Almost all apples and crab apples can pollinate each other, so as long as you have different kinds, I wouldn't worry about it. Crabapples are particularly good pollinators because they bloom for a long time. More importantly, what kinds are you planting exactly? When you say you've started some trees, do you mean from seed? Apple seedlings are very variable. They'll resemble their parents only as much as, say, we resemble our own parents. And if you don't know who the father (pollen parent) was, it's even harder to predict what the offspring will be like. What if that tasty light red apple of yours was pollinated by a tiny sour crabapple? If I were you, I'd make sure I knew exactly what I was planting, and buy some grafted trees. Then again, it can be fun to be surprised, so if you like surprises, enjoy.

Thanks for the comments. I was hoping Red Delicious wasn't prone to chlorosis. I wonder if the root stock could be, though? My soil pH is somewhat high, around 7.8 or so, and excess lime is always rated as very high in soil tests. In fact, about 12-18 inches down you pretty much hit a layer of lime when you get to the normal percolation depth of natural rainfall. Ground water is also quite high in lime (naturally given the lime layer), and I don't expect I will be able to water with surface water for a while, if ever. I've never had much luck with iron chelate, though I've only sprayed it as a foliar treatment. On the other hand, I use the iron sulphate with great success on evergreens and lawns and other landscape plants subject to iron deficiency. Red Delicious seem to be much maligned, but I really like them. The few tree-fresh ones I've had have been really good, and the normal ones purchased in the stores (though somewhat bland) still have many times the flavor of newer varieties. Never really had an apple as tasteless as a gala or fuji.

Thanks much for all your responses! How right, it's December, how can I expect an apple to taste as fresh as if it were just picked off a tree? Although it did have crispness, just that odd streaking (and me and dh thought that the apple might have been exposed to freezing temperatures, but then you'd think it's flesh around the exterior would be mushy?) I've had Gala, and enjoyed them without complaint, and will try some of the other suggestions. Must be location, but I've never seen a honeycrisp in local grocers, just as in the other thread LindaC began with the rd, the Northern Spy apple is not available here either. A girlfriend was giving me her apple crisp recipe (she was from Ontario) and insisted I use Northern Spy for it, until she lived here a while and noticed it was not available. I can be more adventurous, but like beantheredunthat pointed out, dh's (or mine anyway) are more picky. I'll let him tough it out - he can go to the store and pick out his own apples and then complain to himself that there's something wrong with them!

Well my thought was to leave at least one limb as RD. The issue I have with it is that this tree has taken so much longer to flower than my other trees. The RD tree came from a grocery store (before I knew any better). All my other trees came from reputable tree nurseries. I've seen them flower the same year that I put them in or at the very latest one year after transplant. The RD also has loads of suckers making it more maintenance to prune each year. I've seen a bunch of vids online about grafting onto pre-existing trees and I think I'm going to go with using the tree as a framework (since I've spent seven years pruning it to form) rather than totally lopping off huge limbs. This video is from Stephen Hayes who decided to regraft a existing apple tree using Queen Cox scions. Here's the technique that I think I'll use which uses a tree's existing framework: Since this tree is so old and has so many good limbs to graft on, I was thinking of making a "Frakentree" and maybe starting with 30 different varieties similar to what is seen here: I was thinking of grafting the following varieties: Cider Apples Hewe’s Crab Smokehouse Golden Russet Desert Apples Arkansas Black Baldwin Belle de Boskoop Black Twig Braeburn Claygate Pearmain Cortland Cox Orange Pippin D'Arcy Spice Fuji Goldrush Gravenstein Irish Peach Kidd's Orange Red Macoun Pacific Rose Pink Lady (Cripps Pink) Sturmer Pippin Sweet Sixteen Winesap Zestar! Zuccalmaglio Grimes Golden Calville Blanc d’Hiver "High Quality" Desert Apples Ashmead's Kernel Blue Pearmain Karmijn de Sonnaville King of the Pippins Esposus Spitzenberg Anyone ever tried anything like this or have any thoughts? Seems like a fun project to do for a tree that I was thinking of chopping down just a couple weeks ago.