As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I do a great deal of apple porn . I love going on old apple sites and just reading about the diverse varieties offered from hundreds of years ago. One of my favorites was Johnny Miller out of the Fingerlakes of New York. His family produced for over 50 years a repository of applies of antiquity. I would read and re read his catalogue with delight, just studying the varieties.
When his brother died, he sold the business to corporate Stark Bros who have ruined it all. I make that point in being pissed, as they sent me an email, about trees for sale, so I clicked on it, and in browsing, was lured in by the Orange Pippin, which is the European Apple of apples. I decided to splurge as I wanted to taste one, and 30 bucks was not too bad, and then when check out came, I noticed a little note that said, WILL NOT SHIP UNTIL OCTOBER 30, 2020.
Geez Louise, we have snow on the ground some years at that date and plants here need to be planted in September for their roots to grow so they do not freeze out. It said I could adjust the date, and when they got back to me, there was no date adjustment as I do not think they even had the trees and were doing some pre order scam.
Short of it, NO ORDER, and Stark Bros gets outed here in a very dream crushing experience.
The reason I bring this up, as it has occurred to me that people live in shit places worse than the brier. Zone 3 is shit weather, but there is Zone 1 and 2, but at least you get to shoot moose and bears in those zones, and pick berries. Anyway, in long searches I came across this Canadian site which I think is out of Quebec. I had heard of numbers of these apples they offered, but had never witnessed such a complete display of them for sale. Some are so unknown, that they still have the Minnesota plot numbers as the variety.
I thought I would feature them, as I could go the other way with Southern apples, but sincerely, let us face reality in there is no such thing as a southern "good" apple, as the heat makes them tasteless, worse than Washington apples, so apples are just horrid in the South. The South is better for peaches and other soft fruits, although plums are just lovely until you get into the really hot zones.
Anyway we start with Malus Siversii. No one names this apple, so I will, I will call it the Scythian after our Israelite exiles who were in the region. This is the apple which produced all the apples which the world knows.
It is though by the photos about like saying a black man is black. They come in all sorts of colors and sizes. This is more of a genetic stock, and why when the Romans got the Snow Apple, everyone said, "Hey this doesn't taste like shit", and started eating it.
In actuality, the greatest gift the Romans gave to the world were roads, government and apples. It was the Romans who brought apples with them to the Normandy coast, and it was there the founder of the English Pippins found an apple he liked, brought the seeds back to England, sprouted them and produced the grandfather of the Cox Orange Pippin. It was from these English apples, mixed in with the American cultivated species and wild, which began forming the modern apples like Baldwin, Spy, Greening, Wagner, which in turn through thousands of seeds and dead seedlings in Minnesota, produced the Wealthy, which began producing a series of Zone 4 to Zone 2 trees, which moved apples from citrus tart to apples which were sweet.
Japan has produced some wonderful Zone 5 apples like Mutsu and Fuji, as the island grows good fruit, but for the best fruit in the world, Chile, Michigan, New Zealand and Australia produce with their temperatures and soils, a wonderful eating experience.
The Canadians do pretty well in their new orchards, further north in British Columbia.
Here we find the first Zone 2 apple, the Minnesota Russet. A small apple, which is more an apple that you say, "Wow that apple is growing in 60 below weather, and that is the marvel, rather than the taste.
Minnesota 1734 apple - Zone 2 - A russet apple for the North
This heavy bearing northern russet is native to Minnesota. It is one of the very best of the russet apples. While russets apples are very flavourful, they are hard and not standard in what you expect from an apple.
Next up we have a real commercial apple in Alaska, which no one lower has ever heard in Parkland.
Parkland - Zone 2a - An excellent quality apple commercially grown in Alaska
Parkland is extremely hardy and is the leading variety in Alaska. It is an excellent apple in taste and in look, while having a well-balanced tart flavour.
Then there is the Norkent. I know stupid name, but the Canadians are not known for naming things as they tend to be like blacks naming their kid Extravaganzo, when Rastus would do. I never trust people who say that apples are good though, as they usually bring tears to your eyes, but this is about what you do, when you have nothing but moss and moose hair to eat most days.
Norkent apple tree - Zone 2 - Sweet and crisp apple for the extreme North
The Norkent apple tree produces a quality of apple, in terms of being a good keeper and taste, that other trees in zone 2 will find hard to match.
These apples all are lumped together with Wolf River and Dutchess of Oldenberg, which is why people leave them lay on the ground for deer to go to a good tree and eat them. So I am leery, but I like the idea of these apples and I would honestly grow Parkland if I could get my hands on them.
Collet apple tree - Zone 3b - A disease resistant apple from Manitoba
The Collet apple tree (Malus Collet) is a favourite amongst apple growers because of its disease resistance and quality taste.
They do have other apples on the site, Connell Red which they say does well in Quebec, but do not inform you that this is the red version of Fireside, which is one of the top 3 apples ever produced. There is Lautz too, named after the founder, and linked to the Haralson apple, which again is probably the 4th best apple in the world. It far outclasses Honeycrisp, now that standards have dropped. I had some Washington and local Honeycrisp which were just bitter and watery. I detest that brittle wood tree with its too tangy fruit.
I will end though though with the most remarkable apple in the world in Ruby which produces in September. Granted, the Russians have produced remarkable cold region apples which are impossible to acquire, but Ruby is a "Zone 1" apple, that is polar bear fruit and it is one of the most remarkable apples in the world, to have an apple bloom, and bear fruit where the growing season does not exist.
September Ruby apple tree - Zone 1 - The King of the North
Fruiting in Alaska zone 1, this quality apple has all it takes to give hope to northern orchardists.
One of my dreams would be to visit orchards in the eastern United States and those in Canada, to just eat apples in tasting them for days, by the fifties. I realize most apples are not that wonderful, but to eat apples our founders ate, and to know the work that they put in, and their excitement when they found an apple which was not cider tart, was the same experience I have had in tasting an apple God grew which no one has tasted before.
I still mourn over an offspring of a Red Delicious, which somehow sprouted here on the edge of the road, and people had to drive around it, until they cut it down. I stopped once and picked an apple, and it was hard as a rock, full of tannin, and I thought YUCK, but it was a cider apple, and I so would have loved to have saved that one of a kind, as it is now gone forever.
Our modern apples in these Pippin lines, as they moved into Minnesota, actually produce apples which are very close to what the parent is, and have stabilized quite well, so starting seeds by placing them in a peroxide paper towel in a zip lock bag in the fridge, until they sprout, will produce an apple akin to the apples you enjoy.
I would that the world had a leader who would have invested the resources into fruit trees. Imagine a world with a thousand apple varieties which actually tasted like oranges, bananas, strawberries, sweet cherries and apples, because that is what is in the genetics of apples, including spicy and bland.
I though by God's Grace have my own varieties I still am working on to bring into production. Neither satan or evil uncles will stop this. I have the varieties for the next billion dollar apple crop. I just need to graft them on to other root stock in a few years, and expand the apple horizons again.
Once again, another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Nuff Said
agtG
