Ducal Honors for Gatekeeper

Chances are good these are a named variety, but Josh, from Western Washington, calls them Gatekeeper. That will do since we do not know what they are.

They have a good texture for such an early apple, and painterly streaks of red. Sadly, for eating out of hand these do not work for me.

Feast on these

My advice for the week: If you find Pristine for sale, seize with both hands.

Photo from farmers market last Wednesday.

Hightop Sweeting

I wrote about Hightop just two weeks ago. It was not ripe then, but sometimes one is fortunate enough to get a second chance.

A late report on early apples

And here they are.

They were also "here" last Saturday—at the Union Square (Somerville) farmers market—but I wasn't.

Then on Wednesday violent storms closed Arlington's market before I could get there.

Hightop Sweeting (June Sweet)

I have several of these small green apples, noticeably ribbed and slightly conical. Two of them bear a small faint blush, and in the blush the lenticel dots make a faint light spray.

The green is light and subdued, a little milky. This is my first local apple of the season and I am excited to have a "new" (to me) variety to start things off with this year. A good omen!

Apple anniversary

Today marks the first day of the twelfth year of this blog, originally conceived as a one-year project.

Sight me up for another, if only to counter last year's dismal showing (in the new-apple review department).

Baby Baldwin

Any day now the apple harvest will begin. The soon-to-be-picked apples—Lodi, Vista Bella—are recognizable on the tree.

Most of the later season apples, at this point, look pretty much alike, unless you peer very closely.

They are round, they are green, and they do not look ready to eat.

But don't you think that baby Baldwin, above, is very like?

More apples to come

A reader writes:

On our island in Lake Mälaren, one hour west of Stockholm, Mantet has matured the most. "An attractive red-flushed early-season apple variety from Manitoba in Canada. The name is a combination of 'man' for Manitoba, and 'tet' from Tetofsky, one of the parent varieties."

Early fruit

These apples were hanging out earlier today at Hutchins Farm in Concord, Massachusetts.

Apple drought

Things are not pretty here at the end of June.

Supermarkets are flush with Honeycrisps picked in August of 2018.

Of course the cupboard has been bare at almost every orchard for most of 2019.

June apple notes from all over

It's still about a month before the first local apples are ready to eat here.

Apples Yates, Five Crown and Frequin Rouge. Some for the fruit bowl and some for apple crumble 😀🍎 pic.twitter.com/OfZlPTu6Mb

— Heritage Fruit Trees (@heritage_fruit) June 22, 2019

But in Australia (above), there are still plenty of keepers in good shape from the spring harvest.

The evolution of the apple

Apples are from Kazakhstan. But how did they get from there to circle the globe?

How did they evolve from the wild, and in response to what evolutionary imperatives?

One part of the story: the Silk Road. Another: horses.

Subacid

The best apples are a blend of sweet and tart.

These apples are in or near the sweet spot where the tension between sugar and tartness is perfectly balanced and the flavors sing.

The old pomologists used the term "subacid" to describe an apple that had some acidity in the mix, but which stopped just short of being predominantly acid.