marknmt; Those Pristine in your tree look VERY nice!

How old is your State Fair tree?

Mine has been in the ground since '97 but kinda got forgotten about. My Apples are quite a distance from my home and the "out of sight/out of mind" thing took over with this guy. I'm doing some kind of stage pruning now. That's my way of saying I'm afraid to take off too much all at once, so I'm doing things to it each year now....

Anyway, I picked both my State Fair and Earliblaze in mid-August.

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I'm remodeling a place in town and sat down for a break and was about to bite into an Earliblaze I'd picked a few days earlier. I thought it looked pretty nice, and even matched the description on some websites "Smooth striped skin is cherry red and very attractive"

So I took this picture with my iPhone.

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I like the Earliblaze flavor, it's got a little zip to it, kinda sweet and tart at the same time. Most of the grand kids prefer the State Fair though.

Both are really crisp and juicy.

Hello Iowajer.

The State Fair is one branch on my Frankentree. This particular branch is about three years old. It's nice to have an early apple that is so good to eat. Looks like the Galas will follow the Pristines nicely, and that'll have to hold us until the Carousels (Cameos) and Liberties start to come on.

I'm really holding out for a few Winesaps, but it probably won't happen!

What does your sign say?

The signs (there are 4 of them, each double-sided, hung around the tree) say "Please Don't Pick the Fruit ... Thank you very much." They seem to help.

Man that's a productive looking tree marknmt.

So are the apples we see from this view the Galas then?

Very nice!

No, you're mostly seeing Liberty apples in this shot. The Galas are hiding behind. The tree is originally a Liberty and I've been slowly working it over to varieties, some of which have done better than others! But the Liberty is over-productive; I thinned out at least 80% of the fruit and should have taken out half of what I left. Harvestman refers to Liberties as "fruit machines" and he's right. But it's a tricky tree to manage and I'm a long ways from mastering it.

Your Earliblaze is beautiful. I've never seen them before. Thanks for sharing the pictures. It's nice to have early apples that are impressive out of hand, too.

I have an Earliblaze tree also, apples of fair eating quality for a summer apple. Makes great applesauce.
iowajer - your apples look a little better than mine did.

marknmt; Boy I'll say the Liberty's are a machine!!! You need to change your signage to say "Please Pick The Fruit" or "Please Pick One Apple EVERY TIME You Walk By" (That way you can manage the "Thinning" they are doing). LOL

I think both Earliblaze and State Fair are very good early apples for out of hand eating, but then I don't have anything else to compare. (Except the bland apples in the store) My Mac's, RD's, and Haralson's are a ways out yet.

Seems like every year I look forward to my McIntosh being ready as much as anything though, because we freeze a lot for pies. And the tree is huge so we have plenty to give away too. Macs don't hold up under cooking and kinda mush, but the flavor is as good as it gets in my mind.

eboone; This year my early apples turned out pretty good, mainly because for some reason there wasn't the pest pressure and even the birds didn't do as much damage as usual.

Generally (and especially last year during the drought) the birds hit the early apples as they get to turning red and I'll usually have a lot of damaged apples. It wasn't too bad this year in that regard.

We had a couple timely rains a bit in advance of the apples being ready and I think that helped to size them up some.

Speaking of rain, my Mac has a tendency to drop apples when it's about time to harvest, and a couple years ago we'd had so much rain and they were so juicy, when they'd drop they'd just explode. No such thing as picking up any drops that year!

Mark,

I'm in Montana, at a higher elevation than you...my State Fairs aren't ready yet, but I'm hoping in the next couple of weeks. They often don't ripen here until the end of September.

All of my apples and pears are earlier than normal. I picked my Parklands around August 20, the earliest they've ever been ready. Summercrisp pears are almost ready (I've never picked them before mid-September here). Westland apples should be ready within the week. I have some Honeycrisp apples and some Patten pears coming; I think this year they might properly mature--that would be a first!