• Beautiful all-over red apples of good size
• Delicious crisp flesh is juicy and sweet
• Ripens in early September
• Vigorous, early-bearing variety ideal for gardens
• Pollinate with Gala or Granny Smith

• Fantastic heirloom variety with great flavor and aroma
• Very large fruits, up to 1 pound per apple
• Perfect as a cooking apple, with tart flesh that is soft and creamy
• Very cold-hardy and disease resistant
• Gala or Red Delicious are perfect pollinators

Growing the Liberty Apple Tree

Size and Appearance

The Liberty Apple Tree graces your garden with a medium-sized, spreading silhouette that reaches a height of 8-16 feet, depending on the chosen rootstock. Its elongated, polished red apples, adorned with a bright and appealing exterior, are a visual treat in any orchard. The overall aesthetic is characterized by healthy, vibrant foliage and a robust structure that adds both beauty and functionality to your outdoor space.

Using Liberty Apple Tree In Your Garden

Integrate the Liberty Apple Tree into your garden for a bountiful harvest and low-maintenance care. This disease-resistant apple tree is an excellent choice for both home orchards and ornamental landscapes. Enjoy the fruits fresh off the tree, use them for baking, or even consider making your own cider. With Liberty, you not only get delicious apples but also the freedom from constant disease management, making it a hassle-free addition to your fruitful garden.

Hardiness

The Liberty Apple Tree is a hardy and resilient variety, thriving in USDA Zones 4-8. Its adaptability to a range of climates ensures successful growth in various regions. With excellent cold tolerance, this apple tree withstands temperatures as low as minus 30°F, making it suitable for diverse environments and providing reliable performance year after year.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Position the Liberty Apple Tree in a location that receives at least half a day of full sun for optimal fruiting. This apple tree adapts well to well-drained soil conditions, thriving in loamy soils with a pH level between 6.0 and 7.0. Ensuring adequate sunlight exposure and suitable soil conditions will contribute to the tree’s overall health and productivity.

Maintenance and Pruning

Maintaining the Liberty Apple Tree is straightforward, thanks to its disease-resistant nature. Regular pruning, especially in the dormant season, helps shape the tree, improve air circulation, and manage its size. Thinning the fruit encourages larger, healthier apples. The Liberty’s vigorous growth benefits from proper care, and a well-managed pruning routine ensures an abundance of high-quality fruit.

History and Origin of the Liberty Apple Tree

Developed by Robert Lamb at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, the Liberty Apple Tree emerged in 1974. Lamb aimed to create a disease-resistant variety that would liberate growers from the constant need for spraying. Named after the town of Liberty in New York, this apple variety has become a favored replacement for the McIntosh, especially in the Northeastern United States. With a history rooted in disease resistance and a commitment to ease of cultivation, the Liberty Apple Tree stands as a testament to successful apple breeding.

Buying the Liberty Apple Tree from The Tree Center

Elevate your orchard experience with the Liberty Apple Tree from The Tree Center, a culmination of expert breeding and horticultural innovation. This disease-resistant marvel promises not only a bountiful harvest of sweet, crisp apples but also freedom from the hassles of constant disease management. With a hardiness spanning USDA Zones 4-8, the Liberty Apple Tree thrives in diverse climates, showcasing its adaptability and reliable performance. Whether you’re a seasoned orchardist or a novice gardener, this tree offers a low-maintenance addition to your landscape, standing tall in the face of disease and environmental challenges. Enhance your garden with the Liberty Apple Tree, a symbol of resilience, flavor, and the freedom to enjoy orchard-fresh goodness right at home. Choose The Tree Center for excellence in quality and expertise, and embark on a journey of orchard success with the Liberty Apple Tree.

Growing the Arkansas Black Apple Tree

Size and Appearance

The Arkansas Black Apple Tree is a vigorous, upright apple tree growing between 15 and 20 feet tall, with a similar spread. Allow room for its final size when planting. The glossy green leaves are oval, with serrated edges, and they turn yellow or orange in fall. White flowers in spring, on the bare branches, herald the start of fruit development, and this tree needs a different variety of apple growing nearby to produce a significant crop of fruit. In an ornamental garden, most crab apples, especially those with white flowers, will pollinate just about any fruit-bearing apple tree. If you are growing this tree with other apple varieties, most will act as pollinators, including ‘Granny Smith’, ‘Jonathan’, ‘Gala’, ‘Yellow Delicious’, and ‘Rome Beauty’. The Arkansas Black Apple Tree is a good pollinator for many other varieties, so all your trees will benefit.

Fruit develops steadily over the summer, and this late variety is ready for harvest in October and November, so it’s ideal to grow with early-ripening varieties, so you always have apples available. When ripe the apples are round to oblong, with a uniform dark red skin and white flesh. The skin darkens in storage, becoming almost black. The yield is high, and trees begin to bear fruit within 3 years of planting. When first picked there is an acidic bite, but it mellows in storage to a sweet, honey or cider flavor. Like other heirloom varieties the flavor is complex, subtle, and variable. The white flesh is crisp, becoming softer by the end of the 6 or even 8 months this variety can be stored for. It is an excellent juicing apple, and also ideal for baking, pies and for making apple jelly.

Using the Arkansas Black Apple Tree in Your Garden

Grow the Arkansas Black Apple Tree as an interesting lawn tree, or in the corners of your yard. Plant it among others, spacing the trees 15 feet apart, in a home orchard. It is attractive in bloom, and also when heavy with ripe apples.

Hardiness

This variety is hardy across most of the country, growing in warmer, sheltered areas in zone 4, and everywhere else. It requires 800 to 900 chilling hours, when temperatures are above freezing but below 45 degrees. This means it won’t grow properly in zone 9, except in the northwest.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Plant the ‘Arkansas Black’ Apple in full sun for the best harvest, although a couple of hours of shade each day will do little harm. Grow it in any well-drained soil, avoiding wet areas and heavy clays. Enrich the soil when planting, and use organic mulch over the root zone to conserve moisture and feed your tree. Do not allow grass to grow beneath a tree less than 10 years old. Water regularly when young, and avoid long periods of dryness, as this will affect fruit quality.

Maintenance and Pruning

The Arkansas Black Apple Tree is very resistant to rust disease, and somewhat resistant to fire blight and apple scab, so it doesn’t need elaborate spraying or treatments. Pests too are relatively rare, and this vigorous tree is an easy apple to succeed with. Prune in late winter or early spring, during a dry period, and develop a central leader with radiating branches at low angles. You can adjust the angle by tying strings to rocks to pull young branches downwards. Spreading branches are easier to harvest from and ripen better, letting more sun through. Keep the growth open, and don’t allow branches to become crowded. Trim back new side-shoots to several inches long, to encourage the development of fruiting spurs. Once your tree is carrying a significant crop you will probably need to thin out the fruit, otherwise your harvest will be many very small apples. Remove excess fruit when they are the diameter of a quarter, leaving just one in each cluster.

To store for the long-term, wrap each apple in a piece of newspaper and lay out without touching on a shelf. The storage areas should be as close to freezing as possible, but not actually frozen, and it should have a 90% humidity level. The closer you can come to these conditions, the longer your apples will last.

History and Origin of the Arkansas Black Apple Tree

The apple variety called ‘Arkansas Black’ probably appeared as a lucky seedling tree, and it was formally described in 1886, having been first seen fruiting around 1870. Its exact origin isn’t clear, with some saying it was found by a man called John Crawford as early as the 1840s, while others suggest it was a John Braithwaite. It has also been claimed by De Kalb Holt, the brother of Earl Holt, who owned the first commercial orchard in Arkansas. In the 1870s it launched the Arkansas apple industry, being widely publicized, and at one point making up 20% of the state’s apple crop. Fruit was shipped across the country on the new railway lines, but the Great Depression of the 1930s destroyed the apple producers. Since then it has been a rare, specialist variety.

Buying the Arkansas Black Apple Tree at the Tree Center

We love having wonderful heirloom apples to offer you, like the Arkansas Black Apple Tree. Whether you grow it in your ornamental garden, or establish a home orchard, you will love this unique tree, its amazing color, and the delicious flesh. Nothing will be wasted with this long-storage variety, and you can take your time to bake and make jelly. Begin your time as an apple grower, or add to your existing collection – either way, order now, as this variety is rarely available, and is snapped up by collectors as soon as it comes into stock.

Gardeners in warm areas of the country often see the apple as a northern fruit, and something they cannot grow, but that is not true. The Ein Shemer Apple Tree was bred and developed in Israel, and it will grow in places with almost no winter. Unlike most other apple tree varieties, it needs just a couple of hundred hours in winter of temperatures below 45 degrees, and that happens even in Florida. If you thought home-grown apples were out of your reach, think again.

Gardeners in cooler areas will also want to grow the Ein Shemer Apple Tree, because it is renowned for starting to fruit when still very young, and it produces apples very early in the year – as early as June in warm regions. There is yet another reason to grow this apple everywhere.

Growing Ein Shemer Apple Trees

Unlike almost all other apples, Ein Shemer will produce a good crop when grown alone, making it ideal for small gardens, where you want to grow apples, but only have room for one tree. Very few apple trees can do this, so it is a top choice whenever a single tree is called for. If you do have more room, plant the other apple for hot regions – the Anna Apple Tree. Both of these trees will crop when grown alone, but both will give a heavier crop when grown together. No other trees can pollinate these two varieties, because they flower so early in the year – in Florida and southern California they can bloom as early as January.

Planting and Initial Care

The Ein Shemer apple tree is easy to grow in almost any garden soil, but it will not grow well in soil that is constantly wet. When planting, make sure you plant it at the same depth as it is in the pot, and be very careful to not bury that ‘kink’ you see lowdown on the stem. That is where the tree has been grafted onto a special root system to control its size and vigor. Any shoots that might come from below that point should be removed flush with the stem, as they will draw strength from the tree, and never produce fruit.

Choose a sunny spot for your tree, and in zones 8 and 9 it will benefit from some afternoon shade. Water your tree weekly in the first season, and regularly during dry periods after that. Begin to train your tree from the beginning. If you have plenty of room, you can develop an open, vase-shaped tree, but it is often better, and saves space, to develop a single central stem, with branches radiating from it. Use string tied to rocks to spread the branches outwards, as narrow, upright branches can snap under the weight of a heavy crop.

If you want larger apples for eating, thin out the tiny apples when they are the size of a quarter. Leave just one or two in each cluster, and space them about 6 inches apart along the branches. You will harvest less weight, but the apples will be larger, and better quality. There is also more waste in small apples, as the core is still the same size.

History and Origins of the Ein Shemer Apple Tree

Abba Stein was a breeder and grower of apples in Israel, at the Kibbutz Ein Shemer, in the 1950s. This new country wanted crops to grow in the desert it was turning into fields, and Abba Stein wanted apples that would grow in the warm, Middle Eastern climate. He bred local varieties with ones he brought from Europe, and produced both the Ein Shemer and the Anna apples, which are still the main varieties grown in Israel today.

To create our trees, skilled growers take stem pieces from trees that can be traced back to the original tree, and then graft them onto suitable apple rootstocks. There is always a high demand for these unique varieties that grow in Florida and other southern areas, and supplies are always limited. Order now while we can still fill that order.

Far better, such people argue, to grow something unique, special, and probably unobtainable from commercial growers. With fruit and vegetables this usually means something heirloom, that is, an older variety – oldies but goodies, we might say. There are lots of reasons why a particular apple variety stops being grown, and it rarely has to do with quality – in fact it is often the reverse. Size of the harvest is a big issue for commercial growers, and many great apples are replaced simply because the new one yields more. The ability to travel and store well are other big factors. For a home grower, none of these things really matter, and you can focus on what really does matter – taste and uniqueness.

If growing heirloom varieties appeals to you, for exactly these reasons, then the Stayman Apple is the tree for you. As one special tree, or as part of a collection of heirloom varieties, this apple has a unique spicy flavor, combining sweet with tart, plus a juicy and crunchy texture for great eating. Over a hundred and fifty years old, this apple certainly counts as an heirloom, and it’s a great eating apple too.

Growing Stayman Apple Trees

The Stayman Apple is considered by many to be the best eating apple there is. It has the perfect combination of sweet and tart, and a grown-up crunch. The flavor is often described as spicy or ‘winey’, and it has a delicious after-taste like strawberries. Heirloom apples often don’t look great, and the Stayman Apple won’t win any beauty contests, although it is pretty enough. The fruit is large and round, with greenish-yellow skin that has a heavy red blush over most of it, with many red stripes from top to bottom.

Like other heirloom apples, there are russet spots on the skin, and russet where the stalk is attached. Russet is a thicker area of rough brown on the skin. This apple is therefore best peeled before eating. The flesh is white with a yellow-green tone, and it’s crisp yet tender. This is a juicy apple, with a sweet but tart taste you will love. The spicy notes make for a unique and very enjoyable eating experience. This variety also makes excellent apple sauce, and cider too.

Planting and Initial Care

Grow your Stayman Apple Tree in well-drained soil in full sun. Mulch over the root-zone each spring with rich compost or manure, keeping it from touching the trunk. Keep the area below your tree free of grass and weeds. Only mature trees should have grass growing beneath them. Pruning your tree should begin early, and it should be done in late winter each year. The goal is to keep a sturdy central trunk, with several evenly-spaced branches radiating outwards at a low angle, with a clear center, to allow the sun to penetrate. Cut new shoots back by one-third and keep the tree open and uncrowded. If you have a heavy crop of young apples you may need to thin them, so they are spaced out about 4 inches apart. Do this when they are about the size of a quarter. Thinning will give you large, good-quality apples.

Pollinating Your Tree

The Stayman Apple is not self-fertile, so it needs another tree of a suitable variety to pollinate it. Why not compliment it with a wonderful heirloom cooking apple – Rome Beauty? Dating from 1816, this apple is even older, yet it is considered simply the best cooking apple around. It is self-fertile, so it will pollinate your Stayman Apple, and crop beautifully itself too. That way you have a wonderful eating apple, and a terrific one for cooking too. If instead you want more eating apples, another suitable heirloom variety, from 1826, is Jonathan, also renowned for its flavor. In fact, why not grow all three?

History and Origins of the Stayman Apple Tree

The Stayman Apple originated from a batch of seeds taken from an earlier American variety called Winesap. This was a tart apple, popular for cider making. A certain Dr. J. Stayman, from Leavenworth, Kansas, grew the seeds in 1866, and in 1875 his tree bore its first fruit – sweeter than the parent, but just as well-flavored. It wasn’t noticed much until the 1890s, after which it was widely planted in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia – all states where this apple grows well.

This apple is preserved by grafting, and it cannot be grown from seed. Our trees are skillfully produced from sections of young stems grafted onto special apple roots, to give healthy and sturdy plants. You can see this connecting point as a kink low down in the stem of your tree. Keep that area above the ground when planting – in time it will disappear. Any growth from below that point is not the apple you want, and it should be removed immediately.

Growing and collecting heirloom apples is a popular activity, and no wonder – the benefits are enormous. Stock of special varieties like this one sells quickly. Order now while we still have some Stayman Apple Trees left for you.