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nafex - [NAFEX] Climate Range of Pink Lady

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  • From: "Alan Haigh" <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Climate Range of Pink Lady
  • Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 20:27:09 -0500

Yesterday I tasted the first Pink Lady I've ever had that was grown in my area.  It was from a small commercial orchard where I do the pruning and some consultation.  This was the first year that this variety has born any fruit and I was surprised that it achieved perfect ripeness in our Zone 6A- I have long assumed that Pink Lady required a longer season than we experience in southeastern NY.
 
Our last growing season was not especially long,but there was an unusually high ratio of clear sunny days.  It was not a particularly hot summer but Sept. and Oct. were warm without many cool nights.   Our growing season is usually about 7 months for apples with the trees budding out in the first week of April and the first really hard frost around the first week of Nov.(say 25 degrees F.).
 
The apple that inspired the following question was very tasty and crisp even though it is almost Feb. and it hadn't even been refrigerated- just stored in a cool place.  Other apples stored the same way that were hard at harvest were no longer so crisp.  It seems to store as well as Fuji and Goldrush.  It also showed very good resistance to sooty blotch compared to other late varieties grown in this orchard.  Fuji and Goldrush are sponges for this fungus.
 
My question is, have any of you grown this variety for a number of years in a similar climate to mine?  Can it consistently ripen here?  I have already decided to try to grow it as an espallier against a southern wall but if I thought I could grow it conventionally here consistently it might become a favorite variety.






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