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["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

When I lived in England the greengrocers carried all kinds of wonderful apples, but they also always had shiny grass green things that were supposedly Golden Delicious, but picked extremely unripe.  I tasted one, once.  It tasted a lot like water.  A well ripened GD is as good an apple as one could want.  In the old days, the 60's-80's I would poke through the GD's to find the yellowest ones with a bit of russetting on them, they were always the best.  Nowadays I don't know if they are picking them too green or if it's all the sports and/or crosses, but they never seem to have russetting on them anymore.  I probably haven't bought a GD in the grocery in 5 years. 

    I can't grow Golden Delicious on our property because there are way too many cedars there.  But I have a couple of small 'Hardy Cumberland' trees that didn't have a spot on them in 2008, a bad year for CAR.  Like the GD I consider them "high flavored" apples.  They aren't especially tart (I like some tartness) but have lots of flavor.  HC was released by the Plateau Expt station here in TN about 10 years ago, and when I called to ask for scions the secretary told me, "That's sure a good apple."  Someone else there said, "Well, we're not allowed to SAY they are disease resistant, but they sure don't have many problems."  I would have a little bit of scionwood to share in spring if anyone can poke me enough to get me to the post office with it.  Joyce Neighbors says they don't seem to do well down in Alabama, but as the Plateau is 2,000 ft above us I'd assume they'd do well at least 200 miles north of us. 

        Other trees that looked good this year were the winesap and Mammoth Blacktwig I collected locally, neither cropping yet, and the presumed Limbertwig.  The latter made very firm yellow apples with a bit of blush, very high flavor.  I am thrilled with it.  The original winesap tree was huge, with huge pink striped fruit that were very popular with jays.  The MB is not a very good apple, but dis res, comes in late and keeps well, and likes poor soil.  Chestnut crab and yellow Transparent looked terrible all year, lots of CAR.  The cicadas didn't help, the crab also got FB from them.         Donna