Outside the church, fall was in the air and on every colorful tree. Inside, it was fall on a plate. Many paper plates filled with apples. There were marigil apples, russeted and rough like potatoes. Harrison cider apples were small and covered with spots. Tinier wild crab apples came with a warning: “bitter.”
Backyard Fruit Growers’ annual apple tasting is not a beauty contest. It’s a chance for gardeners to share what they’ve grown this year, find a new variety to plant and perhaps solve the case of the mystery apple.
Reserved for the group’s subscribers, the October event sits in the middle of apple harvest. Yellow Transparent harvested in July are long gone and it’s a bit early to pick Arkansas Black apples. Yet growers from the Lancaster County region (and beyond) still brought dozens of apples to try.
Some of the apples are jokingly called “spitters,” too bitter for snacking but perfect for cider. Many of the snackers don’t have pristine skins or pretty colors. Each one has history, some going back hundreds of years. For the backyard apple growers, finding a new fruit and grafting it to grow gives these apples the chance to survive, says Andy Weidman, the group’s secretary.
Here are five of the oddest apples grown in backyards in the Lancaster County region.
Supreme aka Allen Martin Pippen
Jim Reem brought this apple to the tasting not for its flavor but its history.
The Martins, Reem’s long-ago neighbors in East Cocalico Township, used to make a lot of applesauce every fall. One of the children composted the peels, cores and seeds in a giant pile. A few seeds sprouted the next year. Reem grafted a branch from one of those trees and named it after his neighbor.
“In the beginning, I called it my Fuji wannabe,” Reem says. “It tasted a lot like Fuji, very sweet. It ripens the same time as Fuji, blossoms the same time. It has all of the characteristics of Fuji but one plus. Fuji in our orchard, I guess because it’s so humid, rots on the tree.”
White Oak Nursery in Strasburg added it to its catalog and renamed it Supreme.
Arkansas Black
Arkansas Black apple might not be common at supermarkets or even farm stands, but they’re popular with apple growers.
“A lot of people request it,” says Chris Buck, president of the group. “It’s kind of an oddball because it’s so dark.”
Arkansas Black apples are harvested at the end of the growing season in Pennsylvania. Earlier in the season, they’re hard enough to be mistaken for a baseball.
“It’s like chewing on a rock,” says Buck who lives in North Annville Township, Lebanon County.
One good side to the texture: They store very well. In time, they’re soft enough to enjoy the sweet taste that’s also a bit tart.
Harrison
Christopher Hondru brought bitter wild crab apples he foraged to the tasting along with Harrison apples from his home near Manheim. There wasn’t much else available to share at this time of year.
“Everything else, I already crushed and turned into cider,” he says.
Harrison apples are great for cider making and are sweet enough to eat.
These apples in the U.S. can be traced back to cidermaking in the early 1800s, but they fell out of favor by the turn of the century. Hondru appreciates that this heritage apple was rediscovered in the 1970s. A fruit collector found a Harrison tree at a cider mill in New Jersey and took cuttings just before the tree was cut down. Later, he learned the tree was a rare find.
A member of the group knew Hondru was into cidermaking and made sure to share news of a Harrison tree in the group’s annual tree sale. His tree is now big enough to harvest apples to press.
Best of Reds
Over the years, apples have been bred to have thick skin resistant to bruising. Thick-skinned Red Delicious reigned as America’s most-produced apple, but it recently was upstaged by Gala apples. Red Delicious still is the second most-produced apple in the U.S. yet production has dropped steeply over the past five years, according to the U.S. Apple Association.
In the fruit-growing group, shipability isn’t a must, but there’s still appreciation for the Red Delicious’ ancestors.
The Best of Reds apple is an old-fashioned variety of Red Delicious, the modern version which Reem calls America’s compost-maker.
The trio he brought to the tasting have been off the tree for a bit, so they weren’t crunchy.
“But it’s got astounding flavor,” he says. “It’s sweet, not pungent but aromatic and floral.”
This apple tree is a good grower, hardy and somewhat disease-resistant, Reem says.
Mystery apple
The apple-tasting had plenty of varieties with long pedigrees.
There were also a few mysteries. Jerry Dornbach brought two mystery apples he hoped the fruit-growing group could identify by taste.
He discovered one of the apples on a hike in Lambertville, New Jersey. It was nothing like any other apple he’s ever tasted.
“It’s sweet and tart at the same time, very fruity,” he says. “Champagne?”
Dornbach liked the apples so much, he joined the group to learn how to propagate them and grow them at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He joined the grafting workshop, grafted a branch onto rootstock and planted them.
“Here we are 10 years later and I got apples from those trees,” he says.
He had enough this year to share at the tasting. Dornbach has made friends through this journey. Now he has a few more clues to solve his apple mystery.
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