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  • From: Don Yellman <dyellman@earthlink.net>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Lodi Apple
  • Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 01:43:47 -0400

Donna:

I find it difficult to relate your description to the Lodi apples that I know. Lodi is billed as an "improved" Yellow Transparent; I think the improvement consists of a little larger average size. I grow Yellow Transparent here, and have relatives in Iowa who have had a Lodi tree for quite a few years. I don't think the Lodi cultivar has been around for 50 years; perhaps 30 or 40. Just about any description of Lodi applies equally to Yellow Transparent.

Yellow Transparent is the best sauce and pie apple we grow. It is quite acidic, but not bitter, and not dry at all. It is the earliest apple I have, ripening here in northern zone 7 every year before mid-July. This year we took them down on July 3 when a few started to turn yellow. That's the signal to pick them all, since the quality and crispness deteriorate quickly with the color change, they often develop cracks, and they fall from the tree and are easily bruised. If I left them alone, none of the apples would hang on the tree until the end of July.

YT and Lodi are very short keepers, and should not be left around out of cold storage for more than a few days. We make our sauce the same day we pick them, and use every one, with a yield of about 25 quarts of sauce from one tree. Once made up into sauce or sliced apples for pies they keep as well in the freezer as any other variety. My YT tree, when properly thinned, is an annual bearer, and so is Lodi regardless of what the book may say. Sauce made from fresh YT or Lodi apples is absolutely excellent, although it requires a little sugar to balance the acidity. I have not yet tried Monark or Pristine for sauce, but Ed F. thinks they are also top-notch for for this purpose. I do have a little Monark tree coming along that might bear in about 2 years. Many people in VA and West VA still grow the Astrachan for sauce, a redskin apple that is also very early and tart. I did try one other variety for sauce here, an Early Cortland from Miller Nursery, which is a Cortland/Lodi cross. It was a violently vigorous growing tree requiring constant pruning, with very sparse blooms and the buggiest apple I have ever grown. I took it down in spring, 2002, and good riddance.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA





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