Your Classic Apple Orchard

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Issue # 125 - September/October 1990

A mini-handbook on varieties and how to grow them ecologically.

By Brenda Olcott-Reid

AN APPLE ORCHARD MAY BE the quintessential symbol of the good life in the country. What seems easier or more natural than plucking per fect, pesticide-free apples from trees you planted as saplings and lovingly watched grow over the years? In reality, apples are a demanding crop with many pest problems; commercial apple-growers don't apply 12 to 18 sprays a season because they enjoy spraying. But by carefully choosing apple varieties and rootstocks adapted to your area's climate and pests, by keeping trees healthy through good site selection and cultural practices, and by taking advantage of recent advances in biological control, you can grow high-quality, low-spray apples. Here in southeast Kansas, we produce bumper crops of more than two dozen varieties, almost free of serious disease or insect injury, by using just two early-season sprays.

ANTIQUE VS. MODERN APPLES

Many people hold to the romantic idea that apples used to taste better in the "good old days," and just naturally resisted disease and worms. After all, orchardists didn't spray their trees back then, right? Wrong. Fruits were some of the first crops to be treated with pesticides — and back in the good old days of the late 1800s and early 1900s, they used lead arsenate. (Old appleorchard soil may still contain unsafe levels of lead today. In Colonial America, when apples weren't sprayed, every farm family had a 50-tree apple orchard to produce enough fruit for a year's supply of hard cider, the fermented drink that washed down every meal. The family could store the few pest-free apples for fresh eating and baking, but they tossed most into the cider grinder, oblivious to worms and surface diseases.

That's a good approach to follow today if you have the time and equipment to make cider, whether hard or sweet. But if you want apples for fresh eating, cooking and storing, choose each variety on its merits for those uses, as well as its disease resistance and climate adaptation, regardless of when it was developed. While there are a number of excellent older varieties, many other antiques are not woth growing today, because newer types have surpassed them. On the other hand, some of the latter-day improvements" were cultivated just for looks, transportability or fine flavor, but can be very disease susceptible. On the other other hand, all of the scab-immune apples (varieties so resistant to scab they don't get it at all, even during seasons when the disease is severe came from modem breeding programs.

APPLES FOR ALL SEASONS

When choosing apple varieties, note when they ripen and if they store well under refrigeration or in a root cellar, and for how long. Your apple harvest season can stretch as long as three or four months, starting with summer apples of July or August and lasting till first frost. Although the summer apples' flavor and quality aren't up to par with the best of the fall's, and the apples can only maintain firmness and flavor for a few weeks in the refrigerator, they provide a refreshing first taste of apple season. Where summers are hot, most summer apples appreciate some midday shade; excess heat causes mealiness and lack of sweetness.

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