Summer Apples and MeMa’s Applesauce Recipe

When is apple season? Most Americans are going to answer “fall, of course,” October to be exact. We tend to relate the crisp autumn air and apple picking with each other. The fact is that apple season can start early June. It does feel a little odd to be picking ripe apples with green cherries around and before peaches are even close to ripening!

AdobeStock/wlodzimierz

What are the characteristics of these early apples? To quote Grandma Greuel, “They’re only good for sauce.” She did indeed turn the entire crop of early apples into fantastic sweet-tart apple sauce. Her favorite variety of the summer apples is Lodi. A very typical summer apple it is large, soft and yellowish-green with a smooth skin. There are a few apples held in high regard during the summer for eating out of hand such as ‘Gravenstein’ and ‘Paula Red’. These apples hold a “moment in the sun” — they are slightly crisp for just a few days and then they turn soft and mushy. I prefer to pick summer apples a little early when they are firmer and tart like a tree-ripened Granny Smith.

We have a few notable early apples in our orchard. ‘Yellow Transparent’ is an old-time favorite and is sometimes confused with a similar apple called ‘May’. May apple has the earliest fruit in our orchard and has the strange habit of blooming twice a year and sometimes produces a second late crop. If you do a little research you will find that most early apples have many synonyms which can include terms like “Juneating” or “Early Harvest.” This makes discerning apples types difficult as they were marketed with so many different names — sometimes a different one from nursery to nursery.