The best apple - we need your help!

[Nicos]

My favourites are

Egremont Russet
Cox's orange Pippin
Bramley
Belle de Boskoop

I wish we could get more varieties in the shops though- I'm sure we'd all have a much larger favourites list if only we had a chance to sample a larger selection .

[veggiechicken]

I have a number of anonymous 70 year old apple trees. There's the pointy yellow one, the little red one, the huge green one, the one that smells of flowers, the russet and so on. They fruit throughout the seasons, some are best eaten fresh, others used for cooking and they're all shapes, sizes and colours. Even if I could choose my favourite, I wouldn't know its name. My favourite is always the one I've just picked

[Laura Hillier]

All brilliant varieties so far! And VC - it sounds like variety is the spice of life with your apples, how lovely to get the benefits of lots of different types

What will take the last few slots in the top 10? We will have to wait and see...

Laura

[FB.]

Of the varieties mentioned by others, I also like:

Kidd's Orange Red is good, but it's somewhat prone to canker in my low-rainfall area (when it gets canker, the canker spreads very quickly) but apparently not as prone in the wetter West

Discovery is good - a reliable, good cropper with great-tasting fruit in my climate but can be badly attacked by larvae of the codling moth ("apple maggots/worms") here in the East.
Good resistance to mildew and scab. Only about average resistance to canker and not resistant to woolly aphids.
Seems to cope quite well with chalky, nutrient-deficient soil; soils where some apples won't grow well.

Orleans Reinette. Being triploid and old (and the robustness that tends to come with being an ancient triploid variety) I'd give one a home.

Belle de Boskoop. Another old triploid which is virtually bulletproof; good disease and pest resistance, apart from woolly aphid to which it has no special resistance.
This variety (on MM111) is one of my strongest, healthiest trees with large, attractive, whitish blossom and makes a nice specimen tree, although I'd not put the fruit flavour in the very highest category.

[Mikey]

As yet I don't have any favourites, I have two apple trees in the garden an espalier and a stepover but can't for the life of me remember what varieties they are and they've only been in the ground about 2 years!!!.

I've been planning a mini orchard on the allotment and have spent the last few months meticulously planning and ordering a dozen rare varieties to be graft onto dwarf cordon rootstock, suitable for my allotment. These will be ready for me to plant out next winter 2014, and to learn a valuable lesson I'm getting my neighbour to engrave some name plaques for me.

There are a number of very experienced fruit growers on this forum which without their knowledge I doubt I'd have managed to narrow down my list of apples. Ask this question again in about 4 years, and I'll probably be able to give you a much better response.

[Laura Hillier]

Only a couple of slots left now for the 10 best apples - anyone who hasn't cast their vote yet, make sure you do

Laura

[bearded bloke]

Lord Lambourne,generally a good cropper although last year cannot be commented on other than by the squirrel that had the lot while we were away

[Glutton4...]

Wow - I know next to nothing about Apples, there's clearly some experts on here.

Personally I like Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith to eat, and I also have memores of eating 'cookers' dipped in sugar! No idea what they were, but they were huge, rock hard, green and juicy. Quite tart, too, but being a 'cooker' I expect they would be!

[FB.]

they were huge, rock hard, green and juicy. Quite tart, too, but being a 'cooker' I expect they would be!

Quite a lot of the late-autumn-ripening, long-keeping cookers will gradually "mellow" during winter storage into apples which can be eaten raw by Easter.
Annie Elizabeth, Blenheim Orange, Edward VII, Howgate Wonder being just a few fairly-easy-to-find examples of such apples. I've eaten all four "raw" at varying times from picking (in years with good warmth and sunshine to build up the sugars) to late winter.

[Qzy]

Irish Peach for me. They may be tip bearers and the trees do look a bit sparse but they are the first to ripen for me and are wonderful!

[FB.]

Irish Peach for me. They may be tip bearers and the trees do look a bit sparse but they are the first to ripen for me and are wonderful!

I'm glad you voted for IP because I love it too but had already voted for Ashmead's Kernel.

I agree - it's a peculiar tree with its growth, its fruiting habit and only moderate cropping, but it's tastier than many of the other really early apples, multi-purpose (cook, eat, juice, cider) and not much troubled by pests or diseases - including being more resistant to woolly aphids and codling moth than Discovery, and no more prone to canker.
I also find IP to be much less troubled by bitter pit than the other well-known early apples such as Beauty of Bath or Discovery.

[Qzy]

not much troubled by pests or diseases

Except Crows!!

[alistb]

I would like to put forward James Grieve, good taste no great taste.

[yummersetter]

And an excellent pollinator too, especially for triploids.
Are Cox's Orange Pippin's totally out of favour? (Wouldn't surprise me with the imposters sold in supermarkets). If no one else will, I'd speak up for Queen Cox.

[orangepippin]

I would second Queen Cox, but I think I used up my vote on Rubinette - which is of course very much a Cox-style apple.