Nice! How was the pie? Do you think they make a good cooking apple? Hey, save me a slice!!!!

Are your apples earlier then usual? I had a gravenstein fall off the tree and I ate it and it tasted pretty ripe.

Nice work MrsG47!

Thanks all. Pristine is a very early apple, ripens between end of July beginning of Aug. in the NE. They are an excellent cooking apple which is why I have the tree. Sweet, tart, and very juicy. I had about 60 apples total. I didn't always just leave the king apple, got a little greedy. The tree is huge, healthy and grows very tall very fast. It is an excellent creation from Purdue. Glenn. . . no flyspeck or sooty blotch! Only a little russetting as you can see. There are now 20 apples left of the tree. cool, eh?

Hi MrsG47-
I like a little russeting... give it personality!
Yeah, my Williams Pride are the same way. They're just about all ripe now, and no SB/FS which is nice. I think I need to take some pics!
-Glenn

I picked the last of my William's Pride today. First one fell off the tree about two weeks ago and it was two weeks earlier than last year. I have a dwarf tree and got about 15 apples this year.

I also had one good Asian pear already. Not sure what variety it is but it's earlier than last year too.

Looking good MrsG!
I find the advantage of yellow apples,..the bird stay off more so then on red one's. I have some red cheeks now, still hard but birds already marking them for a test. Some branches I covered with row covers. Do you find the same there?

Konrad, thanks! I bag all of my apples individually. I only have four apple trees. The 'baggies' keep the birds off. They are shiny and I think scare them. My Sept. and Oct. apples are beginning to just show red now. The birds didn't bother my yellow apples at all! The birds tested my apricots!

Denninmi, saved you a piece of pie! Making an apple tart this weekend will post pic.

Beautiful Mrs. G! I am going to try footie bags next year to see if I can discourage the rats and ground squirrels. And, more bait traps. They're eating more apples than I am :-(

Paty S.

My Empire apples are almost ripe - usually around mid August, so they are right on time.

Our local bird, the Scrub Jay, have been going after my not ripe Granny Smith and Fuji's, so had to bring out the bird netting early.

The birds are gathering! But the baggies really do the trick. If you only have 14 trees like me, the size of the tiny orchard is manageable for individual bagging. I net my peach and Italian plum but only around the lower portion of the tree, where the fruit is. There are many long sprouting branches for birds to land on. The birds do not go near the netting. I only caught one bird in netting that I released. The netting was on a fence and not on a tree! By the way Williams Pride looks like a really beautiful apple. I cannot wait to see my Mott's Pink next summer!

Hoosierquilt. Baggies are cheaper and easier to put on the apples. Give it a try!

I'm a little concerned about baggies and our more intense sunshine here. Don't want to possibly fry my apples. I have a case of little baggies I bought way back that were pretty inexpensive. And reusable. So, I'm going to try to put some on right now and experiment to see if it keeps the rats and squirrels off my apples.

Patty S.

Patti, I have squirrels here but no rats that I know of. Your zone is so different than mine that I understand that you don't want 'baked' apples, yet! Footies would be the other way to go for sure. What about the Japanese paper bags?