DESSERT APPLES

Specify your rootstock with each apple tree ordered

Dwarf rootstocks are weak and produce small trees growing up to 2m high depending on variety. They are excellent for espaliering or cordoning, and easy to prune, manage and pick the fruit. As a freestanding tree, they must be staked. They need regular watering in summer and regular feeding and mulching. They can be susceptible to woolly aphids; we find regular watering and neem granules applied annually help with this.

Northern Spy rootstock is the old one around the north that produces large happy trees on heavy clay soils. Once established there is no need for watering or mulching. When pruned carefully they can be kept to 4m high.

793 rootstock is one that has been bred from Northern Spy and produces a large tree doing well on clay soils and also well on free draining soils. Like Northern Spy, once the trees are established there is no need for mulch or irrigation. Large tree 6m.

Welcome

A very early apple, hence the name. It is a colourful sweet good early apple that will be finished by early January. Like all early apples they are best eaten within a few days of picking. From an old Auckland tree.

Vaile Early

A small to medium sized apple, early ripening Dec- Feb. Yellow skin red streaks. Reliable cropper of medium vigour. Crunchy, tasty sweet/acid flavour. This is one of the varieties that was common 150 years ago around the north and ripe well before today’s commercial apples. Excellent one for summer road side stalls. Ours came from an old orchard in Paparoa.

Early Strawberry

A small flattish, very sweet, early apple ripening Christmas to late Feb. Green - yellow skin with bright red streaks when ripe. Golden Delicious type flavour and texture.  A very old variety coming to us from an old tree in Birkdale Auckland, and previous to that Papakura (Mr Tom Shepherd since 1896).

Hayward Wright

This is an apple that was sent to us by an old friend of Hayward Wrights (One of NZ’s most famous plant breeders of Kiwi fruit fame) Apparently one of his favourite early apples. Ripe after Vaile Early and Early Strawberry,  before Freyburg and is an excellent second  early apple. The skin is dark red, with golden russet, the flesh is white with a lot of red streaking through it. The flavour is full and sweet.

Freyburg

Ripe after the early apples, before the mid season Captain Kidd ripens. One of my personal favourites, Freyburg is very sweet, beautiful flavour yellow flesh, light green skin changing to honey yellow when ripe, and an excellent desert apple. I’ve been growing this apple for 30years in the north and it’s one of the most disease resistant in our conditions, bred in NZ by JH Kidd and is cross between Golden Delicious and Cox’s Orange Pippin.

Maxwell Quirk

This is an apple sent in to us 10 years ago by a member. I would guess it’s a seedling apple that happens to be a particularly good one, as the gentleman (Maxwell Quirk) realized. It has Golden Delicious as one parent I would say and it is a very good desert apple similar to Golden Delicious in texture sweetness and flavour but with a very different shape. It is pointy and irregular. I really like it and think it will become popular with home gardeners for its flavour and disease resistance. Ripe mid March.

Koanga Red Delicious (K)

Most of us remember the “old” Red Delicious apples, outstanding flavour, sweet, large, rich and very red/russetted .This tree was given to me years ago by an unknown donor and I suspect it is an original type Red Delicious The original ‘delicious’ apples came from the U.S.A  and are superior to the later versions. Large healthy trees and fruit. Ripe late March.

Captain Kidd

Another NZ bred apple by JH Kidd. This has also been grown in the north for long time and has proved it’s disease resistance and excellent quality. Superb flavour and colour. Deep apple with bright red steaks all over. Ours came from Tom and Robyn Morrison near Warkworth, descendants of Red Bluffs Nursery “Morrison” one of the old nursery families in the north. Ripe March.

Jonathon

A well remembered commercial variety after the war and a predecessor of some of our more modern cultivars. It is a crisp juicy, sub acid large round green skinned apple with a red streaky patch when ripe.

Northland Golden Russet

This is another of those old varieties that once used to be very common around the north, and in fact all over the country. All of the early orchards had a russet and they have been well remembered. I trialled all the russets here years ago from the various South Island collections and none of them grew well up here. It has only been in the last ten years that several Northland Russets have come into the collection and they grow well, taste fantastic and are disease resistant (that was the problem with the South Island varieties). The skin is totally covered in a golden russet, the flavour is very rich and full, and it develops more if the apples are picked for a week or two before eating. This one is from the garden of the late Ham Worsfold of Kaiwaka, a very special man, one of the old gardeners I’m really missing. A very special apple with wine and cheese! Ripe March.

Lady Finger

This is an apple that was given to me as a specific cider apple. I grew it so I could make cider one day and have been so excited about it as a desert apple I doubt it would ever get to the cider press! It is a mid season, bright red with a golden russet on the skin and it is sweet and rich and full of flavour with a tang of it’s own. Ripe mid season.

Northern Spy

Delicious, juicy, rich sub acid aromatic, white flesh, fine grained and tender. Green pale yellow skin in shade, streaky red purple in sun. A very well known and loved heritage variety. Ours came from the old Bert Davies orchard in Wellsford. Plant only with other apples for cross pollination. Ripe March/April.

Red Spy    

A large round flattish, red, juicy sweet apple with an old-fashioned winey flavour. Very similar to Northern Spy. An excellent dessert and cooking apple ripening in March. Only plant a Red Spy if you have several other apples in the orchard as they crop better with cross pollination. From an old tree in Paparoa. Ripe March/April.

Mayflower

A late apple of medium to large, round, flat size, with green russeted skin.. A beautiful dessert apple, good for drying, cooking and juicing. Excellent old fashioned full flavour. I’m told this apple came into the Hokianga Harbour in a barrel of pips in the 1850’s.with the Rev Mr. Knaggs who planted his barrel of pips and chose this one as his favourite Ripe Mar/April.

Granny Smith

Another well remembered apple by those lucky enough to have been able to have a tree ripened version! These apples taste so good when they have been left on the trees to tree ripen, when the skin goes yellow with a browny tinge, and the flesh goes super sweet and juicy. These apples were bred originally in Australia and they grow well in northland. Next year we’ll grow some on Northern Spy rootstocks as they taste particularly good on it. Large round bright green skin, crisp, sweet tasty/acid tangy flavour.

Winesap

Sweet, good flavour, solid flesh with pink colouring through flesh. An early apple from the Wharehine, Port Albert area.

Monty’s Surprise. Discovered by Tree Crops Association member Mark Christensen in the 1990's, this is a unique New Zealand seedling variety. It has good natural disease   resistance, (in the lower North Island) so can be grown without chemical sprays. It is a wonderful cooking and eating apple, and, combined with its pips and flowers, has wonderful disease inhibiting ability. This is to the best of our knowledge, the best anti-cancer eating apple in the world. The majority of anti-cancer compounds in apples are found in the skin. The Monty’s Surprise apples mature over a long period and are ready to eat in about mid-April.

COOKING APPLES.

Peasgood Non Such

This is a very large round flat apple that is at its best as a cooking apple. If you like tart apples they are good for desert. I like to stuff the core and bake them. Late ripening with a streaky green and red striped skin. Mid March.

Lord Nelson

One of our original cooking apples, popular because of it’s excellent cooking apple and had good disease resistance in the north, having been selected and grown here for over 150 years now!

Bramley