Greetings Hopeful Novice, Growing apples and peaches is certainly possible in Maryland, as long as you are prepared for an investment of time and expect to make lots of mistakes along the way. Although you are a novice now, you have the luxury of time on your side -- it will be several years before you are getting any fruit and for those years you can focus on practicing pruning and training while reading up on how to get the fruit. The biggest problem for me has been bugs, in particular the plum curculio and moths. For these you need either regular sprays or to bag the fruit. The next biggest problem are the bigger critters, namely squirrels and deer. If you have significant numbers of deer in your area you will need to completely protect the trees from them. I have had to become a squirrel hunter to get any peaches. Third are diseases, which will require a few sprays and some vigilence. Most of your varieties I would call reasonable for the area. I am growing all of them except for the Polish apple and Snow Beauty. Cox is not worth growing, it tends to get mealy in our heat plus it suffers from other problems. Snow Beauty I also would be concerned about, it is a Zeiger selection bred in California and I have generally not had good luck with their fruits. In particular some of their peaches are highly susceptible to bacterial spot. Spitz can be difficult to grow but I have not found it bad for me other than it taking a long time to fruit. Gravenstein I was told would get mealy here but it has been fine for me so far. Ashmead's Kernel is an excellent beginner apple in our climate. Peregrine should also be good. My suggestion is to call up Neil at Trees of Antiquity and see about exchanging some of the harder to grow ones. If they have already set up the order they probably will not do it, but otherwise they may go along. There are some highly disease-resistant apples, but diseases are relatively manageable compared to the pests so there is not a great deal gained by planting them. I would say the best practice is to make sure to avoid the more disease-prone varieties and leave it at that. Overall I would say you stand a good chance to succeed if you have time to devote to it which is roughly similar to the time needed to have a small vegetable garden, watch your trees carefully to learn their habits and catch potential problems before they become overwhelming, and persist at it through the inevitable setbacks. Scott

TOA has both those trees in 5-6' feathered size. They ship very nice stock. Misterbaby. Here is a link that might be useful: TOA

Hair metal, scab is no problem for me. I don't spray for it and I only get a little bit here and there. I have heard that scab is more a northern problem on apples; it can also be bad in the south but is not as likely to be. Fireblight on the other hand is a huge problem, as is CAR. Goldrush is a great apple for the mid-atlantic and it ripens here very well every year. It gets CAR badly however. In general I don't think the disease resistance breeding has been super helpful for us backyard mid-atlantic growers since scab is not a big problem and that is the main goal of the disease-resistance programs. On the other hand many apple varieties just can't "take the heat" or humidity. For example Akane is a wonderful tasting apple but the skin is just too easily penetrated by bugs and diseases and I get very few good fruits. My most bulletproof apple is an obscure old heirloom called Rambour d'Hiver, I harvest pretty much perfect apples from that tree every November. Scott

Goldrush tastes nothing like yellow delicious. YD is distintive for it's aroma and for it's low acid sweet taste. Goldrush doesn't share that particular aroma which I believe is unique to GD and Rush is loaded with acid, making it a much tastier apple to my acid loving palate- a top pick. Goldrush is harder, crisper and keeps much better for that reason. Goldrush will not ripen on even a relatively long season in Z4, I would assume. The original GD has some russeting, is not very disease susceptible and is amazingly unattractive to insects. The newer smooth skinned varieties don't share this and to me don't taste as good. Some of them ripen a couple weeks sooner. Pristine is probably your best choice for disease resistance in a GD type apple but it doesn't keep well and matures in mid-summer here.