OlLine Rebel, your screen name is hard to read. I don't know too much about apples other than I don't generally like the store apples. My parents used to go to an orchard that still is in business. I grabbed a couple bags of Jonathans from them at the store; they didn't last long. My mother liked Northern Spy. They only produce every other year and are green. But they are big and wonderful for baking.
I should eat an apple every day. I usually get Granny Smith if I want to cook something but they aren't the best. Some are saying to use a combination of different apples in pies, etc. No wonder.
I used to like Yellow Deliicious but they're usually green in the store. The one I just hate are what everybody buys. Red Delicious. Guess it ships well. I won't knowingly eat the things.
What I really miss is my Moorpark apricot tree. I got a chance to get it cut down free by the utility company so I let it go. Many years it would succumb to late frosts. So I was thinking about getting a Sungold and a Moongold; you have to have two, but I don't have a good place for them except in front on the grassy part by the street. If I weren't getting so old, I would do it. Maybe I will do it anyway. Dogs will pi$$ on them though. Like anything else I plant close to the sidewalk in front. Like some nice daylilies, not those orange ones that pop up everywhere around here. Dogs or not dragging water out there has pretty much ruined them.
I miss gardening but my back is totally shot and I don't have any family that will help; one daughter but can't count on it. So I gave it up and propagated a beautiful geranium my daughter gave me. I can still do that.
They were talking about growing tomatoes inside. I'll talk about tomatoes some other time.
Red delicious were awful for a while but they have improved them enormously. A big orchard near us in the Midwest planted hundreds one year and a few years later we finaly got to pick that field, but the apples were really bland and without fragrance, so we didn’t want to come back - until the third year when we saw the orchard owner had torn them all out and was replacing them. A lot of groceries started getting bad delicious apples for some years, I guess most places didn’t have the sense to pull the bad stock out.
Few things can beat a winesap for cooking because of their spiciness, but a jonalicious or a johnagold is really good for cooking and eating too, taking the best traits from both parents, and very fragrant. We had an old standard jonalicious up north that seemed never to produce much. My Dad went out to it one day as a joke [ or maybe not] and and threatened it with an axe, he slapped it on the bark several times and then stomped back through the snow to the house. That spring it bloomed like crazy and it produced some of the best apples ever. Every year after that it did very well though there were worm issues until we took some red croquet balls and covered them with tanglefoot and hung them in the trees. Those caught a lot of coddling moths and quality was much improved. Of course the apples tasted so nice we got to where we didn’t care much about the worms anyway- just don’t look and you’ll never know.
Fujis were great for a while but I’ve gotten some bad ones lately- they descend from a tree with rich tasting apples given to Thomas Jefferson by the French ambassador and were crossed with something else by the Japanese, making them delightfully crispy.
The craze right now is Pink Lady but I think it’s more of an eating apple. Haven’t tried them yet because I’m too cheap and just buy unmarked juicing apples to avoid the wax preservative because I love the skins. They are almost always good apples, ii guess they jumble up small lots so you get a little variety.