In Praise of the Striped June

I harvested my Striped June (also known as Margaret) apple tree on Sunday (July 19).  This is an old tree, planted through the the diligence and foresight of the man who owned the land before me.  The total take was about 20 pounds, which is maybe a bit small for a mature semi-dwarf tree, but it was neglected for a long time before I began caring for it.  I've pruned it some, which has helped.  This year I neglected it; I didn't thin the crop much and didn't do any spraying (for disease or plum curculio, so I'm just lucky--for now--that the nasty bugs haven't found it).

Despite the name, it usually ripens in July.  Still, that makes it a summer apple.  It's an old variety.  The only way you'll get one these days is to go to a nursery that specializes in old apples, like Big Horse Creek Farm.  Striped June is somewhat tart/sweet.  Partly that might be due to harvesting a bit too soon, but the apples were looking good Sunday, with a few already on the ground.  So I picked it clean.  I'm not out there every day--this isn't in my back yard; it's a ways away--so there wasn't any viable alternative.  As you can see, the apples aren't exactly ready for retail.  Most have some degree of insect damage (though I've verified that mostly it's just a few small divots, not really affecting anything else), and many of them have sooty blotch and/or flyspeck.  Both of those are benign plant diseases that don't affect anything.  They can be rubbed off the skin with a wet paper towel and some diligence if you must, but as far as I know, they're harmless.  They certainly don't affect fruit quality, except for visual appeal.  I also see russeting on a lot of them, not all, and that doesn't bother me, either.

Here's an interesting thing about Striped June/Margaret: According to a Jurassic PDF from Auburn University I stumbled across one day, it's resistant to cedar-apple rust.  Look on page eight of the PDF (which, surprisingly, is searchable).  Early Red Margaret, which I assume is the same apple that I have, was found to be free of cedar apple rust way back in 1908.  I have cedars near where the apple tree is growing.  The woods have cedars here and there, and there was a huge one about 50 feet away from the tree, which I cut down with a friend.  There's still one within 100 yards.  And there are others.  I saw galls on the closest one.  The disease can travel some distance (it's transmitted back and forth between the two species, and others--like serviceberry--get involved, too).  I have another apple out there that has issues with cedar-apple rust, getting it every year (so far).  I planted a modern disease-resistant variety, GoldRush, another of the PRI apples I have, along with a few others.  GoldRush, alas, while resistant to some of the worst diseases plaguing apples, is susceptible to cedar-apple rust.  The new apple trees are too young to set any fruit yet, so we'll see what happens.  GoldRush did have a small one this year but it fell off (as do a lot of the leaves about now). At any rate, my Striped June has always been rust-free (at least for the few growing seasons I have had it).

So did the guy who planted it select it for that reason?  It might date back to the 1960s or so.  Given some of the other things I see out there, it was probably carefully chosen rather than selected at random from whatever was available in the nursery trade back then.

Some of the other resistant varieties in the Auburn circular are available if you look hard enough, but again, you won't find them at a big-box retailer (with the possible exception of Arkansas, which I assume is the Arkansas Black--that's a not entirely uncommon apple, but it's not exactly one of the major ones, either.  It's available from all or most of the nurseries I list at the left).

So now I have 20 pounds of apples to process.  I will probably dry all or most of them, but I might also do something else with some.  As a summer apple, I don't expect a long shelf life.

I never would have planted it, but I'm happy to have it.  I just need to make the time to make the most of it by ensuring none of the harvest goes to waste.