Oh here is my current top tasting list (ignoring growing issues).

1) Rubinette
2) Hooples Antique Gold
3) Gold Rush
4) Freyburg
5) Nonpareil
6) Bonne Hotture
7) Wagener
8) Reine des Reinettes
9) Kidds Orange Red
10) Hawaii
11) Swayzie
12) Pomme Gris
13) Pitmaston Pineapple
14) Newtown Pippin
15) Ashmead's Kernel
16) Mother
17) Golden Russet (American)
18) White Winter Pearmain
19) Golden Nugget
20) Wickson Crab
21) Maigold
22) Abbondanza
23) Ribston Pippin
24) Myers Royal Limbertwig
25) Pink Lady

Scott

Wiliams Pride - Its a really nice sweet red apple. It had a lot of watercore however.

Jefferis - This is a solid reliable early apple. It is more sour than Williams Pride and with a nice fruity flavor. It keeps well for an early apple.

Worcester Pearmain - Mac-like with less sours and more sweets. Skin issues on some of them. I like this apple a lot.

Ginger Gold - Very nice for an early apple. Minor skin issues. Keeping really well.

Cherryville Black - OK this year but not as good as I remember - less sweet and little flavor this year. I think I picked them too early. Apples not getting any skin rots at all, it is showing its southern roots.

American Summer Pearmain - This looks to be an excellent apple, similar to Blenheim in flavor but earlier. Skin seems good as well, its that dull kind of skin which is less rot prone.

Laxtons - I had a few that were good, don't remember the details though.

Holstein - Finally fruiting after ten years! A more sour Cox with heavy watercore this year. Would be a nice apple without the watercore.

Gravenstein - Tree had very bad rosy apple aphid. Produced a few good apples. Probably remove this guy eventually, it seems overly susceptible to the aphids.

Kidds Orange Red - Excellent as usual. Low acid aromatic apple. I let the tree set too many again, it will probably be an off year next year.

Fall Russet - Not hitting peak ripeness yet but looking to be a solid variety. A sour russet, not like Pomme Gris.

Freyburg - Excellent when picked late enough. Flavor can be a bit too much (cloying) when cooked. This apple is probably not for everyone but its one of my favorites.

Ribston - Not making many apples and having watercore issues as well. A good apple but probably not for my climate. Lots of rot as well. I think its time to topwork or remove this guy.

not-Grimes - mis-ID, its a large later red apple. Probably topwork it.

not-Calville Rouge in row F - mis-ID, its a large sour yellow apple likely for cooking. Unusual lemon-like flavor. Has very high tannin.

Belle Fille - A very rich apple - low acid high tannin. Flesh soft and a bit dry. Good for cider if I ever do an early cider batch.

Doctor Mathews - A very good Mac like apple

Pigeonnet Rouge All dropped as usual, in spite of more thinning. Probably time to give up on this guy, taste is a very unusual savory flavor but probably not worth the effort given how it drops every year.

Egremont Russet - A super rotfest, probably time for it to go.

Court Pendu Plat - Yellow apple school, a cooker. Tons of spot rotting on these. Excellent cooker, worth considering keeping for that.

not-Binet blanc - Not rotting but water coring. Could be good for early cider. Not looking like correct variety, it has a lot of red on it. Maybe its Binet Rouge.

Hooples Antique Gold - A very nice looking apple, no rotting or sooty blotch and beautiful shape. On top of that they have extraordinary flavor - similar to Freyburg in that the well ripened ones have some anise overtone. Very sweet and aromatic. Also very crunchy. Quite extraordinary overall!!

Hawaii - Deer got all of these

Pomme Gris - Early ones coming in are excellent. What a great apple. Not particularly sweet or sour but excellent flavor balance and texture - vaguely coconut-like texture. Not a good keeper.

Reine des Reinettes - Not very big this year. I should make more room for this apple, it has a very rich flavor and is one of the best cooking/processing apples. It has that classic tart tatin flavor when cooked.

Reinette Gris Parmentier - Solidly decent russet apple. Very large compared to other russets. More consistent size. Not quite as sweet as Golden Russet but still sweeter than your average apple and very good flavor and crunch. Good against rots etc. Similar to my memories of Ashmead's Kernel. Keeper for sure!

Swiss Orange - Less sour/sweet version of Rubinette. Showing some watercore but not rotting so much. A nice looking apple, few blemishes and nice flattened shape. Good crunch good flavor when fully ripe, very well balanced. Could turn out to be a good one.

Blenheim Orange - Not ripening as well, not sure why. Many dropping while still green. I think the deer were in there knocking things off.. Fantastic apple as usual, its my favorite cooker but also a great eater. Very large fruits, dull skin.

Westfield SNF - Solid apple, vague mac school taste, minimal rotting/spotting.

Wagener - Very good mild fruity taste in the general Mac family but more fruity (grape). Excellent well-rounded flavor balance. Not a long keeper, soft flesh. Prone to rot/spot.

Hubbardston Nonesuch - Very nice apple similar to Worcester Pearmain but later - tender and lots of sweet/sour. Definite keeper.

Sierra Beauty - Very large apple. some watercore. Nothing exceptional in flavor but I picked a bit too early. Keep another year.

Rubinette - Very good as usual super sweet sour super aromatic. Too many rots but mainly due to a lot of damage from curculio this year.

Apricot - Good interesting flavor. Rotting too much. Very hard flesh. Aging makes it taste like a yellow school apple. No apricot flavor detected however. Seems worth keeping.

Reinette de Cuzy - Good apple, don't remember details however so must not have been too exciting. Had fair amount of rot on this tree.

Maigold - Hard later apple with standard nice apple taste plus interesting unusual tart flavor in the background.

Hudsons Golden Gem - Fantastic taste but LOTS of problems. curcs and stinkbugs out the wazoo. Watercore and strange pink spots inside. Enough of this tree.

Wickson - apples are sizing up bigger than in past years. Very sweet and grape-like in taste. Unusual clear-ish flesh and texture. I need wasp traps just for it, they are destroying the crop this year.

Bonne Hotture - only a couple apples but had that excellent unusual taste. Wish I could describe it.

Myers Royal Limbertwig - Good large apple as usual. It didn't set a lot and it produced almost all very large apples. No rot problems, another southern apple shows its southern roots.

Magnum Bonum - Have been eating too early so far; apples are coming through this rotfest very nicely; taste is a nice sweet/savory balance, looking to be another very good southern apple.

Reinette Clochard - This apple in late Oct is wonderful. A very flavorful yellow school apple. Rich flavor with hints of lemon and pineapple. Need to remember to let it haaaang!

Abbondanza - As usual I overcropped the little tree. It sets like crazy and I never have the guts to thin it enough. The taste is wonderful as usual, delicate fruity with a hint of rose. The flesh is non-breaking and chewy, not like modern apples. This apple is something like Hubbardston Nonesuch.

Rambour d 'Hiver - a lot of these are dropping early; usually they hang a long time but not this year (maybe deer again, it is a low tree). A good somewhat savory apple. Not keeping as well this year, maybe all the late heat made them less of a winter apple. The main advantage of this apple is it produces a huge load of nearly unblemished fruit every year. Very old apple primarily for cooking but still good eating.

Golden Russet - They need lots of hang time and then some time in the cooler to get good flavor and texture. Too prone to rot.

Rusty Coat - Dry, tannic with an interesting aftertaste. Excellent skin condition. I am concluding this is a very late apple, its still nowhere near ripe (late Oct).

Gold Rush - Behind in ripening. Early ones coming in very good as usual; no spice so far though. Almost no rots on it. Probably the best low-spray backyard apple if you can ripen it.

To me, the couple of Freybergs I've tasted are similarly disgusting, which only provides further evidence of how much tastes vary, I suppose. This is one reason taste tests with a range of testers is also quite helpful although I'm quite grateful for your thoughtful and careful evaluations on such a wide range of varieties. You are a professorial professor.

If you like cookers, I suggest you try Bramley's. So far it is my favorite cooker and it's not to hard to grow here.

Hman, I have a Bramleys but its in a bad location, not enough sun. It does give me apples some years and I agree its a great cooker. Blenheim has a bit more flavor so I like it a touch more but both are great.

I love Freyberg but can understand how some people might not like it. My Sweet 16 has not fruited yet so I can't compare with it.

Chris, I may have been irrationally exuberant about Hooples' list position this year, but I just couldn't believe how good it was in every dimension. This was the first year it fruited.

Scott

ditto for my thoughts on sweet 16. I know of people who like it but I do not. I am not a fan of the taste of licorice so
that explains why. Glad to hear someone else has the same experience with it.

I am glad to know that I'm not alone in detesting Sweet 16. I wonder how it actually does on taste tests.

I love Sweet Sixteen's distinctive flavor, but don't like licorice candy. Strawberry Twizzlers are pretty good though (yummy plastic...mmm). When I read "some anise overtone", I suspect it may be more like the subtle hint that Priscilla sometimes has.

But yes, in addition to a boatload of knowledge, Hman always provides high comedy to the point of me often laughing out loud at how he words things, and even reading a line or two to my wife.

My feeling is backyard growers should not need to be doing a lot of spraying and there are many great apple varieties out there so there is no reason to grow any variety that is prone to rot or other bad things for your average busy home grower. I do about six sprays per year and only one is not organic, thats my post bloom spray for CAR.

Scott

Well, looking at my logs I did an experimental MFF on some apples this year due to all the rots. It didn't seem to help much though. It also could be the wrong spray for apple rot.

Scott

Scott

1) Gold Rush
2) Hooples Antique Gold
3) Pomme Gris
4) Rubinette
5) Reine des Reinettes
6) Kidds Orange Red
7) Freyburg
8) Newtown Pippin
9) Jefferis (for an early ripening apple, you should have one of those if you have several apple trees)

Does anyone know a commercial source for the Jefferis and the Hooples Antique Gold?

I was disappointed today to see birds had pecked through most of my Pink Ladies. They are as good as any apple I can imagine this year off the tree and with such a unique texture. I wonder how you'd rate it, Scott, if it was an obscure French heirloom. Probably the most beautiful apple as it hangs on the tree that I've ever seen.

The birds barely touched the Goldrush apples right next to it. The only ones they went after were those most highly blushed.

Not a single common variety seems to tickle your palate while I like growing many of the newer types that can be purchased in a store. When you eat only apples you grow, it seems unimportant which ones are also available to the public.

Hman, I haven't tried Zestar. I thought Jefferis tasted better than the other early apples I listed above.

Green Orchard Mom, I look forward to hearing how these varieties do for you. I have Virginia Beauty but its a new graft I made last year. Grimes I have had for a long time but through various circumstances it never fruited until this year but it then proved to be the wrong variety - ouch. Both should be good varieties for us, I have run into Grimes locally several times and it has always been very good.

Scott

You know something to that. One reason I decided against apples was that every apple tree I ever saw was infested with every insect imaginable. One tree I did see with hardly any bugs, but that's it.
Yeah here is suburbia I have had one bird take some fruit. A robin, and only one, he disappeared about mid-summer and the other robins don't touch anything. it is very strange, but no complaints!

I do live in the city, but in the suburbs. The only disease I've ever had was fireblight in some of my apples two years ago. I kept it under control with aggressive pruning and two sprays of agrimycin. The culprit was a Gala tree that I disposed of, and this year not a sign of fb. As Scott experienced, I had a lot of brown rot this year, which I never get, but it was only on some apples.
I dormant spray, once in january, all of my apples, peaches and plums for scale. I also spray my peaches and plums 1-2 times, after shuck split for pc, and my peaches once in august for borers. I never spray my pears, figs or watermelons.That's my entire spray program. I intentionally stay away from disease prone varieties, and I believe that is the key. I don't understand why so many people insist on planting disease prone varieties, when there are so many other alternatives. Why invite problems into your garden/orchard? I have enough work to do as it is.
The biggest problem that I have is with birds and varmints. I have to net all of my figs and some apples to keep the birds from eating them. I also have a netted hoop house for my blueberries or they would eat them too. I keep five baited traps for squirrels, raccoons, and possums, and in January I'll post my annual varmint report.

Scott

I can imagine controlling PC with one spray if you were carefully monitoring and only got one generation.

As far as selecting for disease resistance, up here that makes very little difference in terms of the number of sprays- you just throw some myclobutanil in the mix you are spraying PC with and you are generally good to go with most apple varieties.

How long have you been growing fruit there? One thing I've learned is that pests have a habit of finding orchards over time.

>>How long have you been growing fruit there? One thing I've learned is that pests have a habit of finding orchards over time. <<

Yes, they found me, apple maggot has started about 4 years ago, but in the city they been around about 8 years longer.

I didn't get your email. Don't use the Gardenweb form, use the email listed on my page.

Scott

PC can't be controlled just by hygiene, they fly for miles in a single day, but perhaps your location does make local hygiene more important because there aren't many other fruiting plants around to draw them from far away.

Here I have natives in the woods that harbor PC and stinkbugs as well as many diseases and almost all the sites I manage have these things right at the border of the property if its not part of the property itself. I started off planting only "disease resistant" varieties and found them to be as much work for inferior fruit.

If fruit growing is so uncomplicated there I'm surprised your neighbors aren't taking it up in droves, growing their own organic fruit. Where I first started growing fruit in CA the conditions were like yours and people grow a lot more fruit in their yards there than in the east.

Still, eight years is a short time, a lot of my pests didn't show up in my orchard for twelve or more, including pear scab, stinkbugs, pear psyla, and significant coddling moth. However, I always needed to control pests with at least two sprays to get decent crops of any common tree fruit I grow besides maybe pears. Now pears are harder than anything.

The only reason I do a lot of spraying is because I manage about 100 orchards, some that are multi-acre, but I am well compensated so don't feel too bad for me.

There are many neglected apple trees all over the region I work as well as the mentioned forest trees.

Scape

I tried that email but for some reason it's not working.
Email me Rgabdalla@netzero.net.

I am mindful that this is an apple thread. Thank you very much, Scott for posting.

I think, Ray, you are very fortunate that your good orchard hygiene practice has been working very well for you.

I have a small orchard in a densely populated suburb. I only a few peach trees and one plum tree that have fruited. I 've practiced the same clean up you do. It's easy to do since it's a small orchard. However, while the practice is a good thing to do, it does not work for me.

PC and esp. OFM found my peach trees the first year the trees bore fruit and have attacked the fruit every year since.

I've to spray pesticide about 4-5 times at least. This year alone, I still see OFM shoot tip damages until Sept.

I do only two sprays for apples and then bag them with a great result..

Trees at my house were sprayed twice with an insecticide, trees at the office weren't sprayed at all, no bug problems yet--unlike my peaches where the bugs win every year. At the house some trees are eaten up by CAR-guess I should spray for it-but no problems at the office where no cedars are in sight. Car seems to love my goldrush, pixie crunch, mutsu, and fuji. Biggest problem for the apples has been the squirrels.

You must be growing pears, right?

It could be the chemicals that you're using and or the timing of your spraying. For some reason Sevin, which is recommended by Clemson here, never worked for me. The bugs just laughed it off. I've found that Ortho Fruit Flower Garden Insect Killer does the trick, and Triazicide for borers. Timing is also very important, especially the first spray of the season. There's a fine balance between zapping pc/ofm and allowing the pollinators time to do their job.
I used to bag apples, but as I added more and more trees, it just became too big of a job, and the results just weren't worth it to me.

Hman,
I fully understand your spray regimen. You have to please your customers, and they probably don't pay you enough, no matter how much you charge.

Scott
PS I found your email and just replied.

Andrew, thanks for that extra bit. It looks like we now have a total of three dings against WP in hot areas. For me it ripened almost identically with Jefferis and I found the latter a better apple. Ginger Gold was also a similar time but not very exciting (certainly nice, just not exciting). In its favor Ginger Gold had no problems with the heat at all.

Scott

If I google "Purdue Williams Pride", the following is from a PRI press release; I'll just copy the "cons" not the "pros". Guess I shouldn't have used M111

"Problems: Severe watercore may be a significant problem in some seasons. Slight bitter pit observed in a few seasons. Severe bitter pit was observed on young trees with their first crop on MM-111 rootstock, on very sandy soil, under heavy nitrogen and irrigation. Fruit borne in clusters on short spurs, may tend to be pushed off as they swell, giving some loss to dropped fruit. Slightly coarse flesh texture. Uneven ripening will require two or more pickings.

General Recommendation: Suggested for advanced commercial testing on soils where nutrient deficiencies do not predispose trees to bitter-pit, as well as small scale and home grower plantings. Produced large, high quality fruit, ripening with the earliest red apple cultivars and relatively long storage-life for early entry and extended use in the summer apple market. Not recommended on MM-111 rootstock, on bitter-pit prone soils, or under high nitrogen fertilization."

BTW I noticed I left White Winter Pearmain off my list above. I lost most of them to deer this year but am cellaring some. One had half rot and the rest was ripening sooner; it tasted very good, something like Mutsu. Its very much a cellaring apple so the real verdict will be in a few months. I am also cellaring half of my GoldRush, I just picked them last night since we are forecast for 20F tonight.

I recently had some Ashmeads Kernel from a local orchard; it reminded me of what an excellent apple it is. The flesh is dry and hard but the taste is excellent, sweet and nutty. My ranking of it above has been lowering since I haven't tasted it in some time. I should finally get my own apples soon as the tree is in the deer pathway but finally outgrew them this year.

Abbondanza I should lower more in the ranking, its not been consistently sweet. I am trying cellaring some of them to see if they improve, as well as a few other varieties that may benefit from cold storage.

Scott

I haven't seen any biter pit on William's Pride, though my tree is on a dwarfing rootstock (G11), rather than MM111. I mostly get bitter pit on Ashmead's Kernel. I think I've seen it on Egremont Russet as well, though I may be confusing it with the other rots ER gets.

Scott

scape