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Apples in Over 7500 Varieties
Sunday, September 24, 2006

There is nothing like an apple!

Here are some great Ohio apple orchards among my favorites and they are found with the many listed and described on www.ohioapples.org. You can pick your own or purchase a fine range of apples by the basket, peck, or bag at these great places. Look at this list and read our story of apples following it. Whole books could be written on this subject!

MAPLESIDE FARMS
Cleveland Area, NE Ohio
294 Pearl Road on US 42, Brunswick, Ohio
330-225-5576 or 330-225-5577

Apples: 20 varieties.

FARM MARKET & BAKERY AND GIFT SHOP
Monday thru Saturday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.Sunday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

RESTAURANT
Lunch, Monday thru Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Dinner, Monday thru Thursday 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Friday and Saturday 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Sunday 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Sunday Brunch Buffet 10:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Special Fall Foliage Festival October onsite 14 -15, free admission

LYND FRUIT FARM
9090 Morse Rd.
Pataskala, OH 43062
Licking County
740- 927-1333

Open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

500 acres of apple orchards makes us one of the largest growers in Ohio and the Midwest. Apples are our heritage; we are into our 8th Generation of Lynds.

Apples: McIntosh and Honeycrisp

HUGUS FRUIT FARM
1900 Old Rushville Road
Rushville, OH 43150
Fairfield County
Phone 740- 536-9590

Open August - December, Monday - Saturday 9-5

Third generation family owned and operated orchard. Fresh apple cider pressed weekly all fall and winter.

Apples: Cortland, Fuji, Gala, Ginger Gold, Gold Rush, Grimes Golden, Granny Smith, Honey Crisp, IdaRed, JonaGold, Jonathan, McIntosh, Melrose, Red Delicious, Yellow Delicious, Winesap.

Other Fruit: Peaches, Plums, Pears of the Asian and European varieties.

September marks the beginning of the autumn apple harvest, and this includes literally hundreds of different apples categorized into several types. These types include eating apples, cooking apples, and cider apples, not to mention apple cider vinegar.

The genetic make up of apples and apple trees is a rigorous scientific study occurring at this time at Cornell University. Apple seeds from the mountains of southern Russia are being cultivated in order to develop apple varieties that will be disease resistant commercially.

Among the hundreds of apples grown worldwide, there are many found in North America. The first apple orchard in Massachusetts was planted in 1625 by Pastor William Blaxton, the owner of a farm in Boston on Beacon Hill. He moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island and planted the first Rhode Island orchard in 1635, 10 years later. He grew the first named apple in America.

Apples are frequently named after the cultivator, as with roses, or the location in which they are first found. Blaxton named his apple Blaxton Yellow Sweeting, but it was renamed Sweet Rhode Island Greening. Early orchards were planted with imported seeds, usually from Europe; but Blaxton developed the first American apple through farming techniques.

Apples were very important in colonial life, because they tasted good, could be used in cooking, and could be stored whole over the long winter months. The American colonial farmhouse had apples as a required food staple. Apples were served as part of a main course with meat or fish, for breakfast, at lunch, for snacks, and at dinner. During the winter, many families relied on apples for food, just as the Russians used to depend upon dried cherries during the harsh season. Apple pie was invented in Europe, especially in England, where people liked meat pies. Apples were added to the meat, or substituted instead of meat for a dessert for times when meat was in short supple. In fact, one type of mincemeat was originally a combination of beef, apples, raisins, and spices and it can be a meat extender since the resulting pie is very filling.

Throughout the centuries, new apples were developed in America through grafting processes in which the branch of one type of apple tree was attached to the trunk of another type of apple tree. Cross-pollination sometimes resulted in a hybrid apple and there were other techniques used to produce types and flavors. The apple has become the All American fruit, broadcast into early America and the mid western frontier by Johnny Appleseed to become the basis for American baked goods form apple butter, apple pie, and applesauce, to apple cider doughnuts. By 1872, apple researcher Charles Downing documented 1,100 different kinds of apples with their specific origins in America.

Many of these original experimental fruits have become what are known as Heritage Apples or Antique Apples. While there are no specific cutoff dates of apple breeding or discovery associated with the apple that is called an antique, these qualities are usually agreed upon: heritage apples have been grown for a long time, even centuries; and many appeared widely in the 1800s, with others as early as 1600 in Massachusetts, France, Holland, and England. There are over 200 varieties of American heritage apples alone. How many are grown in your state or province? Here is quite a nice list of about 100 American antique apples that are now a part of history.

American Beauty
American Golden Russet
American Pippin
Arkansas Black
Baldwin
Ben Davis
Bethel
Black Ben Davis
Black Gilliflower
Black Oxford
Black Twig
Blue Pearmain
Campfield
Cannon Pearmain
Carolina Red June
Cheese Apple
Chenango Strawberry
Cherokee Buff
Cole Quince
Davey
Esopus Spitzenburg
Fall Harvey
Fall Pippin
Fall Wine
Fallawater
Fanny
Gano
Garden Royal
Gilpin
Gloria Mundi
Golden Pearmain
Golden Russet
Graniwinkle
Grimes Golden
Harrison
Hawkeye, the first Red Delicious
Henry Clay
Hightop Sweet
Honey Cider
Hoover
Horse Apple
Hubbardston Nonesuch
Hudson Golden Gem
Hunt Russet
Huntsman
Hyslop
Ingram
Jefferis
Jewett Red
Johnson Fine Winter or York
Jonathan
King David
Kinnaird's Choice
Late Strawberry
Limbertwig
Lowry
Magnum Bonum
Maiden Blush
McAfee
McLellan
Melon
Milam
Missouri Pippin
Mother
Newtown Pippin
Newtown Spitzenburg
Nickajack
Northern Spy
Northern Sweet
Northfield Beauty
Northwestern Greening
Ohio Nonpareil
Opalescent
Orenco
Ortley
Parmar
Peck Pleasant
Pilot
Porter
Primate
Pumpkin Sweet
Rainbow
Ralls Janet
Rambo
Ramsdell Sweet
Red Winter Pearmain
Rhode Island Greening
Roxbury Russet
Rusty Coat
Shiwassee Beauty
Shockley
Sierra Beauty
Smith's Cider
Smokehouse
Somerset of Maine
Stark
Starkey
Stayman
Stone
Summer Banana
Summer Pearmain
Summer Rose
Sutton Beauty
Swaar
Tolman Sweet
Tompkins County King
Turley Winesap
Twenty Ounce
Vine Apple
Virginia Beauty
Virginia Crab
Virginia Greening
Wagener
Wealthy
Western Beauty
Westfield Seek No Further
Williams
Winesap
Winter Banana
Winter Sweet Paradise
Winter Terry
Winthrop Greening
Wolf River
Yates

Considering apple products besides apples for eating and cooking, there is also apple cider. The two types of apple cider include alcoholic cider and nonalcoholic or soft cider. There is also apple cider vinegar, which has a distinctive flavor different form white vinegar, and health related properties used for hundreds of years.

Apple Cider

Cider apples are produced specially for the production of cider from pressed apple juice, and these apples are not good for eating or cooking. They are grouped into four main types according to the nature of their flavors.

Sweets contain high sugar levels that encourage fermentation and raise alcohol levels.

Sharps are high in acidity and add bite to the taste of the cider. They tend to be low in sugar.

Bittersweets are high in sugar but also high in tannin, tasting bitter and astringent. A certain amount of bitterness is expected in all ciders.

Bittersharps are high in both tannin and acid.

Normally, ciders are blended using juice from several apple varieties. There are only a very few varieties that will make a good cider alone, but Golden Russet does. It is also good in blends.
Three good cider apples originate in England and are called Kingston Black, Stoke Red, and Dymock Red.

Hard Cider

A type of hard or fermented cider, or artisanal cider, is alcoholic and fermented from freshly pressed apple juice that comes from the same general geographic location where the cider is produced. Traditionally, artisanal cider contains no preservatives, except some sulfur dioxide for the fermentation process. This process is the custom in the US since the 17th century when Europeans first imported fancy cultivated cider apples.

Apple cider in colonial days was important as a food crop and as a currency of exchange. The leadership as a product of American national beverage began to dwindle in the late 1800s when much of the population shifted from the country to city living. In the early 1980s, following the growing interest in home brewing and the rise of microbreweries, hard cider saw resurgence. A handful of cider production facilities began to experiment with their own recipes and brands, using classic cider making from old Europe and colonial America.

A US State Park Fruit, the Capitol Reef Apple

Capitol Reef National Park in Utah is home to many scenic views and the Capitol Reef Apple, cultivated onsite in the park historic Fruita Orchards.

Fruita, settled in 1880, was home to only ten families in its heyday. Today the orchards are preserved as a Rural Historic Landscape by the National Park Service. As a sugary, crunchy apple, the Capitol Reef is good in pie, but not tart enough for cider. It is famous in Fruita, where it is uniquely adapted to the canyon climate and produced organically. Caring for 3,000 trees, Fruita is the largest historical orchard and campus in the entire US National Park system.

Gravenstein Apple in Danger of Extinction

The sweet, tart flavor marriage of the Gravenstein Apple is unique to Sonoma County Californian farming traditions. It was first planted in 1811 in Sonoma County by Russians, but was originally from Denmark. It ripens in late July, so it is one of the first apples in North America to market each year. It comes in a variety of interesting colors, usually with a greenish yellow background with red stripes. The Gravenstein is versatile as an eating, sauce, and pie apple, with a crisp, juicy texture and aromatic. In fact, they helped keep US troops alive in World War II.

Gravensteins are in danger of becoming extinct because they are difficult to harvest. The apples have short stems and the trees produce ripe apples at different times in the harvest season. In addition, they are extremely delicate. This is complicated by a loss of land for growing, because so many orchards are being converted into California grape vineyards. During the past sixty years, the Sonoma County Gravenstein growing acreage has reduced by 7,000 acres and the total today is only 960 acres.

There are only six commercial Gravenstein growers remaining in Sonoma County. There is also an agricultural hobbyistÂs version of the Gravenstein with a red skin, known as the Red Gravenstein. In Austria, Gravensteins are used for the production of a high quality brandy; and in Denmark, it is the national apple.

European Apples

The wild ancestor of the American Apple varieties is known simply as Alma. A major city in the region where it first was discovered is Alma Ata, meaning the father of the apples. This Alma tree is still found wild in the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and in Xinjiang, China. A recent study of apple DNA at Oxford University in England indicated that a single species that still grows today in the Ili Valley on the north slopes in the Tien Shan Mountains near northwest China and in Kazakhstan is the genetic parent of all the apples of today.

The word apple comes from an ancient IndoEuropean word and the apple tree was probably the earliest tree to be cultivated. That gives some credence to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and the magic forbidden fruit. More so than any other tree fruit except citrus, the apple stores well for many months and retain its nutritive values. Winter apples may be picked in late autumn and stored just above freezing in Asia, Europe, Argentina, the United States, and Canada.

There are over 7,500 types of apples in the world. Different varieties are available for planting in temperate and subtropical climates. However, apples do not flower in tropical climates, because they need a period of cold temperatures each year. Commercially successful apples are soft and crisp, colorful skin, absence ofrusettingg or browned surface damage, ease of shipping, long storage life, high yields, disease resistance, a long stem for easy picking, and good flavor.

Older varieties of apples are very often not round but shaped strangely, russetted with bruising, and have a wide variety of textures and colors. Many have excellent flavor, have problems commercially. They may produce a low yield, succumb easily to disease, or have a low shelf life. Few old varieties are still produced on a large scale, but many are cultivated by hobbyists and home gardeners. There are also some small independent farmers producing unique and delicious varieties for the local markets.

The apple has its stars and has beens, too. The U.S. Washington State Apple was extremely popular and successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, as a Red Delicious, its grainy texture and lack of full flavor is considered inferior to the sweeter Fuji and Gala apples.

Apple Fun Facts

The name of the ancient Kazakh city Almaty means Father of Apples.

The apple blossom is the state flower of Arkansas and Michigan.

The name of the Russian political party Yabloko means apple.

Apple Corps, Apple Records, and Apple Computer also use the apple as logos.

Johnny Appleseed was an American pioneer orchard farmer; he earned his name by walking along and planting apple seeds across large portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

One of the youngest apples is Aurora Golden Gala from 2003, a sweet yellow Canadian apple.

Cary Fowler, executive secretary of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, said in a statement: At the end of the 1800s, 7000 named apple varieties were grown in the United States. Now, 6,800 of those are as extinct as the dinosaurs.

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