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| Apples go best with friends. |
If in the off season you miss thinking about apples, I invite you to browse some particularly interesting exchanges in comments that readers share on this blog.
They really are the best thing here.
Honeycrisp
My suggestions of Honeycrisp-adjacent apples that fans might also like drew many interesting reactions. (One came from a SweeTango afficionado who mentioned that his tribute to that apple had been published in the New Yorker.)
I also particularly enjoyed the back-and-forth commentary to this comparision of Honeycrisp with McIntosh.
Consistency
Liberty
Breeding
There are some pretty good follow-ups in the comments to that as well.
History
He sold apples for $5 each during the gold rush, and tried to start a free-love cult in Honduras.
I'm a huge fan of these kinds of stories and hope you are too.
Liner Notes (sources of confusion)
Blogger, the platform I use, did not introduce "threaded" comments until 2012. Even after that people (including me!) sometimes reply to a comment off-thread.
Consequently, the comments to a particular post may not be perfectly linear.
Some older comments now read as "unknown" because they come from accounts that have been damaged. You might see replies to these addressed to names that are no longer shown.
I'm in it for the comments (and the apples)
- Don't miss out, and
- Thank you.
Western WI: I love the comments in addition to your wonderful taste/mouthfeel descriptions. Thank you! Here, I am finally getting down to the last of my gold rush apples and am noticing how differently the individuals have aged. Smaller, more wrinkled apples seem to have aged the best (if you can get past their appearance and the feeling of the peel. However, those small ones are still crisp and their taste is great (although sweeter than back in October/November). The large, unwrinkled ones puzzle me. I think these may have been large and a bit unripe in late October when I got these, but now, unfortunately, they tend to be mealy and sweet. Too bad. They might be good in apple cake or a galette though (I haven’t tried this yet). Then there are the ones that are slightly wrinkled. These are all different from one another, although mostly good. They may be large or small and are not mealy. I have only had a few out of the bushel and 1/2 that I received that went bad. So all in all, a great buy!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we have had limited cold weather this year and I am worried if we will have a decent fruit crop of any sort this year. :(
Western WI: I just finished the last of my Suncrisps, which develop some marvelous flavors over time with decent texture even if wrinkled.
DeleteHave also been disappointed by unripe Gold Rush.
I'll have to try Suncrisps.
DeleteBetween eating the last bite of the last apple crisp made using mostly our own apples from 2023 and not yet starting grafting, I’ll take up your suggestion to do some musing.
ReplyDeleteA hard freeze on May 18 destroyed about 90% of our apple blossoms and first fruits. We were saved by our neighbors, who only live two miles away but whose orchard was spared. They begged us to pick from the bounty of their old orchard. We picked 15 bushels, including Rhode Island Greenings, McIntosh, Roxbury and Golden Russets, and many of the apples that were anonymous to us. Their youngest variety is probably Macoun.
As I am in the midst of dormant spraying, and seeing early signs of life, silver tip and green tip, I wonder if we in the northeast US and elsewhere are going to have to deal with the challenge of late killing routinely? As excited as we are to see renewed signs of life this early, we are more hopeful than solidly optimistic for a marvelous harvest this year.
Last year was pretty rough across the Northeast. Out here we lost all of the stone fruit because the trees woke up too soon.
DeleteLate frosts seem to be on the menu as well.
It is hard to know what will happen as the earth changes so fast.