite to eat are Cox's Orange Pippins and Granny Smith possibly because I have a Granny (sadly dead now) whose maiden name was Smith!

In my experience Granny Smith apples are brilliant for eating but also great for drying into apple crisps.

The only other one is a Bramley apple. When I was a child I used to eat slices of Bramley apple dipped in sugar Excellent for apple sauce too.