What's your experience with Honeycrisp apple?
fruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
12 years ago
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windfall_rob
12 years agofruitnut Z7 4500ft SW TX
12 years agoRelated Discussions
Will HoneyCrisp and Spitzenburg apples pollinate each other
Comments (9)Last Earth: Do not confuse bloom period with ripening order. There is no direct relationship. Bloom period is the one that is important to pollination. In my experience, with over 30 apple varieties, it is hard to say which ones cross-pollinate, since they all seem to be in bloom at about the same time. I wouldn't expect it to be a problem if you have three trees. But Murky's point about triploid varieties like Gravenstein is an important one. I have several triploids out there (Stayman, Spigold, Mutsu etc.), which are pollen sterile and cannot pollinate anything. But there are other apples that can pollinate them, and there are a pretty fair number of decorative crabs in the neighborhood, which are excellent pollinators. Apples are pollinated by insects, which fly several hundred yards or more between trees. If anything, overset is more common on apples than underset, requiring the orchardist to do some thinning on the clusters. I thin to one per cluster, but two is about the maximum if you want apples of decent size and quality. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA...See MoreHoneycrisp apple thinning
Comments (7)Not that pissy, and I am a big Geraldo fan, but I give no one carte blanche when challenging my big apple ego. I am not a commercial apple grower and have a great deal of respect for anyone who has gone that route. My business is making sure home growers get great fruit and if they don't, I'm out of business. Commercial growers can be out of business even if they're succesful fruit growers. I have read articles about using Crockers fish oil to blossum thin apples organicly in the west. The information I get is that blossum thinning isn't so useful out east because of more unpredictable fruit set. As I understand it, when we get cool wet weather during and immediately following petal fall it can have a strong negative affect on fruit set. Of course cool weather also affects the efficacy of chemical thinning- but the other way, by reducing thinning. As far as my suggestion of removing all blossums from branches when all else fails to create annual fruiting, it is based on personal experience with a Goldrush apple tree on my own property. Even after removing all flowers on every other spur and coming back shortly after petal fall to hand thin thoroughly I couldn't break biennial bearing on this tree. It was as if the tree just sent out a signal that could only be stopped by going radical. I did and of course it worked. Goldrush is considered an annual bearer and further south it behaves much differently than here in NY. Even here, the reason my tree gives me so much trouble is that it looses the sun from mid-afternoon on but even in full exposure Goldrush can be difficult here. When reading Beach's Apples of NY it is interesting how many of the heirloom varieties were noted not only for being biennial, but even triennial, so obviously thinning on such a variety as this wouldn't work consistantly. Most newer varieties are fairly reliable annual bearers or they wouldn't be released. One clear exception for me, even when grown in optimum conditions, is the Fortune apple which has actually been triennial on a couple of sites- one with full sun exposure. I'm hoping the trees will settle down when they mature. In the humid part of the country the growing season doesn't give fruit trees as much total energy to work with. It's like a solar battery loosing power on cloudy days....See MoreHoneycrisp Apple Tree doesn't bloom
Comments (43)OK, we're now on the third year of the honeycrisp and there are no apples. It got only a few blooms, but no fruit developed. Meanwhile, the snow apple, which was purchased as a polinator, has a number of apples. I haven't fertilized any of my fruit trees (a peach and two cherries in addition to the apples). Maybe this is the problem with the honeycrisp. The cherries aren't producing, either, but I didn't expect them to this soon. The sweet one was decimated by japanese beetles last year and the sour is a standard not a dwarf or semi-dwarf so I expect it's got more years of growing before it produces fruit. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that and should be doing something to encourage fruiting (besides spraying, which we are doing for the first time this year). This is an extremely helpful forum. Thanks to everyone for their input. Caryl...See MoreHoneycrisp Apple Trees in Illinois? (Zone 5)
Comments (3)I guess the big question would be how well it drains (you could dig a hole in your soil and fill it with water and see how long it takes to drain). Drainage is probably the most important thing when it comes to growing trees, although unless you are growing in a swamp, I doubt you have many issues (at least with apples). Look at trees on M26 or Bud 9 rootstock (both dwarf). Like I said, I'd probably stake them, at least for a few years. If the tree isn't labeled, then it may be tough to find out what it is growing on....See Moremegamav
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