Scottsmith How goes your harvest?

I was wondering how your harvest was going this year. Any new gems to report? Hurricane Ike just blew through here (So. Ill.) and uprooted one of my apples and broke lots of limbs. I had my first Thompins King apple Mon. and it is great. Galas and Golden Delicious were loaded. I have a few Winter Banana, Spitzenberg, Fuji & Braeburn but haven't picked any of them yet. Brown rot got most of my late plums. It is a very bad problem in my area, especially this yr as it was very wet.
RED

Hi Red,

Unfortunately work has been really busy plus I've been sick so I'm not doing the greatest job there, but I still am getting many things in. I didn't have time to net the grapes so I lost most of them. I only had a few pawpaws and apparently some critter beat me to them. I had a bad late rot problem just like you, so I got very few European plums. Fortunately the apples are piling in now, something like 40 varieties tasted so far. Here are a couple things I have "discovered" recently.

Freyburg - this Cox Orange Pippin x Golden Delicious is one excellent apple! Crispy, very aromatic, and unique in flavor -- most like Golden but with its own uniqueness. Apparently it isn't good in all climates but it sure likes mine!

Swayzie - this is a russet apple which is not as dry in the flesh as some other russets and has a very nice aromatic flavor. Supposedly it is something like Pomme Gris; my P.G. turned out to be the wrong variety so I haven't been able to compare them. I like this much more than Roxbury Russet.

Blenheim Orange - the best new cooker apple this year. It has a bit of a "nutty" flavor.

Pitmaston Pineapple - a very small russet apple but the flavor is condensed as well -- very rich flavor and extremely sweet.

Golden Transparent Gage plum - a couple of these did not rot and they were excellent. I hope I can get the rot under control in most years.

Black Boy peach - this is one of the several red-fleshed peaches I am growing. I love all of them. There was the usual rot problem on these guys but there were some truly excellent ones. I am harvesting this guy now -- a very late peach. My Indian Free (another red-fleshed) usually come in about the same time (in fact I wonder a bit if they are the same variety) but they all rotted, every last one. I made jam out of my earlier Indian Cling peaches, supposedly an old pickling peach. I think it would be fun to try to pickle them.

Scott

Everyone seems to have had a hard time with brown rot this year. I saved half my nectarines by picking them early, or they would have all rotted.

Thanks Scott, keep me posted on the apples. How are you going to attack the brown rot problem for next year? I am at a loss. By the way when I was a wee lad we had an indian cling peach in the garden fence row. Mom would always can them in a syrup with cloves and maybe some other spices. They were very tasty. I am trying to get a scion wood trade started for this winter. I have never tried grafting but it don't sound too hard.
RED

Red, my Grand Plan is to keep doing disease sprays longer than I did this year (I stopped at petal fall); I am going to spray for the next 1.5 months after petal fall and also try to spray a few weeks before harvest, a time when external infections can enter supposedly.

Thats interesting to hear about your moms peach recipe, that is the traditional use for that peach.

Grafting is not too hard but don't start on peaches, they are the most difficult. I'm not looking to do any big swapping (done too much of that already!) but if you are in a pickle for something I have drop me a line.

Scott

Scott - do you use the same spray all season or switch off?

LTilton, I try to be organic so I have very few options. I start with copper up through bloom and switch to sulphur after that. Next year I am going to try Serenade and milk as well to mix it up. In general I strongly believe in alternating sprays if you have multiple good options.

Scott

Scott
You should be picking all you apples by now. Any more outstanding desert apples? I am trying to settle on what I want to order next spring and am starting to run out of space so I can't just order willy nilly.
Thanks
RED

Red, I have had many good ones.

Right now I am enjoying Gold Rush. It can age forever but even a few days after picking they can be excellent if they ripened well on the tree. Very hard flesh and anise flavor to varying degrees.

Myers Royal Limbertwig has a very distinctive taste, I wish I could describe it. The apples don't look particularly attractive but I think its a great one.

I only had a couple Margil apples but that one was extremely good. It had a skin that tasted just like hazelnuts.

Wickson is one of my all-time favorites. It tastes like an apple/plum cross and is one of the sweetest apples out there. It is quite small however. This year they cracked when it rained bad in September; that never happened before.

Orleans Reinette tastes like several other strong-flavored sweet-tart apples: Roxbury Russet, Pomme Cloche, Sturmer Pippin, etc. Most of these I have found to be moth magnets (who knows why) but Orleans Reinette came out very nice so it is now my favorite in this group. These apples are not aromatic but they are very sweet/sour and have a distinctive flavor I cannot describe. I guess some sort of orangey/nutty thing is about as close as I can think of.

On the cooking apples category, Blenheim Orange and Reine des Reinettes are my favorites for things where you want the apple to stay together (not sauce); Bramley is great for sauce. Canada Reinette and Rambour d'Hiver are more subtle-flavored cooking apples. I have been making applesauce out of everything, its a good way to get kids who don't like eating the soot-covered wormy apples to eat them. 100% organic in Maryland can make for some ugggly apples!

Scott

Scott, do you have any special storage equipment for keeping apples?

Thanks Scott. Probably my favorite new apple was my Spitzenberg. It was very sweet tart and was very hard (dense) In fact it is almost difficult to bite. My second most favorite new apple was the one from the "sport" on the Lodi tree. It was a dense sweet apple with a little tang. very nice. Hope it continues to bear true.
I have a lady who is supposed to send me some scion wood from a Wickson this winter. I have been looking at it for a couple of years. Do you have any of the other Etter hybrids?
I am not familiar with Margil and have never tried any of the Limbertwigs. I will look into them for next yr. Thanks a lot
RED

Red, I ordered a few of the other Etter apples from Greenmantle but they only sell bench grafts and both of them died. When I wrote to complain they wrote back a letter about how I overwatered them, when in fact I watered them very little (twice). So I think I will just stick with Wickson. My Spitz had fruited for the first time this year but it died of fireblight, sigh. I grafted some on to another tree before it completely succumbed.

LTilton, I don't have any storage equipment now. My trees are very closely planted so I get at most a couple dozen apples of any variety. But in a few years when all the trees are finally bearing I will have too many. I will at least stick some of the late apples in my garage which is in the 40's-50's most of the winter. I also have a cider press which is a great way to use up bushels of apples in no time. There is a thread on the Gardenweb forum now about using a deep freezer set just above freezing for long-term apple storage -- sounds like an idea worth trying.

Scott

I make applesauce from my surplus, but I wish I could keep apples in better eating condition longer.

The equipment commercial growers use is vastly expensive.