Land grant university extension services were established to assist and provide information for home gardeners. Most are very helpful, both with published information, classes or just answering questions.

Have you tried any texts? Timber Press has some excellent garden-related books including one called Apples of North America, which is supposed to be a rather complete reference book that covers disease and pest issues, grafting and rootstocks, orchard planning as well as details about a wide range of apple cultivars....something like 190.

I learned a lot of things along the way. One of the biggest was apples good in Europe or the west coast can be miserable where I am. I tried 50 different European cider apples before giving up on that. I started growing no southern US varieties, but I have added more and more of them over the years: they are bulletproof compared to apples from other locations.

The disease descriptions are not always very helpful. GoldRush is super disease resistant overall, but for me CAR is my biggest problem and its a magnet for that. So, its a relatively bad apple as far as diseases go for me. Most of the time its scab that is dominating the apple disease resistance ratings, but I have little problem with scab. If its highly sensitive to fireblight on the other hand I would stay away. Less than highly sensitive are often fine, the ratings have enough noise in them based on the happenstance way most of the ratings accumulate.

The stated purpose of apples is important to look at, but its best to have all-around ones for flexibility (except if you have a devoted cider orchard). Many great cookers are also great eaters, for example Blenheim Orange is my favorite cooker and its also a great eater. Few great eaters are bad cookers, but they will either be sauce or pie apples and not both.

Scott

Re: sprays, you don't need to do 11 if you have more resistant varieties. In my climate I do about five per year and I'm almost completely organic (only one spray is not organic). What I do with varieties doing poorly with my number of sprays is to give them the axe! If you are not organic even three sprays could produce some decent fruit if you have good varieties. Just don't expect you will get good no-spray apples.

Scott

That's a lot of sprays and all the more reason to grow your own and know exactly what your consuming.

I figure they bloom later and ripen later which in theory has it's advantages.

I'm truly just a novice here but I have found that the later blooming apples tend to get fireblight more, at least in my location. My Harry Master's Jersey is the worst for blossom blight and it is my latest bloomer.

Scott

What unhelpful descriptions were you reading Scott? CAR susceptibility was something reported in every single piece of PRI literature I've ever seen, even back when it's "name" was co-op 38? CAR susceptibility wasn't just reported, it was reported to the extreme. They pointed it out to such a degree as to make it out to be even worse than it really is.

Is it maybe possible that you just weren't "listening" to the descriptions?

I agree with you on the CAR as obviously it's an issue here as well, but it is also (for me) completely blemish free (fruit) on this very day as I've not picked it yet. If it tastes and stores ANYTHING like the literature says (and GW members say) then it's a winner.

I only say this Scott because I've seen some of the listings of apples you've grown or tried to grow and the descriptions (when read) would have or should have made you very weary at the very least.

I also agree somewhat on descriptions, though from a very different angle. So many "so called descriptions" are simply cut and paste jobs. I recently seen this for about the billionth time when harvestman posted about Crimson Topaz and nobody...and I really mean nobody had ever posted literature as to it's CAR resistance, which I can only guess would probably be found lacking.

So while I hear what your saying and certainly respect your experience you chose a very bad example in Goldrush. If you were at all unaware you simply didn't look for, or read the data. It was there before it was ever released.

When do you usually pick your Goldrush? I picked mine too early last year, so I waited and picked them last Sunday.

Appleseed, the problem with disease-resistant is the standard blurbs just say "disease resistant". I keep a file of nursery apple descriptions and of the dozen GoldRush listings I found only one mentioning CAR. My main objection however is they seem far too focused on apple scab when they say disease resistant, not on the bigger picture. Summer rots and the like are a huge issue for my minimal spray program. Fortunately my GoldRush with only one CAR spray in late spring are looking awesome now, and with that one spray its one of my favorite apples. Enterprise is another disease-resistant apple with a weakness, its watercoring on me. In my climate if I wanted to pick a bulletproof apple I would first go for an old southern heirloom; the modern disease resistant varieties would be #2.

Scott

Gotcha. I just posted the other day about this. It's a peeve of mine too. Why is this? I've never been under the impression that CAR was of such little concern elsewhere. Even ACN does this.
I like using the charts that list all diseases including mildews, you know the ones that list an apple and each disease as VR, SR,R,SS, S, VS.

The only problem with that is that those charts (that I've seen) is that they only list the more mainstream apples. Folks like you who like to grow the heirlooms / antiques etc are back to simple descriptions that like you say, leave a lot to be desired. I would think CAR resistance would be very important to commercial growers as well since it's such a difficult fungus to deal with.

If I can't find in depth university type research reports on something I'm going to figure I'm gambling a bit if I chose to plant it. Black Oxford is just such an example. There is little to go on with it, so for all I know it could be anywhere from great to terrible in the DR arena.
If I notice CAR resistance is omitted I personally am going to assume the worst.