Some of my Golden Delicious were huge compared to a supermarket GD. Mostly because last year I didn't thin enough and this year I only had about ten on my tree. One of my Liberty also had some huge apples which surprised me. They tend to be a medium sized apples, but one of my Liberties didn't seem to get pollinated to well and had fewer than usual. I made sure one of my daughters didn't grab the big ones on their own because I know they won't finish them.

I visited a local orchard last week and brought home approx. a half bushel of about ten different apple varieties.

One of the varieties was thinned in a many much like you describe, except further, with larger fruit. The trees in question had been thinned to approx. 15" spacing, and there wasn't a single apple smaller than 5" diameter.

as an interesting anecdote, and this will tell you how much people actually use their brains, everyone who has seen the apples has picked up one of the large ones and said a variation of, "These can't be organic."

I had the same issue harvestman. I had many apples the size of medium sized grapefruit and the median size was too big. I tried last year to not thin in an effort to get smaller apples and what I got was broken branches. I see small and even tiny HC in the market right now and I wonder how they get them.
Like you, I don't think the larger size resulted in higher brix this year either. Although I've never measured and am simply going by taste/recollection it seems my HC were actually sweeter last year while being marginally smaller, although still too big.
People always hail big fruit and growers want them big too. I've always preferred a small to med. size apple. My only real complaint of HC would be it's a bit too big.

Fruit has traditionally been sold by the bushel basket, so size meant less weight to fill the basket- I believe this is an important reason why commercial growers and their breeders have always gone for size. Of course, by now it is what the public expects.

As far as folks suggesting a big apple couldn't be organic, it's actually somewhat valid because organic growers can't use chemical thinners and hand thinning is extremely expensive. Not that the comment was based on this knowledge, or anything.

Harvestman can you post some pictures? Would love to see them! We had some really big fruit and really small fruit but mostly good flavored fruit. Our improved kieffer were blan somewhat like store bought fruit and everything else was good.

Yes, pics please!

Fruit has traditionally been sold by the bushel basket, so size meant less weight to fill the basket- I believe this is an important reason why commercial growers and their breeders have always gone for size. Of course, by now it is what the public expects

Yeah...except that all the apples (well, not all, but most of them) are now sold by the pound or in bags of 3 or 5 lbs. and the larger apples (as you say) equals less weight per given volume making shipping and storage more costly resulting in lower profits.
I think you nailed it with "what the public expects". I think that may be changing a bit though...I've recently noticed efforts to market apples as "lunchbox" or "snack" apples or having pictures of kids on the bag to indicate their target market (Wallyworld). I personally think this is a good strategy.

I hadn't thought of the liability of bulk in shipping, although I think trucking costs may largely be a weight issue, seems to be with what I have shipped.

Certainly in America the trend is bigger is better. In NY it is hard to get a real bagel, for instance, as they approach the size of a loaf of bread, and unfortunately, the texture of a loaf as well.

Maybe if they start charging for airline travel by the weight of the passenger folks will "gravitate" towards smaller portions.

If it makes you feel any better big, crappy puff-bread bagels aren't exclusive to NY...they are alive and well in MD as well.
If you wanted a first class bagel...Pittsburgh, PA. for whatever reason is where they reside...have no idea why, but that's where you find them. I would think NYC would have scores of good shops, but the Pittsburgh ones aren't even the least bit pricey.

Well, I know a good bagel is boiled and then baked, which accounts for the chewy texture. The worst bagels are only baked and taste like plain white bread.

The best bagels are hand made and I suspect the machines cost quite a bit of money. When bagels are all the same size you can be pretty sure they are machine made. I lived in Manhattan for a decade and learned the difference there, but even there the trend is toward huge, even if they are boiled first.

Anyway, I can't be bothered with empty calories unless they are completely delicious and not a meal onto themselves.

If mother nature would be kinder I can probably get some high brix peaches here. Our summers are so dry. I was busy with many fruits this year I neglected my trees, and they becane quite water stressed. By harvest time I have to water here, so controlling brix may be easier here. Since the cold killed all fruit buds I didn't pay much attention until the leaves looked bad! Stunted them a little this year.
The farmer's almanac predicts I'll lose them all again this winter. -40 degrees is a bud killer for sure! Well in the future only the most hardy peaches will go in. At least the trees can survive, well most of them, some cannot.

My Golden Delicious and Granny Smith are huge, too, and Lord knows I don't thin. I also don't prune worth a darn either. I am assuming this was just a particularly good year. I had one GD that was a full 4" in diameter. It taped out to a foot in circumference. It ended up in apple sauce. The apples were so big I had limbs break on both the GD and GS trees, but hang onto enough sapwood that the apples on both hanging branches kept going. That really big GD was on the branch just about the break, so perhaps it got some extra juice.

Chuck

The way it works for big fruit:
In the first 21 days or so after bloom fruit size increases by cell division. After that it is by cell enlargement.
Warm to hot weather after bloom followed by cool weather after three weeks makes for extra large fruit.
I used to be a commercial apple grower in WA state. In the 40 years I grew apples retiring in 2001 there were only two years where this happened. Everyone said that it was impossible for smaller fruit to be worth more than larger but those two years
proved them wrong.
No doubt with climate change it will happen more often.

very interesting...thank you

No doubt with climate change it will happen more often.

I don't see how the fact we are getting colder and colder as we have the last 17 years that will make them bigger?

Sal, here it is not just about hot weather but also about water and relative cloud cover. I suppose ideal conditions for big fruit would be warm weather shortly after bloom but also ample rain- preferably at night so trees get as much sun as possible.

This year we did have mostly night rain and many clear, warm but not hot, days, but cell enlargement plays a big role as well as cell division so weather and water continues to affect fruit size throughout development, I believe. Where you are, the summer weather is more consistent than in the humid regions- so maybe it doesn't represent a variable factor- and trees are irrigated.

I don't know how a period of cool weather anywhere along the process would encourage large apples. Cool nights do decrease night respiration (as I recall), which I believe can make fruit sweeter because it reduces vegetative vigor and channels energy (sugar) to fruit. It obviously increases fruit color. I can see how the energy saved from night respiration might also go into enlarging the cells of fruit.

I think that, where you grew your apples, summer days are often too warm for maximum photosynthetic production, apples are a bit of a cool weather fruit and most tree species start closing stomata in hot weather, slowing energy production.

I wouldn't lightly dismiss your 40 years of observation as a commercial grower- how cool is cool in this case?

Cool is 50ð days when it normally would be in 70-80ð range.
I have little experience with cloud cover, our area boasts of 320 days of clear skies with an average rainfall of about 8 inches that comes mostly as snow.
Without irrigation water from the Columbia River it would be a desert.

I don't see how the fact we are getting colder and colder as we have the last 17 years that will make them bigger?

Drew...it hasn't got colder...it's gotten warmer. It was colder in the mid-atlantic and perhaps in your region, but hotter in other areas like the west coast. Keeping in mind the entire US makes up I think around 3% of the Earth's surface, this is all really insignificant. Climate change modeling has always called for this, it is nothing unexpected, in fact it is expected that some places may get colder; much colder. The general trend is warming and that it precisely what climate scientists are seeing the world over.

It has gotten a full zone warmer here based on average temps over the last 10 years. I can't believe how long growing season is becomming- still waiting for first frost again and harvesting red peppers and tomatoes.

Of course this is not necessarily the result of or connected to global warming (it is local weather, after all) but that is what the experts are coming to believe. This wasn't supposed to be happening so fast

Hman. We have a commercial orchard not far from my house. About ten years years ago I picked and ate my first Jonagold from that orchard. It was the size of a grapefruit! I had never seen larger apples in my life. Thus, the reason for having the tree in my small orchard. To date, they are a very good sized apple, not small, not medium but almost large, with no grapefruit size in sight. I cannot imagine what the orchard did to increase the size of their Jonagolds. Can you shed some light on that? Many thanks, Mrs. G

I was at two orchard stores this weekend in Massachusetts and their Jonagolds were big to huge. Mine are fairly small. Maybe because I don't water that much.

Mine are huge and I don't water them at all. Yours may be small because they are very young trees and not established yet. Free standing rootstocks often take about 7 years to really plug in in my climate (depending on variety).

Or you may have missed some of the storms that kept the soil moist all the way down the entire season until about mid-Aug.

Growers in the northeast usually don't use irrigation for free standing orchards. It is required for dwarf trees.