North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[<dmnorton@royaloakfarmorchard.com>]

Interesting!  We grow Red Free, Jonafree, Liberty, Enterprise and Goldrush and sell all very well in both U-Pick and Pre-Picked in our Apple Barn.  Liberty is one of our best sellers.  We found that it's a matter of educating the public to other varieties that are available besides the old standbys.  Our Liberty are as hard as a rock, much crisper than Mac and very flavorful.  I have known a Mac to be a "crisp" apple.  Are we discussing the right apples?

 

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com
http://www.theorchardkeeper.blogspot.com
http://www.revivalhymn.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Alan Haigh

To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 11:35 AM

Subject: [NAFEX] disease reisistant varieties

You can grow scab and cedar-apple-rust resistant varieties but you may have trouble selling them.  I managed a small commercial orchard that wasn't organic but we used an extreme low-spray of 2 applications of imidan with summer oil in the first doable ap.  Liberty was the primary cultivar and they were gorgeous (the site was open and windy with little soot or speck) but we couldn't give them away.  Members will say we didn't harvest at the correct time but they weren't there and they'd be wrong.  It may have better potential in other parts of the country however but it has bombed here as a commercial.  It lacks the Mac crunch and aroma and is just a so-so apple.

 

Goldrush is the only D R that I've tried that I consider world-class based on my taste and scores of others but it gets plenty of CAR and insect damage of course though it's more curc resistant than most.  You'll need at least 3 aps of Surround at 10-day intervals from pedal-fall.  Enterprise is pretty good also.

 

I'd approach this project  with caution before a major cash or labor investment- experiment first.