(Reprinted from the October 5, 2001 Suburban News)

Gone are the many types of apples I knew in my youth; kinds like Baldwins, Potters, Roans, and even Banana Fruit. Some were real keepers that could be put in the vegetable cellar where they would keep all winter.

Today most farms and orchards raise Macs, or Cortlands. A few have Delicious, Winesap, or Red Jonathans.

A few years ago, I had a Priscilla apple tree given to me. A Priscilla apple tree is supposed to be virus free; but it’s an early apple tree, great apples to eat, but they only keep for a few weeks.

A couple of years ago I bought an apple tree that was advertised in “Parade.” It is a tree with four limbs and each one had been grafted with a different type of apple. It has Granny Smith, Cortland, Red Delicious, and Macintosh fruit. This year it gave me two or three of each and I’ll look for more next year.

I have to put hen wire around my young apple trees as the deer like to browse on them. I had a young peach tree that after only two years gave lots of fruit but right after the season the deer ate all of it just leaving me a skinny walking stick.

An apple tree is a member of the rose family. It’s the largest member and that makes an apple a rose hip. It is also well marked as a plant that bears edible fruit. If you should cut an apple in two at its equator you would find a perfect star, the sign of heavenly food.

When you throw an apple core away, a seed from it might become an apple tree. It will never become a bearer of apples like the one you ate. It will bear what is called a natural fruit. Still, its apples are useful. If you want it to bear a special kind of apple it has to be grafted with a small branch from the kind of apple tree you want it to be.

Some apple trees won’t give fruit until there is another apple tree less than a hundred feet away.