I guessed "Prairie Spy" because of the similarity in names, but I doubt it, after looking at pictures. How about Jonagold? You could do much worse!

I agree with marknmt. It does look very much like my Jonagolds but this photo is of a much smaller apple. I would side with a small Jonagold. Mrs. G

Thank you both so much! I looked up Jonagold and I would agree with nearly everything that was said about them. The minor exception would be that my apples may be a little more red and less green than was often described for Jonagold.

I assume that the somewhat smaller apple size is due to less than ideal growing conditions. The tree was planted around 10 years ago in very sandy and acidic soil -- it probably even gets some road-salt in the winter due to the snowbanks! It was supposed to be an ornamental flowering crab, after all. :p

So I guess I'm out to harvest everything from the tree today then. No frost here yet, but they're predicting anything from 23-30F for a low tonight. I assume they should be harvested from the tree before the frost/freeze can damage them.

Thanks again!

OOps. If there isn't another pollinator (another apple tree that blooms at the same time) its not Jonagold. Jonagold is a triploid. (sterile). Mrs. G

MrsG47, how close would a pollinator need to be? there may be crabapple trees within 100yds, but I'm not sure if there are other apple trees as close by. Could be... just don't know.

This is the 3rd year the tree fruited. The first two years it had something like 6 apples, then 12 apples -- the squirrels got most of whatever was there. Then last year NOTHING fruited here due to unusually warm weather early, followed by a week of hard freeze. I didn't even get a single lilac bloom last year. Everyone here has a huge crop of apples this year!

Based on the first two years of fruit, I thought this was an early apple variety. In 2010 I planted a Lodi (I think) near this tree as a pollinator, thinking as an early apple it would help... I don't think that flowered this year though. At least I didn't see flowers on it. I believe this year's fruit is unusually late for the tree due to our extremely rainy cold start to the summer. Hence, this fruiting time may be misleading you in determining the variety.

I assume that I should pick these apples before the frost/freeze tonight, but some just don't seem to want to let go! Should I just leave those on the tree?

I had to tug to get my Enterprise apples off of the tree. I realized they probably were not going to get any better hanging on! I don't really know the distance for pollenation. I have read that the distance was about 20 yards. Maybe some of the experts will chime in on this. By the way, where is Scott, Fruitnut, Noogy and Tony?

100 yards is plenty close. Crabapples make fine pollinators for apples.

This post was edited by ltilton on Mon, Oct 28, 13 at 16:19

My own experience, which is bolstered by comments here, is that apples will manage temps down into the middle twenties, F, without difficulty. (How that might affect long term storage characteristics is another question that might enter into it.)

I'm eating Liberty, Yellow Delicious and Carousel off the tree right now after a low of 24 F and my one Winesap was underripe but still edible at that point a couple of days ago. But we're dropping into the middle teens tonight, they say, and I've got everything off the tree and hoping that it will be OK in the unheated garage. We'll see.

Good luck!

M