These are the apple varieties available for grafting at the Benevolence Orchard & Gardens grafting workshop on Saturday, April 6, 2024

Akane       From orangepippin.com: "Akane is useful early season apple with an unusually good balance of sweet and sharp flavors. The flesh is firm rather than crisp, but with plenty of juice."

Ashmeads Kernel       Russeted apple. From orangepippin.com: "Ashmeads Kernel has remained popular for well over 2 centuries, and with good reason: it has a distinctive flavour which is quite different from most other varieties."

Baldwin       Good keeper, juice valuable in hard cider, and it does well here in the Boulder area.

Blanc Mollet       French bittersweet hard cider apple from the 1700s.

Cortland       A McIntosh-like apple. Good for juice and fresh eating when perfectly ripe, but doesn’t store as well as some.

Duchess of Oldenburg       1700s Russian apple, early season. One of the apples used to breed Honeycrisp.

Esopus Spitzenburg       Late 1700s New York apple. Very good eating apple. Keeps well.

Fireside       Good for pies, sauce, and fresh eating. Ripens later in the harvest season.

Freedom       Good for fresh eating and pies. One source recommends it highly as a dried apple. Resistant to two diseases, scab and cedar apple rust, that aren’t big problems here.

Gold Star       Pomiferous: "Moderately sweet with some tartness and perfumed, fruity aroma."

Golden Russet       Eric’s favorite apple — if I could only eat one apple ever again, I’d choose this one. Dense, bursting with flavor. High BRIX makes it valuable for hard cider. Grows well in the Boulder area. Late harvest season.

Grimes Golden       One of the parents of Golden Delicious. Unlike most apple cultivars, it is partially self-fertile and does not require another nearby tree for pollination.

Gros Frequin       Bittersweet hard cider apple. Gros Frequin has done well on the West Slope and we are trialing it here.

Harrison       Although considered a hard cider apple, I like Harrison for eating out of hand.

Hewe’s Virginia       A smaller-sized apple (sometimes called a crab), Hewe’s has notable astringency and is excellent in hard cider. I also like to eat this variety fresh, however.

Kingston Black       A bittersharp hard cider apple.

Liberty       A McIntosh-like apple. Useful for fresh eating and in hard cider.

Mutsu       Mutsu, also called Crispin, is a Japanese variety. It is like a very large Golden Delicious. Good cooking apple and very good for fresh eating. The largest apple I ever saw was a Mutsu, in California.

Prairie Spy       Prairie Spy is an early University of Minnesota apple that is very cold hardy. It would be a good one to try in mountain locations. Good eating apple.

Six-finger Jack       Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project in southwest CO has preserved and propagated this apple. It has a very high BRIX and would likely be good in hard cider.

Smokehouse       A fine cooking and eating apple that keeps very well into the late Winter.

State Fair       Summer apple. Very good when perfectly ripe, but doesn’t keep for a long time. A good choice for a small orchard that needs apples of various ripening times.

Sweet Sixteen       A fireblight-resistant mid-season ripening apple. From the University of Minnesota, so it puts up with cold climates.

Wealthy       Good for many uses. Commonly found on old homesteads on the Great Plains.

Wolf River       A very large apple very good for cooking. Very cold tolerant.