I just picked Dixie Red Delight today also- sweet, dense, spicy, but a little dry; probably a good keeper. Sundowner still has a couple weeks to go, as does Lady Williams. Fuji never did ripen right, I'm not sure what happened.

What do you mean by not ripening right? What happened? Our fujis ripened in late October, they are long gone. Not a single one of them even made it into the house.

Gee, I thought the same thing about my 4 Granny Smiths on my multi-graft tree, and went to harvest them last week. They were all GONE, footie coverings and all.
I suspect squirrels or possums. Grrrrr. I waited almost 10 months!!!!

Carla in Sac

Axel--I agree with you on the Granny Smiths. I had the great fortune to taste one that was actually ripe many years ago in Arizona. It bore no resemblance to the things bought in the store. Too bad they aren't actually harvested and sold as a ripe apple, but then apples from the store rarely live up to "real" apples picked ripe from a tree. More incentive to grow your own.....

You folks live in a nice bubble. I come from CA but now live in the northeast. We can ripen Fujis but I can only imagine what Granny is supposed to taste like. I have long advised that it doesn't properly ripen here. I wish CA had an apple industry to provide the country with something like what you experience.

Pink Lady is doable here but it is a somewhat different apple.

Applenut, you participate in the NAFEX site, right? I'm Alan Haigh and I think I know who you are.

Axel: Your apples sound great. Would you be kind enough to tell me a little more about exactly what type climate you have. What are your summer high temperatures? How far from the ocean are you and what is your elevation?

I'm seriously considering moving back to CA and this information would be a great help in my property search.

Thank you!!!
The Fruitnut

Well I do live here in California (foothills overlooking the Valley of Heart's Delight, aka Silicon Valley) and I've never tasted a ripe Granny Smith. It's not one of the apples I planted and it's not on the short list for my second wave, either. But based on your post I'm going to keep my eyes open for a farmers' market that just might have it for sale. I'd love to taste one. Just this September I discovered Gravenstein. It's a so-so eating apple (IMO) but the best pie apple I ever tasted.

Rosefolly

Fruitnut:

You should look into Placer County, which is supposed to be perfect for growing fruit--hot summer days, cooled-off nights, creates wonderful sugar in fruit. And you can grow anything--from cherries to pluots to tangerines (well, maybe not dates!) Here is an article which contains a blurb on growing conditions in Placer, about halfway-down:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/03/CMGNNKE2RN1.DTL

Carla in Sac

Carla:

Thank you for the info. I didn't realize they grew mandrins in that area. The trouble with finding a place in CA is one spot might be good and a mile away it's a whole different story. If a person stays in the central valleys, You can be fairly certain the climate is favorable. Then you have to be concerned about the soil, etc. In the foothills, things are a lot more variable. If you could find a place right next to a producing orchard, that might work well.

Do you know anything about the Valley Springs area about 45 miles SE of Sacramento? Climate is similiar to Auburn and there are a lot of rural properties for sale.

Thanks,
The Fruitnut

Fruitnut:

I have been to Jackson, but not Valley Springs, which is a little further south. It's rolling foothills there, but keep in mind the further away you get from the corridor along Interstate 80 (Vacaville, Davis, Sacramento, Auburn) the hotter it gets and stays in summer. That's because I-80 goes along a natural "funnel" which sucks in what are called the "Delta Breezes" from the San Francisco bay area at night in summer. Even though they all may be 105 during the day in July, as the sun goes down Sacramento cools off to 65-70, but Stockton and Marysville can be 5 degrees hotter, and Modesto and Chico 10 degrees even hotter, and so on the farther they are from the Delta Breezes.

Which is a long way of saying that I would guess Valley Springs is hotter at night than the Auburn area, and it would be better growing fruit in Auburn even though they may be the same altitude. But I'm sure it's lovelier than where you live now (but maybe I'm prejudiced :) )

Carla in Sac

I have posted this before, but will again. I pick my Granny Smith in November and they are very sweet and entirely different from what you buy in the store. I don't know if they are as good as those from your microclimate, axel. You can grow Lady Williams and I simply can't. It is a crime that people can't eat these good apples, but yes keep your eye on the farmer's market. I used to sell them at a market, but I have quit going to the markets much. It was too much work for too little money. The competition was fierce. At least here in Washington there would be ten other people selling apples. Even if they weren't as good as mine ( ok a little brag here) there are many who boy based on price.
California doesn't have a big apple industry anymore and likely never will again. It is just too expensive to grow there. I will guess that the land where axel is located is too expensive to warrant putting in a 160 or 80 acre orchard. When they grew them near Fresno they had too much sunburn to make it profitable. So many things in California are going to those that can be machine harvested such as almond, prune, walnut, grapes, etc. They want to lower harvest cost due to minimum wage and social taxes. We have the same thing going on here with wine grapes, hops, and now machine harvest asparagus will be the next big thing. In Cali they don't even want to pay for pruning and those nut crops and prunes aren't even pruned much. Near Kern Cali they have to pay around $400 per acre per year for irrigation water.
So those of you who come here need to plant many trees so you can enjoy the better taste of the tree ripened fruit at least similar to axel's if not as good. Or maybe even better in some cases as there are likely things he can't grow as well as you in your microclimate.
The parsnips and Brussels Sprouts have been really good right out of the garden, but the last two weeks it is freeze too hard now. I pulled all the parsnips and we put the sprouts in the freezer.

Fruitnut, I am in the Santa Cruz mountains, about three to four miles from the Monterey Bay, about 30 miles southeast of the open ocean, so even though I am close to the water, it's quite a bit warmer here due to the geography and the mountains that block the predominantly northwesterly marine flow. We still get some fog, mostly when there is a southern surge, which is when fog flows northward up from Point Conception.

Summer highs run from 68F on a cold day to the mid 80's on a warm day. Nights are quite cool, and lows can run anywhere from the upper 50's to low 40's. A low of 44F on an August day isn't uncommon.

winters are chilly but short, we clock anywhere from 1000 hours on cold winters to as low as 600 on a mild winter, most of the chill accumulating in between thanksgiving and the end of February.

Rainfall is around 60 inches a year, but no rain from May through September, total drought conditions during that time.

Axel: Thanks for the detailed response. Didn't have any idea that the marine flow is mostly from NW. I was on your Cloudforest website yesterday. Learned a lot there. I can tell you are interested in weather and climate, as am I. I know CA climates pretty well and am trying to learn more relative to my possible relocation.

Thanks again!!

I love this thread

A ripe Granny Smith apple is something you should try before you die.
I was a commercial grower back in the stone ages and what a treat it was to find some yellow Grannies left on the tree to ripen properly.
Yet the trade demanded that we pick them green, such a pity.
I was growing fruit at about the latitude 32 deg south about 25 Km from the coast at an elevation of 300m.
We could grow the best Grannies there, yet we could still grow cherries and citrus side by side.
That is the location where Pink Lady and Sundowner were bred, so thats their natural range if you like.

Thanks every one for this forum I love it.

Axel:
Searching best apples Santa Cruz, a bunch of your posts came up. Thanks for sharing your expertise.

I went to the Nursery to buy a Gala apple bare root, choosing Gala because there is one growing a few doors away from my yard. My former neighbor gave me some of the apples which were very good, better than store bought.

But the man at the nursery said the Pink Lady is a much better apple than the Gala. I asked if it would do well in my area of Santa Cruz, which is in Live Oak by the upper harbor by Capitola Road. He assured me that it would. But when I got home I read the tags; they said that Pink Lady is for hot climates, so I wonder if I should take it back tomorrow and get the Gala or another variety. What do You think? Do You know if Pink Lady will ripen well in my neighborhood? Among store-bought organic apples, I like the Pink Lady the best, then the Braeburn, and the Gala third. It would be nice to grow an apple that keeps well and (optionally) could be eaten raw or cooked. I'd probably prefer a later ripening variety than one that ripens in summer when there are still plenty of other fruits available.

It's pretty warm where I live, but probably nothing like the summer heat where you live. Aren't you in Grape-growing country in the SC mountains? Which red or reddish apple would develop the best flavor in my area,on a dwarf or semi-dwarf stock, and ripen for sure? I don't even know for sure what chill requirements mean, but it has gone below freezing maybe 10 times in the last couple months, which is probably a bit more than usual.

Any advice you give me will be greatly appreciated. The other trees I'd like to plant are a pineapple guava and a Japanese plum. Both have been observed growing in my area, and both make delicious fruit, although no-one knows what varieties they are.

Thank-you, I really enjoy your posts.

-Gala (like the apple, I always say)

Gala:

Pink Lady will do fine for you, but Gala and Pink Lady will ripen almost 5 months apart from each other, so why not plant them both?

Winesap and Arkansas Black would do well for you also.

While you're at it, tear out all that silly lawn and fill up the back yard with apple trees. Remember some nurseries give discounts for quantities over 100 trees. OK, so you're probably not that serious about it, but once you start growing your own fruit you start thinking about things like that...

Applenut

I am so unimpressed with everything about gala besides yeald. How do the rest of you feel about their complete lack of charactor (or am I just missing it)? They seem like the new Red Delicious to me. Opinions?

I thin them to get best possible quality, by the way, and they get plenty of light.

I would say Gala is Red Delicious done right: sweet, crunchy, mildly aromatic; a fine apple overall. It does really well in Maryland. They need to hang a long time or they will not have much flavor. I harvest when they are yellowish, not white, in the background behind the red stripes. They may like more heat to bring out the flavor - it can be pretty hot here when they are ripening.

Scott

Harvestman:

Its well over 100 degrees when we harvest Gala in August, but they're firm and crisp, sweet and juicy. I would enjoy a bit more spice in them, but everyone I give a sample to wants more. The tree bears heavily and is a fireblight monkey, but blows away anything we can get in the store at that time.

Applenut

I've eaten them well ripened, but as grown here they don't do anything for me. I'm not surprised they would do well commercially although they ripen about with Honeycrisp and almost everyone around here prefers that apple. Maybe they just don't reach great quality in Z6. They do have Cox as a parent- and that is certainly a most distinctive apple.

Mike:
"We could grow the best Grannies there, yet we could still grow cherries and citrus side by side."
That sounds like a fruit lovers paradise. Citrus and cherries and Sundowner. Where are you in WA, north of Perth? but didn't you also tell us that the parrots put you out of business?

Rozegardener, the nursery is right, pink lady is the best apple for Santa Cruz, even Live Oak. For you, it will be a very late apple, ripening in December and January. You can keep it on your tree even through the mild freezes, the apple can take the 20's (F) and freeze solid, yet recover fine and tastes fantastic.

My orchard is at 500 feet elevation, inland, but it's not as hot as Bonny Dune, but definitely hotter than Live oak. There are better apples than Gala that I would recommend, but Gala is nice and aromatic when tree ripened.

Applenut is right, you need 3 or 4 different varieties to cover the whole season. Based on what's readily available in the local nurseries and what will do well in Live Oak, your best bet is Gravenstein for August, Gala for September, Jonagold for October, Fuji for November and Pink Lady for December. Braeburn is a nice apple too, but it's not a good one for Live Oak.

My first apple tree ever was a multi-graft on M7, it's what got me started, once I tasted the apples, I was hooked, nothing even came close, and I grow just about everything that will fruit here.

Geraldo, we grow cherries, cherimoyas and citrus side by side here. In fact, the cherries and cherimoyas ripen about the same time, in early June. I am grafting sundowner this year, I just picked it up at our scion exchange.

While some citrus do quite well here, the best place where you can do cherries and citrus side by side is down by Lincove, that's where the University of California Citrus research station is, and they have thousands of amazingly delicious varieties. And they get enough chill to grow every cherry there is. They can't do cherimoyas, and they can't do every apple variety. The tradeoff is always heat.