Floyd, I don't think any apple is highly curculio resistant. But as you have noticed there are degrees of infestation. Since nearly everyone seriously growing apples is spraying there is not much good data. Also, many of the trees that appear to be curc resistant have more to do with location of the tree than the variety, and so what little data you hear is often meaningless. I have found wild trees with no curc damage at all, but I don't think its the variety doing it, its the isolation or no overwintering grounds nearby or something else.

Similar remarks go for the moth damage (do make sure you are keeping track of which is your scourge, they are completely independent issues as far as resistance goes, a variety can be curc resistant but ruined by moths for example). I expect most of your damage is curc as it tends to ramp up faster in a new orchard. Moth damage is what you get to look forward to more and more :-) Consider using mating disruption for them, you just hang some lures in the spring and thats that.

Anyway if you really want to stick with no spraying I would just keep trying varieties yourself. And get ready for the moths...

Scott

An abandoned orchard near my in-laws had one tree with hardly any insect damage. It stood out. We thought maybe someone local was spraying it. The apples were pink fleshed. Very soft, not good for fresh eating. Then again it may have had some resistance. The city expanded the road there and took out about 20 trees. This resistant tree is still there though. We make apple brown betty out of the apples every year. It was nice to pick fresh apples with no treatment or insect damage. Infested apples were all over the ground from other trees. We grabbed a few from the other trees too that were not bad, but man those insects inside some are super gross. Disgusting creatures!

Occasionally I read about some old southern apples being partially resistant to bugs. They're the very hard apples; Arkansaw Black, King David, Stayman Winesap. I'm going to plant a couple and see what happens.

Scott, can you or someone tell me the type of mating disruption lures to purchase and where to purchase them? I hope to use them for the 1st time next spring, thanks, Chris.

Liberty sure seems to attract codling moth. They will decimate the Liberty apples on my multigraft and completely bypass the yellow delicious.

But I've been able to control cm almost completely with carefully timed Spinosad sprays; if I had to have a near-guarantee I'd use Once and Done, but am always more comfortable with the least toxic option.

That being said, I don't have to deal with plum curculio yet and I'm spared most things like sooty blotch and apparently CAR. Not too much fireblight too often, and powdery mildew is easy to knock back with sulfer so far. The arid west has its advantages.

Good luck,

Mark

I'm not sure if it still in progress, but PRI looked into breeding disease resistant apples a while ago.

In particular, Co-op #17 seems pretty interesting. According to ARS, it has resistance to apple maggot, plum curculio and red banded leaf roller, per a 1988 study. Of course, the PRI page describes it as "Bland, insufficient flavor, tough skin; tough flesh texture; undesirable growth habit", so maybe I'll pass on that one...Tough skin and texture aren't so bad- it will probably mellow with storage. But, bland and ARS's "slightly bitter", with a 12.5 brix reading crosses it off the list.

I see 7 with PC resistance listed. Several others also have bland or bitter in their descriptions. But, this one looks interesting. It has Jonathan in it's history and one brix reading of 17.3.

Floyd; from my experience one can not draw conclusions with any degree of confidence. PC destroys apples on 3 trees in my backyard. However at our Farm some 50 miles distance we haven't had any PC problems and the orchard (45 trees) are 10 to 12 years old. This past year I did not spray at all too wet, no available time and I'm getting too old. GR,Liberty,Enterprize, Red Yorking, and Northern Greening were fine except for sooty blotch. This orchard is isolated, surrounded by woodlands and miles from other trees except wild ones.

Chris, mating disruption is hard to source thanks to various regulations. I used to get them from Great Lakes IPM but I'm not sure they have anything registered for me anymore. Gemplers also sells, again to certain states only. If you have a local ag chemical supply thats probably the best place to look.

Scott
PS I just noticed arbico organics has it listed.. Note you need to pay mucho $$, but a bag will last several years if kept in freezer.

This post was edited by scottfsmith on Thu, Dec 11, 14 at 21:55

I know at least a few people in the broader neighborhood that have old apple trees that receive practically zero care but still produce a lot of usable apples or at least some of their trees do. I imagine they're pretty mainstream varieties or at least were 20 or so years ago when they were planted. There's one tree that's at least that old on my property, but it's pretty near worthless with under-sized, diseased, wormy fruit if it sets a crop at all. I hope it's a variety issue and not a factor of my location unless it's just that particular spot. I have seen some promise in some varieties I've added.

Do early maturing apples avoid any of the insect problems?

Scott, when you talk about moths, is that Oriental fruit moths? If I remember correctly, I think OFM's are what cause the ends of the peach branches to look bad? I've had plenty of that. And is that the likely cause of the worms I've seen in just a few of my Asian pears?

Floyd, most moths in apples are Codling moth but supposedly OFM can also infect apples. for pears its the same as apples.

It would really be great to figure out how some of these unsprayed trees manage to produce good fruit. Theres even one by my house, the owners don't pick the apples and I find them lying in the street perfect and unblemished. They don't even have sooty blotch on them.

Scott

There is definitely a difference here in codling moth infestation between varieties. Fuji is riddled with moths and King David has not a one. Wickson has nothing, Bramley was 100%. King David hasn't had any disease, so wins my vote.

An old timer once told me a perfectly disease resistant / insect resistant fruit was produced once but it was poisonous to eat. That stuck in my mind because if the bugs won't touch them, they have no diseases etc. There might be an obvious reason. Like in the case of Ben Davis, Arkansas black and others the reason is they are rock hard until they mellow. Nice soft early apples untouched may have a different meaning. Nothing touched my Hansen cherries I grew for years until I grew one that is actually not bitter and the insects tore it up. By the time it was a few inches tall I was protecting it because I knew it was something special. Bugs and diseases do their jobs which is look for things out of place and we want things out of place to manipulate our environment to produce larger sweeter fruit. Arkansas black grows slow as well making it less Fireblight prone. The most obvious solutions to disease are management such as don't leave old apples on the ground, till around the base of the tree several inches down and the width + of the tree. Less intensive apple plantings so trees don't touch , stagger between apples with other fruits to get rid of specific insects that target apples traveling tree to tree.

Hey Bob,

I see 7 with PC resistance listed. Several others also have bland or bitter in their descriptions. But, this one looks interesting. It has Jonathan in it's history and one brix reading of 17.3.

That does look interesting, but even more interesting to me is when I clicked the link "obtain this germplasm" (from your link) it took me to the USDA site where scions are apparently distributed.
Have you ever done this and if so, what is the cost? I followed it through a ways and it looked like it was free. Can it be? Free that is?
I just threw in several varieties off the top of my head and they had every one of them. A poster mentioned Frostbite the other day and it sounded interesting and unusual and they had it too.
Maybe this is only available to universities and other research stations?

I have heard some other board members including I think Mrs.G ordering wood from somewhere like this. Is this the place?

Because there is little research, all we can go on is anecdotal observation, of which I have a good deal. I used to have a nursery that I didn't spray at all and over the years I've had severeal clients that I pruned trees for that were never sprayed.

When it comes to PC, the Macintosh soft fleshed types are very attractive, or I should just say damage is highest there. Cornell's DR breeding, unfortunately, was to find something that could replace Macintosh's niche because it was NY's most important commercial apple when the research was launched. So William's Pride and Liberty have similar soft flesh- not mushy but not at all dense, the opposite of Goldrush or Fuji.

In my unsprayed nursery Goldrush and Fuji both were the most likely to produce decent fruit. Now my nursery trees get some spray but I'm mostly protecting against fungus. Others that do well lately include St. Edmond's Russet and Arkansas Black.

In unsprayed trees I manage, Old strain Winesap and old strain Yellow Delicious do well without spray. The old strain YD's are prone to russetting so I bet close relations to YD that are fully russet are probably even better.

I've never tasted King David as it is not grown up here much, but it is listed on Tom Burford's list as being resistant to scab CAR and fireblight. Now the esteemed Applenut has observed a resistance to CM in this variety. It is a close relative of Winesap so it sounds like a real good bet. Somebody please send me some wood.

I have read that the apples that grow fastest immediately after petal fall crush larva of PC very quickly, but it doesn't seem like this stops adults from feeding on them or scarring them while laying the eggs.

Thinking about my most bug resistant apples they tend to be late ones, so that is probably a good guide. I have a very late russet called Rusty Coat that gets almost no damage. It is all russeted and has very hard flesh. Hooples Antique Gold might be a good GD strain, in my limited experience it also is bug resistant. Russet doesn't stop codling moth but it does seem to slow them down a bit. I agree with Applenut on Wickson's bug resistance, but it has too many other problems in a warm humid climate, rots, cracking and CAR in particular. My King David hasn't fruited yet so no data on that.

I also have apples that get PC but not so much moths. Maigold is a hard-fleshed apple with relatively little moth damage. Rambour d'Hiver is another. My memory of moth damage is fading though, after five years of mating disruption I have almost no moths in my orchard.

Scott

Appleseed, I ordered both apples and pears last spring (see here). Of the 16, at least one graft of each took, so eventually I should be able to evaluate them all. Next time, I'll add a note to request only 1 stick each, as that was plenty for most varieties. I think there were a few where I used up most or all, but that was overkill. The vast majority of the grafts (over 90% of >50 grafts) took fine, as there were less than a handful of failures (all on potted trees). Over the last week, I've been putting together my list for this year and will probably post the candidates soon.

Keep in mind that while it is free, they don't want people requesting things which they can get from other sources online. As Murky mentioned in a recent thread, it is a good idea to get a Fedex account to cover the shipping.

As has been mentioned frequently before, locale makes a huge difference. From anecdotal accounts, some apples are insect resistant in some locations and not in others.

Ed Fackler was a well known apple guy, when he owned Rocky Meadow Orchard (started Midwest Apple Improvement Association, and patented the cultivar-Big Red Gala). He was continually looking for insect resistant apples and once wrote he'd been on countless "wild goose chases" traveling across the country because someone claimed they had an insect resistant apple. He'd gather some scions from the apple tree and graft them back in his own orchard. He said in every case, the supposed insect resistant apple was not insect resistant in his own orchard.

I mention this Cousin, because it sounds like you have a lot of insect pressure (like my area). There are lots of folks around here who plant apple trees and don't manage them. It's not uncommon for just about every apple on the tree to have significant worm damage. Codling moth is the biggest culprit. We get two generations here.

Another dimension of locale is the trap tree effect - if in a single orchard there is one really juicy tree (from a bugs perspective) the less juicy ones in that orchard will get less damage. But, if you have a stand of only less juicy trees the bugs will infest all of them. One way I saw this was when I finally got good Surround coverage on my apples and plums I found the curculio moved on to my unsprayed pears, which were before getting little curc damage. So, the not so juicy pears became more juicy when the really juicy apples/plums turned really non-juicy with the Surround.

.. yet another reason why it is so hard to get any real data on bug resistance.

Scott

I feel like I'm learning a lot from this discussion and getting a lot of ideas. Thanks, everyone.

Following up most directly on Olpea's story, I wonder if locations susceptible to late spring freezes wiping out the crop are less susceptible to insect damage. In other words, do periodic complete crop failures help to keep insect populations from getting too far out of hand? Any other theories on what makes for a location with low insect pressure?

What about very early apples? Does maturing early not help at all to limit exposure to insect damage? I can see what you seem to be suggesting, Scott, that maturing later would mean that the apple didn't reach the susceptible stage/texture until the insects were less active, but is there no evidence that the opposite strategy ever works (i.e. earliness)? A friend of mine had (until he moved away) a little orchard with multiple trees of multiple varieties, and he thought Pristine had good no-spray potential -- my Pristine fruited for the first time this year and the apples were almost all very nice -- so I'm hopeful that there's some mechanism for insect resistance with Pristine. Or instead of what I'm hypothesizing here, could early varieties do what Harvestman talked about, namely grow fast after petal fall and crush larvae?

And what about trap crops? Scott, your mention of plums and apples protecting pears from PC leads me to wonder if one could grow a sacrificial trap crop. In a small, organic context, I could see harvesting all the fruit of a trap crop before the insects completed their life cycle and burning them (or something along those lines.) Is there any hope in that line of thinking? (Beekeepers sometimes do something very similar sacrificing drone brood in order to destroy the varroa mites that drone brood preferentially attracts.)

An old timer once told me a perfectly disease resistant / insect resistant fruit was produced once but it was poisonous to eat.

That is true! Just ask Adam!

"Following up most directly on Olpea's story, I wonder if locations susceptible to late spring freezes wiping out the crop are less susceptible to insect damage. In other words, do periodic complete crop failures help to keep insect populations from getting too far out of hand? Any other theories on what makes for a location with low insect pressure?"

Cousin,

My thought is that in terms of insect pressure, location is largely temperature and rainfall/humidity driven.

As you move south w/ warmer winters and more rainfall, there are just more bugs. Folks who seem to have the least problems w/ insects are either in low rainfall areas like CA, or in the northern U.S. states (or Canada) where it's pretty cold in winter and the growing season shorter, where most insects find the environment more challenging. In this context, I once read about a Canadian grower who was telling others, "We should be thankful for our weather."

Another indication of pest pressure is the success of organic culture. Most organic operations are in drier or colder climates. There are very few in the SE.

I don't think spring freezes are a significant help in terms of reducing insect pressure. There was a lot of discussion in this regard when the widespread Spring freeze of 2007 hit the Midwest. As far as I could tell, the next year was just as bad as normal for insect pressure.

Spring freezes may help more in areas where insects have difficulty establishing large populations because of unfavorable environments (dry or cold climates) but in areas where there is plenty of warmth and rainfall, they multiply incredibly fast. Remember these pest insects are very efficient at reproduction. One Curc. can lay more than 70 eggs, and she hops from one fruit to another. Likewise w/ codling moth.

I think very early maturing apples may miss the second generation of codling moth. Here, codling moth seems to lay second generation eggs toward the end of July (based on unsprayed fruit of neighbors I've examined). This is an anecdotal observation, as I've never put this to a controlled test.

Bob.
I wanna thank you for turning me on to this ARS site. I'm having a ball with this. I'll probably try your suggestion, the only thing that concerns me is it's susceptibility to fireblight (if I'm reading the observations correctly).
It is a nice looking apple and you can certainly see it's resemblance to Jonathan.

Ed grew apples to sell. I think his appraisals may be based on commercially viable fruit. The apples I get here without spray wouldn't be saleable and probably wouldn't store well, but they certainly are good to eat.

Hman, perhaps you are right. I can only comment first-hand on unsprayed apples here, which sound remarkably like the ones Cousin describes, little to no edible flesh at all.

Same thing here. Unsprayed apples are virtually useless. You'd spend so much time cutting away rot etc that by the time you finished it would never be worth the effort.
I suppose some years with some varieties you might be able to do something worthwhile, but on the whole it's an act in futility.

I would have the same impression, even here, as the both of you, were I not around such a wide range of varieties. Unless you've seen unsprayed orchards with a very wide range of varieties, your observations may be of limited value. I would not want to discourage CF from experimenting.

I went on a field trip to an orchard in VA where the owner had nothing but very old, full sized yellow delicious apple trees that he never sprayed. He claimed to produce the only organic apple cider commercially in the state of VA.

He didn't get nice looking fruit but its was certainly useful fruit and he had given up on growing other varieties where this was not possible.

I've been given apples from at least three people each with 2-8 unsprayed (not organic, per se, just not hardly managed at all) trees, all within 5 miles of where I live, that were very usable, mostly with nothing but superficial imperfections. I helped pick up the dropped fruit from one of those home orchards once, and there were certainly bad apples in the mix, but mostly they were quite usable. I also have one tree that was here on my own place when I moved here, like I already said, that's essentially worthless, at least as an unsprayed tree. Perhaps my location is the chief problem (although the trees I've planted that are just coming into production are showing some mixed hope), but in this area generally -- which I guess is about as high with regards to disease and pest pressure as anywhere in the US -- it seems entirely evident that there's hope for usable unsprayed apples. It even seems like the odds are in my favor, although that could very well be because all the failures get cut down before long.

Another reason to like King David; this was a couple days ago. They still have about three weeks to go, they will be a deep purple, almost black when ripe. Not many apples obtain this marketable size and appearance here where our winters are tropical and September 15th was 110F.

I guess those of us in the east have never tasted a truly ripe KD.

Greetings:

I grew some King David in SE WI many years ago at an orchard I worked at during the time. I do like this variety as
very dark skin. I cannot comment on its insect/disease resistance as the orchard was sprayed often.

I can say that I have heard of some organic growers growing Connell Red as it has a waxy skin which the
apple maggot seems to stay away from.

Another who has an old farm orchard and never sprays
tells me his NW Greening usually is fine yet all the other apple varieties are riddled with maggot.

I recall our home orchard in my childhood had unsprayed
Wolf River and no maggot, yet the neighbor's apple tree of some unknown variety was always so full of apple maggot the fruit was impossible to use.

My brother's friend grows apples in the backyard. He ripped out his Jonathan as the maggots loved it, yet his other varieties had little to no maggot damage.

Differences in curculio on apples? They sure hit my red delicious this past year (june was constantly raining so
even Imidan did not work well). Yet my Northern Spy had
virtually no curculio damage.

One other factor I just remembered is topography .. if you put trees on a steep hill the bugs will more hit the upper trees. Or so I have noticed, consistently across many varieties and seasons and on two different hill areas I have. I think this has to do with a natural tendency to head up - think on the old standard trees they (genetically) trained on, the fruit is way off the ground. So, it could be possible to say put one of their favorite trees uphill and a less tasty tree downhill and come away with one good apple tree with no spraying.

Scott

Harvestman: here's when King David is ripe. Many people mistake it for Arkansas Black, but the flavor is night and day above AB. John Bunker up at Fedco trees in Maine claims it as one of their favorites also, and clients in Africa say it has one of the best growth habits there, requiring little training.

Small apples or huge hand.

It is interesting that you only now consider it ripe and Bunker also sings its praises. I've actually been interested in it for quite a while since seeing it on Burford's list of disease resistant apples.

By night and day, I assume you mean KD is a sweet? Not soft, I hope and would certainly guess.

OK, correction; the apples on the branch are NOT King David, but Lady Williams (that's what happens when the Belgian Fence makes tracing the branch to the tag difficult). The King David in the hand are indeed runts, but excellent-tasting runts. I picked the Lady Williams today, also very nice, very marketable, but nothing close to King David. KD is still very firm when ripe, but in a pleasant sort of way, very sweet, with a distinctly winey taste, hints of Welch's grape juice, but also very spicy, appley, sweet-tart, matching the color.

KD doesn't keep nearly like Arkansas Black unfortunately, but Lady Williams is reported to keep well and improve in ordinary storage, a plus where there is no refrigeration.

applenut:

The apples shown in your hand look exactly like the King David I had so many years ago. The orchard I worked at
during that time had just a few old trees. My favorite so I would take lunch time under those trees and enjoy the fruit.

For me I found King David to be a smaller sized fruit with very dark skin. The flavor was somewhat tart and perhaps
tasting a little similar to jonathan apples? Tough to describe the flavor but I really enjoyed it. I did not find it
to be sweet nor super tart just mildy tart.

Perhaps it develops more sweetness when grown in warmer conditions? It sure grew well here in Southern Wisconsin.

Spartan;

The KD in my hand are from an elementary school orchard, where they don't get a lot of love and the trees are never thinned. They grow in clusters of 3-4 on branch tips and spurs, and hang on the tree until they're past ripe. This results in a bit of biannualism, and this was an off year. I don't have any Jonathan to compare them to, but that's how Stark Bros. marketed them, as a superior replacement to Jonathan. They are plenty sweet here when dead ripe, which is tough to gauge as the color isn't always a good indication. Dave Wilson nursery is bringing them back into production.

I have often seen it smaller size and expect that is the only reason why it is not more popular. My tree has not fruited yet but from the King Davids I have seen they are not as big as Jonathan. In every other aspect they are superior.

Scott

On a good year Jonathon is just about perfect in my book, but it can be a fussy apple that is very susceptible to fire blight. KD and it are apples of two distinct seasons, I believe, as Jonathon is ready by late Sept here. No need to compare the two, actually- Jonathon only holds its quality for about a month

I really should graft King David then. I love Jonathon apples, so anything similar or better, with better disease resistance sounds like something to try out. In terms of size, anything 2"+ diameter is fine, which it looks to be based on the photo.

There seems to be a curious mix of information about when King David ripens, both in the comments here and from nurseries. Century Farms Orchard (in north-central NC) says late August. Hidden Springs in east Tennessee says mid-season. But Johnson Nursery in north Georgia says "late October and hangs on into winter." This discussion has gotten me interested in trying this variety, too.

Womack nursery in tx says they ripen about 9/1

1924 Stark catalog listed it in Arkansas as late October/early November. We had one odd one ripen end of September here, and it was poorly colored but very, very good. Our late ripening properties may have to do with our lack of chill, although the blossom period is pretty compact once it does bud burst.

I have a dozen or so different apple trees and the arkansas black has given me several flawless apples when the other trees are riddled with worm holes. the whole tree appears healthy and vigorous.