FAQ: The questions most often asked of us as organic apple growers in California's Sacramento Valley
Question: I didn't think apples grew around here — don't apples need more cold, mountains, snow?
Answer: No. We grow very high quality apples here; the most often repeated comment we hear is, “These are the best apples I have ever tasted”.
Apple trees are deciduous temperate-zone plants that require winter chilling, which we have. Apples are a long-season fruit and need heat, sunshine, and a long growing season to develop full flavor and ripeness. Also, our dry weather is not conducive to diseases, which can be a challenge for apple growers in humid areas, such as along the coast.
Apple pips have been found in Neolithic archæological sites, so we know that people have been eating apples since prehistoric times. The ancestors of most domestic apples are thought to come from a region of southwest Asia northeast of Turkey in present-day Kazakhstan, where wild apples (Malus sieversii L.) are found today growing in mixed woodlands. This area has a continental or inland Mediterranean climate with long hot summers, like ours.
That so many people are puzzled that we can grow apples here testifies to the success of the Washington Apple Board, which was created when an economic decision was made to centralize US apple production in Washington state to make use of Federally subsidized water projects. The puzzled American public, used to eating locally grown apples, needed to be persuaded that Washington apples were best for the whole country.
This industrialization of apple growing also brought us standards for smooth skin, red color, and conical shape. These preferences are based on the relatively fast-maturing Red Delicious variety as it appears when grown in Washington. By contrast, most traditional heirloom apples are russeted, are multicolored with a green or yellow background and orange, golden, pink, or crimson blush, striping, or mottling, and are round or flattened in shape. When grown here, Red Delicious is a round apple, mostly green or cream-colored with red or pink stripes.
Question: Do you grow MacIntosh? Gravenstein?
Answer: No and no. These are two fast-maturing varieties developed for areas with short growing seasons. Grown here, these apples ripen in the summer when we are busy harvesting and enjoying peaches and nectarines. The last thing we want to do then is to rush ripe apples into cold storage, 70°F below the ambient temperature, to bring them to market.
Apples, like grapes, are among the very oldest domesticated fruits. Apples are genetically quite heterogeneous and this variability has been used over time to create thousands of varieties of apples, including apples that grow well in areas with limited growing seasons. The MacIntosh was developed in Canada and is much grown and valued in upstate New York and New England. The origin of the Gravenstein is lost in the misty dawn of history, but it appeared in Slesvig-Holstein in Denmark in the seventeenth century; some believe that it arrived there from northern Russia. (Slesvig-Holstein has been alternately part of Denmark and Germany many times. For this reason, books list the Gravenstein variously as German, Danish, or Russian.) Other popular varieties developed for limited growing seasons are Northern Spy, Winesap, and Jonathan. Some of these originated as crosses between domestic apples and wild crabapples (Malus sylvestris P. Mill. and Malus baccata (L.) Borkh.).
Our local area does not have these growing limitations and so we are able to grow slowly maturing apples to full maturity. We have the heat, sunshine, and time needed to develop high acids, high sugars, full aroma, and full flavor in these apples. Our long-season apples such as Braeburn, Caville Blanc, Sierra Beauty, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Cripps Pink (Pink Lady) fully develop their strong varietal characteristics and complexity.
Apples that take a long time to mature have denser flesh than faster-maturing apples. A bushel of Galas, the earliest apple that we grow, weighs less than a bushel of our Fujis or Granny Smiths. This density relates to keeping quality, with the dense, slower maturing apples keeping the best. There are even some old traditional very late apples that mature much like pears and require storage time in a cool cellar in order to develop their full characteristic varietal flavors.
Just say no to globalization — eat your local fruit where ever you are! Thank you for eating locally and supporting organic agriculture.
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