Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Glockenapfel, Belle de Boskoop, CO hardiness
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:02:45 -0400
> On Dec 14, 2008, at 8:29 PM, derry&bill wrote:
>
> I've received an email from a home gardener in Minnesota. She grew up in
> Switzerland and her father had a few apple trees. She wants to know:
>
> 1) if Glockenapfel, Belle de Boskoop and/or Cox's Orange will grow in
> zone 4?
I can't speak to the first, but Belle de Boskoop flourishes here in Southern Nova Scotia, which
is Zone 5), and there are a few growers in the Annapolis Valley growing Cox's. (The Valley is
generally 5 degrees warmer during the summer than I am.) My understanding with regard to
Cox's is that the limiting factor is the length of the growing season, rather than the
temperature per se - it needs a long season to ripen.
In passing, the Boskoops are, for me, an absolutely outstanding apple - large, seemingly
resistant to everything (including coddlers, maggots and scab - I didn't spray them at all this
year, and they are absolutely clean. The taste is equally outstanding But the crows like them.
[They bounce up and down on the branches until they manage to get them to fall, then grab
them and fly off to cache them.])