I don't have Pristine, but I am happy with my Liberty. It is about three years old and produced a small crop of nice fruit this past year. I bought it for its resistance to CAR because that is the major disease problem I have with my apples. I did not spray with Immunox last year and saw significant CAR on many of my apples, but the Liberty, while showing some spots, did just fine. The apples were pretty tasty, too.

Chuck

I love my Liberty, but I haven't pruned it well, and I understand that they can be a little unruly. I've eaten some that are among the best of any apple I've ever eaten. With care they will keep several weeks. It has been completely free of any health issues for years, except that I had a trace of powdery mildew one year.

Pristine has a pretty narrow harvest window but is a good summer apple- still, I'd run with Williams Pride if it was a choice between the 2. WP has a much longer harvest, keeps better and is a beautiful and very tasty apple. To me not as good as Macoun but, for its season, very good.

Liberty has its fans but doesn't seem to win enough love to make it commercially viable for such a grower friendly apple. In orchards I manage that have it the fruit is usually not as prized as apples like Honeycrisp, Mutsu, or even Gala and the Liberties usually largely go to waste.

Maybe you should have Applesource send you some Liberty to see if it appeals to your palate. You're in luck if it does because once you know how to manage it it will fruit for you every year and as you already know it is disease resistant.

If you aren't planning to spray for insects Liberty is a lousy no-spray apple as it is a plum curculio magnet.

Liberty is also a codling moth magnet! My Liberty has had Yellow Delicious go completely untouched by CM without a single Liberty escaping.

Now, I think that's because CM have good taste. Your mileage may vary.

;-)M

Ok then, I can buy some 7 gallon locally for $25 each Honeycrisp, Gala, Red Fuji, and yellow delicous. I really only need 2 trees to choose.

Here's a thought- I don't know where you are or whether a 7 gallon tree package is good or bad where you are, but before you plunk down your hard-earned cash consider looking online at one of the sources that show up here from time to time, and consider rootstock choices and such (which I suspect that local nurseries and big box stores just won't have a clue about!) and then buy.

'Course, then you'll have many more choices, but where there's choices there's voices, and this is a good place to listen to them.

Good luck,

M

Bare root trees are usually a better investment than trees in 5-7 gal. pots. Those small potted trees usually start out with a bare root with a very nice roots system that's too big for the pot and they end up cutting the most important part of the tree to fit it in the pot.

I suggest you order from a nursery that specializes in fruit trees like ACN.Com and choose from a hundred varieties.

"ACN.com"????

That can't be right -- when I typed www.ACN.com into my browser and hit the button, I was redirected to a website for some phone company in the Caribbean.

Granted, they might have great voice and data rates just waiting for me the next time I need to make calls from Haiti or Jamaica, but I didn't see any fruit trees for sale. ;-)

All right, google Adams County Nursery. Cummins Nursery is another possibility and there are many more.

I emailed Stark Bros. for help on finding a variety for me, "We tend to like the yellow apples over the red." A gal there by the name of Brenda emailed me right back, She was very friendly and gave me some real good information. She picked out 3 apple trees that ripen at different times and picked out one to pollinate the others with. That is some good customer service there!

I grow Pristine and Liberty. Both good apples. Don't have much bug problems due to using footies. My trees are still young and I use dwarfing rootstock. Pristine is good, nice flavor. Liberty is one of my best. Very sweet down here with nice acidity and crispness. Much prefer Liberty to Pristine. I grow two others you may want to consider. Hawkeye and Jonalicious. Hawkeye is nothing like the current Delicious varieties. It is absolutely delicious down here (Houston). Can see why they changed the name to Delicious...it is. Jonalicious is very similar to Liberty but in my opinion better. It is very sweet, crisp, with excellent balance of acid. It is my favorite. Highly recommend Cummins and ACN ... excellent trees with great selection of varieties and rootstock.

I read an article today in Goodfruit Magazine that said WSU did tastes comparisons between new strains and Hawkeye delicious and no one was able to differentiate them based on taste. They claimed the test included people who loved and knew apples well, apple likers without much knowledge and people who don't particularly like apples.

I've tasted very red strains that seemed to have a very hard skin and were not nearly as good as the old strain to my palate so I'm not convinced by their study. Here in NY, I don't even particularly like Hawkeye Delicious, even as a straight sweet but it's probably better grown elsewhere.

Obrionusa-
I'll second Harvestman's recommendation of William's Pride. Other Disease Resistant varieties like the Liberty and Enterprise that I grow are still somewhat susceptible to CAR (my biggest nemesis here in RI) and Scab, but Williams Pride's doesn't even get a touch of it. WP is a great tasting early season apple which is a combination that's not easy to find. I've had great luck with Cummin's, Adam's County Nursery, and Trees of Antiquity. Best of luck, -Glenn

for what it's worth, my Liberty is the only tree i my yard that reliably gets crops of unblemished apples. I have Jonagold which gets ok fruits half of the time, and golden delicious that never gets edible fruits. Then North Pole which does OK but not as good as Liberty. I like the Liberty apples for taste. crunchy and nice flavor. I'm in Southwest Washington and I grow organically which might be an issue.

I love Liberty trees for the Midwest - Williams Pride is a good choice too. I also have some Statefair trees which have produced fantastic large apples for the last few years (with no spray). They were the youngest producing trees (on M7) other than Missouri Pippin and Huntsman. Does anyone have any disease resistance info on Statefair?

I've had bad luck when ordering small lots from large nurseries or mega stores - many were not the correct variety and the employees had no idea what rootstock they were on. I got several trees in 2001 and by the time the trees produced fruit (revealing all the errors) the nursery had changed ownership twice.

ACN was excellent - in 2006 I ordered 500 trees and they were all very healthy. They're also over 100 years old and have had the same family as owners the whole time (I believe).

If you are ordering just a few I'd go with a smaller operation (not sure if ACN sells small orders) that can actually confirm the apple is true to type (they have a mature bearing tree) and can tell you the rootstock that the scion is on. Many large companies just say "semi-dwarf" that could be a dozen different rootstocks all with different traits.

ACN takes small orders- just charges more for them.

I really thought I read that William's pride is not CAR resistant. Yes or no?

Chuck

Almost CAR immune up here.

Now everywhere I read on William's Pride I see that it is CAR resistant. I can't even find where I read that it wasn't. I may simply have had a brain burp. OTOH, I could swear there were lesions on my WP this last season when I didn't spray with Immunox.

Chuck

I agree with Glenn. Here in suburban Maryland, surrounded by Red Cedar, Enterprise gets just a touch of cedar apple rust. Williams Pride next to it gets zilch (and likewise no scab or fireblight). The tree is super disease resistant, the apples are tasty, but the plum curculio love it.