When you go to buy a house, some folks might want a particular design style. They may require a long driveway, a large yard, no neighbors to either side… they might not want blocked views of the west, require a water feature on site, or refuse to be next to anything loud like a school, or firehouse. People can be really picky when choosing a new home…

In contrast, some folks just need their basics covered. They don’t care much about the particulars, they’re happy to make due as long as the home has strong fundamentals.

This is the nature of planting fruit trees.

You can make the process as complex, or as simple as you want.

The following list presents all the considerations when choosing your first apple trees.

You may choose to consider just one or two points… or all of them.

Something may be a priority to you that isn’t even much of a consideration to another grower.

There’s no wrong or right approach… only your approach.

If it seems like a lot, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Most of these are pretty basic concepts, all working to make your apple growing experience the best it can be. It’s OK not to know… If you need help, just email!

By the way, if you’re interested in planting apple trees but not interested in researching the countless varieties. If you don’t want to deal with any of it. Just let me know how many trees you want to plant and try and give me some basic direction on your likes and requirements and I’m more than happy to come up with a selection of trees for you.

Nick@GoodApple.Info

1. USE

Some folks don’t really care about the apples at all. They want a healthy, low maintenance tree just for the aesthetics in their yard, or to feed the wildlife.

Other folks might want the luxury of picking fresh apples off their trees for a tasty, healthy snack unlike anything they can buy in the supermarket.

Are there any bakers in the room? Few things are as American as homemade apple pie! And some people want trees to support their sweet habit (or to help kickstart a business).

Yet, other folks don’t even eat the apples they grow, not directly anyway… they may choose to juice them down into some sweet cider, or maybe get into some distillation for some of that hard cider stuff. Sorry, we just deal in apples not in copper tubing and hoppers.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with targeting multi-purpose apples that can be used for just about anything. We love those apples!

The bottom line is that you should identify your primary use of the apple you’re looking to grow.

2. TASTE

Sweet. Tart. And subacid, which is a combination of sweet and tart.

Some apples are pretty flat or one noted, though they can still be good. Honeycrisp is a super famous good-tasting apple that doesn’t have any complexity to it.

Other apples have deep complexity, like a fine wine, giving flavor and different notes in every bite.

It’s important to focus on growing apples you actually like to eat!

In other words, you don’t want to spend YEARS of dedication and work to produce an apple that you have no interest in eating.

Ok, this one is a little tricky…

Unless you were lucky enough to grow up with grandparents who kept an old-time apple tree, the reality is, outside of the common commercial varieities, most folks aren’t familiar with the flavor of most apples… this is especially true with the harder to find, old-time apples.

My advice is to try and identify what you like. Then take a leap of faith with how an apple variety is commonly received.

In other words, if Winesap is known for being an outstanding subacid fresh eating apple… and you like subacid apples, it’s probably a safe bet.

It also pays to know how particular your tastes are. If you’re the kind of person who never met an apple he didn’t like, then feel free to be more adventurous in your varieties. BUT, if you like to order the same meal every time you go out to eat, again, you might not want to invest years in a fruit tree you might not love.

Ideally, it’s a great idea to get out and taste some of the rarer varieities at farmer markets or fairs or wherever you can find them. While tastes can vary from season to season, the best proof really is in the pudding… or apple pie as it were.

3. DIFFICULTY

We break our trees into three distinct categories:

Easy.
Medium.
Hard.

Primarily this is a reflection of the varieties disease resistance.

Ultimately, easy trees require LESS of YOUR time to oversee. These vigorous, healthy trees just like to do their own thing, barreling through the common apple tree diseases.

On the opposite side of the spectrum are Hard trees. These trees may be particularly susceptible to one or more diseases, or they may be more particular about the conditions they grow in. In this regard, Hard trees are more likely to demand more attention.

In the middle of the pack are medium trees. Trees that will likely need more input from you, but not enough to be considered really demanding or overall, difficult.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with stocking your orchard with Easy going trees!

On the other hand, some of the highest quality apples come from varieties that can be challenging to grow (hard).

For the most part, growing any kind of apple tree isn’t hard–but some definitely will require more time and effort on your part.

Adding hard trees to your orchard can be a super rewarding experience, if you have the time and dedication. You can lie to me, you can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to the tree! So be honest in assessing how much time you’re willing to be a tree doctor.

4. BLOOM PERIOD

Almost all apple trees are NOT self-fertile.

This means ONE apple tree alone in a field will NOT produce apples.

If you were to only buy 2 apple trees and one blooms on March 25th and the other on April 25th, that’s a month apart!

You’re going to have some very sad bees waiting around AND two trees that produce NO APPLES.

When you start choosing your apple tree varieties, try to get them in the same bloom period, or close, overlapping bloom periods.

You can read the full bloom period article here.

One last consideration with bloom period, are EARLY BLOOMERS. In our area of North Carolina, we are notorious for getting late freezes. Usually, just one or two nights, just enough to ruin eager beaver green thumbs.

Apple trees are generally, more resilient to frosts than other fruit trees, but still, if you want to be totally on the safe side, not worrying about ever losing a crop to a bad late frost year, don’t consider early bloom varieties.

Again, if you’re only planting a couple of trees, you probably don’t want early bloomers… but if you’re planting a bunch of trees or a full orchard, early bloomers offer some wonderful options.

5. COLOR

Red, Green, Yellow are the main colors.

Color is a superficial aspect, BUT, you may prefer a certain look, or you may prefer one side of the orchard to be green and the other red.

6. RIPEN DATE

The other critical date for apple trees are their ripen date.

It’s not so critical as something bad will happen on this date or that date, BUT, there’s a big difference between having apples ripe and ready for picking in July! as opposed to January!

Some folks prefer to harvest all their apples in a short window. Others, like to have apples ripening on their trees for as many months as possible throughout the year.

There’s no wrong approach, just personal preference!

7. CHILL HOURS

Another consideration are what’s known as CHILL HOURS.

The idea is that apple trees need a certain number of cold temperature hours in order for the biological processes to kick in, so they can bloom in the spring and make fruit later that season.

Broadly speaking, many apple trees are around 1000 chill hours. This means, if you plant a Honeycrisp in Florida, where there may be only 200 chill hours, you might have a lovely looking apple tree, but it will never produce fruit.

Because Good Apple info specifically grows trees that do well in OUR AREA, we’re not posting much info on chill hours. Many chill hours are not strictly known and the science of it isn’t really settled.

8. STORAGE

Some apples last hardly a week before losing their flavor and becoming a soft muckity-muck.

Other apples, like Arkansas Black for example, last for months and months and months once picked.

In fact, some apples, like Arkansas Black aren’t really edible off the tree and need to rest in storage for a while before their flavor really comes together.

If you’re an apple growing pro, you can plan your orchard so that you literally stay in fresh apples all year long!

9. HISTORY

This is one we’re really fond of.

Did you know there are a million billion varieties of apples out in the world! That means there’s a ton of green varieties, a ton of red varieties, a ton of sweet, a ton of sour, etc…

So with all those choices, it only makes sense to pay attention to the history of the tree.

This honors and preserves the memory of the past.

Big points in our book.

10. SIZE DOESN’T MATTER-FRUIT

Small, medium, or large. We mostly don’t care what size an apple is as long as it’s yummy! The reality is most small apples will produce a higher quantity than a tree of big ones, so in the end it all balances out.

Though of course, your intended USE could call for a particular size fruit.

11. SIZE DOES MATTER-TREE

Mother nature makes an apple tree in only one size–Apple tree size! about 30-40 feet tall.

Man says, “whoa, it’s hard to pick all those apples up top and it takes a long time to grow a 40′ tree,” so they went ahead and scaled back apple tree ROOTSTOCKS… meaning apple trees now come in;

Semidwarf and dwarf sizes.

We don’t deal in dwarf trees.

75% of ours trees are semidwarf in size, about 20′ tall at maturity, if left to grow on their own. The other 25% are full apple tree size. Though we are working on grafting to more full size tree stocks, with varieties particularly suited to our area.

12. Special Pollinating Partners – Triploid

As I mentioned under bloom periods, the vast majority of apple trees require two sets of genes to make fruit…

A single apple tree has one set of genes, then you partner it up with a different variety that blooms at roughly the same time, for the second set of genes. However, there are two exceptions to this rule.

The first are in fact, self-fruiting trees. There are a few of these in the apple kingdom… but even when you have a self-fruiting apple tree, it will produce better, when paired with a partner.

More importantly, is the other exception, called a TRIPLOID.

As you may have guessed, this type of apple tree needs TWO donor trees to get its total three pieces of genetic material to make fruit.

As a further complication, Triploids DO NOT pollinate other trees. So you can not count on a triploid variety to partner with any nearby apple trees.

It may sound a little more complicated and intimidating than it actually is… If you plant a triploid tree, you simply need a total of three different trees (with overlapping bloom times). This means all three trees will get the genes they need and all three will produce yummy apples!

Please email with questions or for help selection your trees!

Choosing the Right Apple Tree