Choosing Apple Varieties for Your Back Yard
Here's where you may have to do a little bit of research, because
planting the right varieties for your climate is critical and you can't change that
once you plant. Your orchard will be in production for
many years, and a poorly-performing tree will just take up space and resources.
The Fortuna Orchard Variety List
These choices were made based on the location (seven miles from the Pacific in
northern California) and in part because of the taste preferences of the family.
Soil quality played a part because the orchard was planted in fairly heavy soil.
Winters are wet, and
conditions during the growing season
are cool and include early morning
and late afternoon fog.
The following list of varieties were chosen to give a long window of ripening
fruit in Fortuna. The rootstock on these varieties was M-111, an excellent
all-around rootstock for apples in the area because it tolerates wet and poor
soil. This rootstock allows the trees to grow to about three-fourths of the
standard size, but remember, we're going to train and prune them so that all parts of the trees
can be reached from the ground:
 | Gravenstein. Ripens mid summer. Famous for sauce and baking, also
used fresh. Crisp, juicy, flavorful, tart. Early bloom, early
harvest. 700 hours chilling requirement. Pollenizer required:
Empire, Fuji, Gala, Red Delicious. |
| Gala. Late summer. Wonderful dessert apple from New
Zealand. Crisp, nice blend of sweetness and tartness, rich
flavor. Skin reddish-orange over yellow. Early harvest, good
pollenizer for other varieties. 5-600 hours. Self-fruitful. |
| Golden Delicious. Early fall. Long-time favorite for its
sweetness and flavor. Reliable. 700 hours. Self-fruitful. |
| Jonagold. Mid fall. Superb flavor and connoisseurs' choice. A
cross of Jonathan and Golden Delicious. Yellow with red-orange
blush. Crisp, juicy, sub-acid, all-purpose apple. 7-800 hours.
Pollinated by Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith or Red Delicious, but not
Golden Delicious. |
| Fuji. Late fall. California's favorite apple and
from Japan. Sweet, very
crisp and flavorful, excellent keeper. Dull reddish-orange skin,
sometimes russeted. Excellent pollenizer for other apple
varieties. Chilling requirement apparently less than 600 hours.
Self-fruitful. |
| Braeburn. Late fall. Superb late season fruit: very crisp
and tangy, more flavorful than Granny Smith. Excellent keeper.
Green with dark red blush. Approximately 700 hours.
Self-fruitful.
|
Customizing Your Own Orchard
This can be confusing, considering that over 250 different strains of just
Red Delicious apples have been cultivated. So how do you choose out of the 6,000
or so available varieties? Don't just buy something at your local garden world
just because it has a pretty package. See your local Agriculture Department Extension
Service or a local professional nursery or two, and they will be able to assist you
greatly in choosing the correct ones. Visit a local apple orchard, they'll be
thrilled to help you out. Ask local master gardeners. Notice how the word
'local' has been used five times already in this paragraph? Learn up on rootstocks and
make sure you get a variety that likes your dirt. Make sure the apple variety
will have a pollinator. Search the Internet for
more information once you've narrowed it down to specific varieties.
Don't rush into this. This is a multi-year commitment and you'll want to get it
as right as you can. Taste test apples that were recommended to see if you like them
(both before and after they ripen) before you commit to growing them
for the next twenty years.
Remember also that early apples don't store well, not even in the
refrigerator, but fruit from the late maturing varieties will keep well into the
winter. You may wish to plant extra for storage.
Buying Quality fruit Trees
And last but probably the most important item on this page—buy
the best stock you can find and refuse it if it's not in the best shape. Just
like with garden seeds, you can buy top of the line quality merchandise or you
can buy floor sweepings, but the amount of work and resources they will require in
your yard are the same. Poor stock will handicap you from the very beginning. No
matter how hard you try, you can't make a bargain tree produce quality fruit.
The few dollars you save at the beginning are a very bad trade-off for decades of poor harvests.
But whether you've fully chosen your varieties or not, the next step is
figuring out the optimum location for your fruit trees. Grab a pencil and paper
and we'll design the layout of your
orchard in your back yard. You'll be surprised at what fits!
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