When I was a kid, my dad ordered a case of Washington Delicious apples every
year, and we loved both the yellow and red varieties. Then some years ago it was
decided that Washington Delicious apples bruised too easily, so they started
grafting new stock to produce apples that don't bruise so easily, but look the
same. They succeeded, but the result tastes like crap. Now there are no decent
Washington Delicious apples, but it's too late for them to go back. Sometimes
you just need to leave well enough alone.

Few people today have ever tasted a real Washington Delicious apple.

I just returned from a trip to Watsonville California where they grow apples on
small farms. They have many different wonderful apples. The farm I go to is
Prevedelli,  http://www.prevedelli.com/
They grow 40 different varieties on 400 acres. I have bought about a dozen
different varieties, and all are just wonderful. We brought back 40 pounds, and
now we have to dehydrate them.


On Sep 29, 2014, at 7:18 PM, ruby@m... wrote:

> I read a book a few years ago - something by Michail
> Pollan? - about several crops, apples being one of them
> (mary jane being another).
> 
> I was amazed to find out that the 10 or so seeds in each
> apple will grow 10 different apple trees with different
> unpredictable flavor in each tree's fruit.  Eating apples
> only really occurred in the latter half of the 19th
> century.  When someone discovered a flavorful apple - say a
> Macintosh - the tree was worth thousands and all Macintosh
> bearing trees now are branches from descendants of that one
> tree grafted onto miscellaneous rootstock.  There was a
> time when rewards were offered for new types of apples, and
> it was all just chance.  Amazing.
> 
> Also, interesting to find out about Johnny Appleseed.  He
> was growing generic apple trees with inedible fruit and
> giving them to pioneers heading west so they could make
> hard cider.  You couldn't drink the water reliably, so
> cider was a way to hydrate safely (until you had too much
> and got behind the plow).  So Mr. Appleseed was a pusher,
> or at least an enabler, and not the jolly guy that Walt
> Disney made him out to be.
> 
> Ed MInch
> 
> 
> Steve Jones  wrote:
>> Matt;
>> 
>> That's a pretty useless site. All they have is a bunch of
>> pictures of
>> apples - no pictures of the wood!
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