God Didn't Make Them Little Pink Apples ...

In the Photo: Pink Pearmain apple – one of Albert Etters great apple breeding successes.

Harry Burton, a Salt Sping Island organic farmer, prolific letter writer, and the closest thing BC has to a "Johnny Appleseed", sent us this essay on red-fleshed heirloom apples, a variety that Harry believes will be the next "hot" trend in the produce bins. You will be able to try them this fall, along with 200 other connoisseur apple varieties at the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival, taking place on Sumday, September 28, 2008 at Fulford Hall.



RED-FLESHED APPLES ARE TRULY THE APPLE OF THE FUTURE

By Harry Burton

Red-fleshed apples are truly the apple of the future.

We grow 23 varieties at Apple Luscious Organic Orchard on Salt Spring Island and they are great to eat. The excitement of biting into the apples, the great taste and the novelty is amazing. You never have to encourage a child to eat them. Kids love them.

Not only that, but the red colour is an indication that the fruit has extra antioxidants, in the form of anthocyanins, that are great health benefit. I predict that red-fleshed apples will become the apples of the future, in the same way that red grapefruit has displaced white grapefruit as the common type. They taste even better than they look. The first reaction to biting into the red flesh is always “WOW”.

The most prolific, most dynamic, most creative and least know apple breeder in North America was Albert Etter, a self-taught genius of horticulture who lived in Ettersberg, Northern California until his death in 1950. His greatest and most lasting horticultural achievement was with apples, to which he shifted focus in the late 1920’s. For his grafting, he was fortunate to obtain scionwood for Surprise, a bright rosy pink-fleshed heritage apple variety from the remote wilds of Turkestan.

Although not highly rated in The Fruit and Fruit Trees of North America (1869), which was an eastern US publication, Surprise grew much better in the California climate, and it became the basis for Albert’s red-fleshed apple breeding program. Fortunately, Etter was not inclined to put much faith in the advice of “Eastern” experts growing apples in less favourable conditions. He loved to show how well most apple grew in the hills of Ettersberg. His intuition paid off. He was also unique in that he used unlikely breeding parents using localized, wild apple breeds and often including some crab apple breeds.

Etter claimed to have created at least 30 red-fleshed apple varieties, most probably open-pollinated seedlings of Surprise. He had a vision. Etter was delighted with the great taste and beautifully red coloured flesh of his apples and told his neighbours that someday his red-fleshed varieties would “grace the menus of San Francisco’s most elegant hotel”.

However since the mindset of the 1940’s was not leaning towards change, it became difficult to introduce new varieties. Albert gave scionwood for 40 of his best apple varieties to California Nursery Company (CNC) with the hope of introducing the best to the public. Unfortunately, only the Pink Pearl (a red-fleshed variety) was really in any way successful, and is still available to this day, even though Etter did not claim it to be his best variety. CNC has discontinued or lost the 39 other varieties. So most of Etters varieties were neglected after his death and heading for extinction.

Fortunately, Ram Fishman, of Green Mantle Nursery in Etterberg, California, has taken on the task of rediscovering as many of Albert Etters apple varieties as possible. He has catalogued at least 15 red-fleshed varieties. With his family, Ram would track down any red-fleshed apple trees they could find, attempting to differentiate, catalogue and preserve by propagating, any red fleshed apple trees they found. This was no easy task since the varieties were not only scattered throughout their local area of Ettersberg, but appear to have been growing in parts of Oregon, where Etter had colleagues who probably shared his scionwood. In addition, Ram had the difficult task of trying to match the Albert Etter given variety names such as “Hoover Redflesh”, to the currently discovered red-flesh variety. Quite a challenge.

To Ram Fishman we owe a great deal of thanks. Not only has he revived these varieties, probably with little financial reward, but in some cases, he has saved these varieties from extinction. Rubiyat (a red-fleshed variety), for instance, was a decrepit fragment of a tree when Ram discovered it and fortunately, his first attempt at grafting succeeded, for by the following year, the original tree had been, in Ram’s words “bulldozed over by some pesky cows”.

The best way to connect with red-fleshed apples is to attend The Salt Spring Island Apple Festival on Sunday, Sept 28, 2008. We have a very unique, diverse, exciting organic Apple Festival. The 700 or so happy people who attended in 2007 are our best advertising. They were delighted. They all became Salt Spring Island apple connoisseurs. Where else do you have over 350 different apple varieties being grown organically and for good taste?

Can you imagine a 92 year old woman, with a walker, becoming as enthused as a teenager when she discovered we had the old Gravenstein apples she had known as a kid. She climbed up the 2 stairs to our selling area on her own. WOW. Her words were, “You have made my day”.





















Two more blushers: Left: The Winter Red Flesh Crabapple; Right: the Hidden Rose Apple.