Apple Facts
Know Your Apples
Ginger Gold
This fruit is golden yellow, medium to large size, smooth, sweet and only mildly tart. The flesh is white to creamy, with good storage life for an early season picking apple. Great for salads or snacks because it does not discolor when sliced. Great for applesauce or apple butter.
Season: Mid-July
Paula Red
This apple is tart and juicy with a crisp white flesh. If you like tart apples, you may want to try this one. It’s excellent for eating fresh and is also good for applesauce or apple butter.
Season: Mid-July
Empire
Is redder and firmer than McIntosh and has a longer storage life. It has a white juicy flesh. It combines the mild tartness of McIntosh with full-flavored Red Delicious sweetness. It is an improved McIntosh that has a longer shelf life and better flavor. It is excellent for fresh eating, in salads, and for use in baking and cooking.
Season: Early August
Gala
Usually medium to smaller in size with pinkish-red stripes over a yellow background. It has a sweet flavor that is excellent for snacks and salads. Galas have gained popularity over the past few years.
Season: Early August
McIntosh
This apple has a dark red color and a bright white flesh. It has a sweet flavor with a hint of wine taste. It is used for cooking or eating.
Season: Early August
Blondee®
Great early variety apple. It is sweet and crisp. Great for fresh eating.
Season: Early August
Early Fuji
This apple ripens about a month and a half before the late Fuji. The flavor is sweet and crisp, just like the later Fuji, but these apples don’t store as well as the later Fuji. It’s excellent for snacks.
Season: Early September
Early Honeycrisp
The taste and look is similar to the later variety. Sweet/tart with a great crispness in every bite.
Season: Mid-August
Honeycrisp
This is an exceptionally crisp, sweet-tart and juicy apple. It has a well balanced flavor and stores well. We make a cider just out of this apple that is a “must try.”
Season: Early September
Jonagold
This juicy, orange-tinted apple has a tangy sweet flavor. It is great for fresh eating and for cooking. It is becoming the world’s most preferred eating apple. This apple makes great apple pie.
Season: Early September
Red Delicious
The heart-shaped fruit is bright red and sometimes striped. Firm, crunchy, and sweet flavor makes it excellent for eating fresh as a snack or in salads. This is the world’s most widely planted apple and favorite snacking apple.
Season: Early September
Golden Delicious
This apple has a firm white pulp, and retains its shape and flavor when baked or cooked. This is one of the best grown varieties in North Carolina. Because of our climate, this apple gets extremely tasty here. This apple is hard to beat when eaten right off the tree. Although many people prefer tart apples such as Granny Smith, Stayman, and McIntosh for cooking, we prefer this apple because you don’t have to use as much sugar in your recipes. This apple is our choice for cooking, eating, drying and making fried apple pies.
Season: Early September
Granny Smith
Green, extremely tart, crisp, juicy, and versatile. Grannies are a favorite of Washington State pie-bakers. This apple is also excellent for snacking and salads. Warm days and cool summer nights ensure crunch and flavor for October harvest.
Season: Early September
Ambrosia
It has a great sweet flavor with a crispness similar to a Golden Delicious. It is not as sweet as a Golden Delicious. Great for fresh eating.
Season: Mid-September
Rusty Coat
There are sweet rusty coat apples and tart rusty coat apples. We have both available in season. This apple is an old variety that has a sweet and crisp flavor.
Season: Mid-September
Suncrisp
This is a crisp, firm, yellow apple with a red blush. It has a longer shelf life than the Golden Delicious and does not bruise as easily as the Golden. It is also a little more tart than the Golden Delicious. It is quite flavorful with a firm texture. The Suncrisp is an excellent all-purpose apple.
Season: Mid-September
Mutsu (Crispin)
This apple is juicy with a moderately sweet flavor. It is a light green to yellowish white in appearance with a white firm flesh. This apple is crunchier and more tart than a Golden Delicious. This apple is great for applesauce, apple butter or just eating.
Season: Mid-September
Magna Bonum
Magna Bonum is medium to sometimes large in size. It is used for snacking and cooking.
Season: Mid-September
Stayman (Winesap)
This apple is good for eating fresh and for cooking. It has a firm and crisp flesh and a tart flavor. This apple stores well. Our Stayman dried apples are great for fried apple pies.
Source: Late September
Cameo
Cameo has a sweet-tart flavor and firm texture. It has a red stripe over a creamy colored background. It is a crisp and juicy apple that is excellent for cooking or eating fresh. Fuji lovers will enjoy this apple.
Season: Late September
Goldrush
This apple has a unique spicy rich flavor with a firm texture. This apple is tart but not as tart as a Granny Smith. It has a tart flavor without the puckering tartness of a Granny Smith. It is great for a snack with peanut butter. It holds up very well in storage.
Season: Early October
Red Rome
With crisp, white flesh that is sometimes streaked with red, this apple is good for baking, drying or just eating fresh. It keeps well in storage. The flavor is richer when used in baking.
Season: Early October
Fuji
This apple is great for a snack. It is sweet and crisp. It keeps well in storage.
Season: Early October
Crimson Crisp®
Crimson Crisp has a great sweet/tart flavor and is very crisp. Great for fresh eating and baking.
Season: Early October
Candy Crisp
Sweet as candy, just like the name suggests. It’s a yellow apple with red blush.
Season: Early October
Blacktwig
This apple has a sweet/tart flavor that is all its own. It is crisp and full of flavor.
Season: Mid-October
Arkansas Black
This apple has a tart flavor when first picked, but in storage, it mellows out. This apple can be used for cooking or fresh eating.
Season: Mid-October
Winecrisp
Sweet, Crisp. Great for fresh eating and baking. Stores very well.
Season: Mid-October
Pink Lady®
We planted this variety in 1996, and it has grown in popularity ever since. It is a crisp apple and has a sweet/tart flavor. This apple is delicious in our Pink Lady® Cobbler (link to recipe). Since this apple has such a great flavor, we also use just this apple in a Pink Lady Cider, a “must try.” This apple is an excellent keeping apple that stays firm and keeps its flavor. Our Pink Lady Dried Apple is great for a snack.
Season: Mid-October
Evercrisp
Sweet and crisp. Its parent varieties are Honeycrisp and Fuji. Has a sweet/tart flavor.
Season: Mid-October
Limbertwig
This apple is called the Brushy Mountain Limbertwig because it is indigenous to the Brushy Mountain area. It is a small, tart apple with a lot of flavor. It keeps extremely well in storage.
Season: Mid-October
Facts
North Carolina ranks seventh in apple production in the U.S.
Henderson, Wilkes, Alexander, Haywood and Mitchell: Top apple-producing counties in N.C.
Up to 4 million bushels of apples can be produced in a given year.
The high potassium/low sodium ratio of an apple is important in certain cardiac and renal problems, as well as in diet for overweight persons.
Apples contain ZERO FAT per serving and 5 grams of fiber per serving.
THE BEST WAY TO STORE AN APPLE IS IN THE REFRIGERATOR.
Apples soften 10 times faster at room temperature.
Dried Apples
DRIED APPLES HELP LOWER CHOLESTEROL
Results of a Florida State University study involving 160 women who were to eat 2.7 ounces of dried apples or prunes daily for a year.
Women who ate dried apples lowered their total cholesterol by 14%.
They lowered their LDL (bad) cholesterol by 23%.
The women’s HDL (good) cholesterol had increased by 4%.
They also had a 32% decline in the C-reactive protein, which is an indicator of inflammation in the body and a risk factor for heart disease.
Apples are rich in pectin which blocks cholesterol absorption in the gut and encourages the body to use it. Apple peels are full of polyphenols-antioxidants that prevent cellular damage from free radicals.
They are a slow food, which means they’re full of fiber and require a lot of chewing, so they give your body time to register that it’s full.
They help you breathe easy. The children of women who ate the most apples while pregnant were less likely to wheeze or develop asthma by the age of 5. The fruit may also protect the lungs of adults.
They zap cholesterol. Pectin and Pholyphenols in apples prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol. DON’T toss the peel because the skin has two to six times the antioxidant compounds as the flesh.
They fight cancer. People who eat more than one apple a day lower their risk for several cancers (oral, esophageal, colon, breast, ovarian, prostate and others) by 9 to 42%, Italian researchers found.
They make you smarter. They boost the production of acetylcholine, a chemical that transmits messages between nerve cells. Apples are now thought to keep your brain sharp as you age, to enhance memory, and potentially, to lessen the odds of getting Alzheimer’s Disease, suggests one recent animal study from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.