Depends on your taste preferences, but I have a suggest for first to fruit and last to fruit.

I like Ginger Gold for very early (start of August for me) supper big apples, they are tart if you pick them early, mild if you wait for them to turn golden yellow, great pie apple or fresh eating.

To me, Pink Lady is unparalleled, and is the perfect choice for "last to fruit" (as late as November). In a good year, this apple is the perfect combination of sweet and tart, it is like eating candy, it stores better than almost any other apple and can maintain its excellent flavor in storage. It has also been shown to be an excellent cider apple surprisingly. Perfect for fresh eating.

If you like sweet apples, many say honeycrisp is the best. Then there are the heirlooms that many backyard growers love like Ashmeads Kernel & Cox Orange Pippen (personally I don't believe the hype but as I said, taste is highly subjective).

Thanks for the reply. Pink Lady and Honeycrisp definitely interest me. My big issue is I need something with a high level of scab resistance. Maybe I have it wrong here and please correct me if so, but I'm under the impression that most of the effective fungicides require a couple weeks time from spray to harvest (captan is 14 days for example). With the tight spacing in the system I want to do and the extended harvest, I would think it would be pretty hard to spray for disease once the early harvest began. If that's not the case, then it's a whole new ballgame.

I don't spray my fruit.

Here is a link that might be useful: I bag it.

Captan has a zero day pre-harvest interval on apples. If that's not enough for you, you can always skin your apples, which completely dispenses of any captan residue.

Thanks for the replies.

tradergordo, bagging has crossed my mind, but spraying just seems much quicker and easier.

Olpea, that's strange...I was looking at a spray program from UNH that says Captan is 14 days for Apples and 0 days for Stone fruit. Ferbam is listed as 7 days for Apples. Folpet is listed as 0, but I'm not familiar with it.

Carbaryl is 1 and Malathion is 3 for apples, which is why I was thinking it would be easy to spray for pests, but we have a scab problem here and thought working the fungicide into the schedule would be more difficult.

Hmmm, guess I have to think this through a little more.

bagging sounds awesome! thanks for the info gordo

Firstyear,

The Captan formulation I use has a zero PHI for all major tree fruits listed. I also checked a couple major spray guides and they report the same thing. It's possible UNH is referring to some homeowner formulation, but I rather think they just have misprint. Check the label of any Captan formulation you buy, but I think you'll find a 0 PHI.

Scab won't be a problem with the cultivars you mention above in the OP. You won't have to spray them for scab at all. If you choose some scab susc. cultivars like Pink Lady, you may have to spray for scab, but generally those sprays are early in the season, so PHI isn't an issue.

CAR may be a bigger issue for you. Even the disease resistant Goldrush is not resistant against CAR. However, like scab, CAR is treated early in the season, so PHI doesn't really enter into it.

Carbaryl and Malathion are pretty weak insecticides, and carbaryl if sprayed early will thin off all your apples. Tiazicide Once and Done is a better choice. Several folks on this forum have had good luck with it and I use a similar product. It has a long PHI (two weeks) but you generally don't need to spray right up to harvest anyway.

Thanks Olpea. That's awesome information. Googling around there's so much information and misinformation out there, it gets difficult to separate out the chaff sometimes.

Sounds like I really don't need to place so much focus on the disease resistant strains. Time to sit down and expand the search for varieties.

firstyear,
Be sure to come back here with your 'possibles' list - there are some very helpful folks here with lots of 'real-world' experience.
Wish I'd had some of these folks at my beck and call when I started planting apples 15+ years ago; I planted a bunch of varieties that just wouldn't work here. Out of over 60 varieties, I'm now down to less than 10 that are worth the space they occupy, if they're even still taking up space. Don't believe everything you read in the catalogs, or Extension bulletins, for that matter - but if one piques your interest, throw it out here for comment, but don't take it personally if someone trashes your latest favorite with less-than-glowing reviews. Take it and learn from it.

Couple of suggestions for you to consider.
MonArk - best early season apple I've grown. Ripe mid-July. Large red-over-green apple with crisp, tart, white flesh. Good for fresh eating and cooking. Unlike most early apples, will keep well under refrigeration for 6 weeks or more without going mealy. Good disease resistance.
Centennial crab - Genetic dwarf, if I recall correctly. A pretty little apple with terrific taste. Does get some scab & CAR here(I don't spray), but it's a winner in the taste department.
YMMV.

I posted my opinion, I thought but it's not here. I think you should really think about storage ability. Someone mentioned Pink Lady which is great in this regard although it's not very well tested where you are. If someone here has been cropping it in your zone for a few years it would be nice to hear from them. Goldrush is fantastic tasting and well tested. It will assure you apples into spring if you store them in a cool place.

The best storage apples tend to be dense fleshed which is not everyone's cup of tea. If you like a softer apple, (not mushy,just not hard) Northern Spy is a good keeper, delicious and excellent in pies, sauce and cider.

If you like sweet, non-acidic apples, Fuji is a world class keeper although it's a bit of a handful to manage and tends towards bienniel cropping.

Consider the difference between a variety that only is useful for a couple of months and another that can provide you with apples for 2 seasons. Most importantly, there isn't a lot of other good fruit to enjoy in the winter months.

Great stuff I'm getting from everyone here.

I actually tend toward denser, tarter apples for fresh eating, although my wife prefers sweeter.

My original list I had compiled before I changed my mind to disease resistant varieties was

Pomme Gris
Mutsu
Honeycrisp
Fuji

so with this in mind and everything else considered (I still want a very early apple for fresh eating, but hman makes a very good point about storage).

Williams Pride
Mutsu
Honeycrisp
Fuji
GoldRush
Pink Lady

I'll give Pink Lady a try and if it works, great...if not, I'll replace with something else. Any other thoughts from folks?

Definitely keep the Williams Pride. A great tasting early apple is hard to find... And, this is the most disease resistant variety that I know of. Without any spraying, it's the only variety that I have which has been immune to CAR. Even my Liberty and Enterprise are affected somewhat. -Glenn

I prune and do some consultation for a small commercial grower who showed me how good Pink Lady can be as grown here- in Z6. I thought we were too short seasoned.

Then last year it was so cool and wet PL didn't ripen. He get's a crop most seasons though, so I'm trying to grow it now- an hour north of NYC.

Just want to mention that there are some organic sprays too which don't seem to get much mention here. Greencure can be used to control cedar apple rust, scab, powdery mildew, and many other diseases, and its safe enough to eat (although I wouldn't recommend that :) I honestly can't say how it stacks up to chemical alternatives, I don't have a huge amount of experience.

Firstyear, I'd replace william's pride with Zestar, because pristine and William's pride come in at about the same time. Zestar will fill a niche for middle of August for you. Zestar is a long keeper too, much longer than any other Summer apple. And it has a lot of disease resistance.

I am not that impressed with freedom, it's ok, but not outstanding. Liberty is a good one, though. Pink lady is great but might be too late for you.

BTW, if anyone is interested in an earlier version of pink lady, I've got an apple called Sweet Valentines which ripens late September and is very similar to pink lady.

Or drop the Pristine. Williams Pride is prettier, has a wider harvest and most would say is more interesting for eating although Pristine, being an early Golden Delicious type, is probably a better cooker.

I've had people say that Williams Pride is the best apple they've ever tasted, which mystifies me but I'd be more surprised to hear it said of Pristine. That isn't to say that I don't think WP is a very good apple, but it's not even as good IMO as its parent, Macoun.

Firstyear: if you aren't careful you'll end up like me and probably many others thinking to yourself, I just want about 2 or 3 trees. A year or 2 later you plant more, and then more. The next thing you know, every inch of your property is covered in fruit trees. I wanted 2 apples, 2 pears and one peach 6 years ago and am now up to 9 apples, 2 pears and one peach. Sure would like to have another peach or 2 but am out of room!!! If the neighbor to the east let me cut down a Hackberry or 2 I could plant at least 3 more trees, hmm, wonder when they're going on vacation -:)

Liberty can be such a fine tasting apple when harvested in its prime and stored cool for a couple of weeks. It's late but worth waiting for, very versatile for fresh eating, drying, juice/cider/wine.

I noticed that Barbara Pleasant / Mother Earth News also has Enterprise, which fills the gap between Williams Pride and Liberty. She's in Virginia, says she doesn't spray at all.

Here is a link that might be useful: some tree fruit varieties Z 6

Enterprise ripens well after Liberty. Liberty can't be called a particularly useful apple IMO because it doesn't store or cook well. It has its following and is great for disease resistance but the idea of harvesting sound fruit in VA without insecticide, Surround, and or bagging is not going to often happen. Liberty is an plum curculio magnet.

Hman, I have to agree that Liberty has its limitations, and I was surprised to have ours keep "tolerably well" right up until last week when carefully bagged and kept chilled at just above freezing. And we love eating them when they are fully ripe.

Still, when we went back to supermarket Fuji, Jazz, and Pink Lady- it's true- by now, Liberty had done its run and was no comparison.

So far we've been spared the PC problem, -we do have codling moth. Of course, that's in Montana.

I enjoy cooked Liberties in pies, or fried, but I'm easy.

Best,

M

I've pretty much dropped the thought of Liberty or Pristine at this point, at least in favor of Pink Lady and Honeycrisp. The good thing is I have a long, albeit narrow space (only 4 ft wide, hence the Super Spindle) I can work with, so I can put a few different varieties in place. I thought to start with 7 or 8, which would take up about half the space, see how they work out and go from there. What are folks' impressions of Mutsu and Pommes Gris? Pommes Gris seems like a neat apple and I've always loved the taste of Mutsu.