Friends of Pipers Orchard

We have more Wealthy apples in the orchard than any other variety. Not all orchard experts are fans of the Wealthy, but Orangepippin.com states, “Excellent dessert and multi-use apple, picked a few weeks early for cooking. Beautiful fruit ripens to bright red across the surface. Crisp, juicy flesh. Refreshing, sprightly, vinous flavor.” We’ve got lots if you want to pick some to use for the pie contest at the Festival of Fruit on September 24th.

From Wikipedia:

The Wealthy was the earliest apple cultivar to thrive in the Minnesota climate. Horticulturalist Peter Gideon grew it first in 1868, after years of trial and error with various apple varieties.^[1]

Before 1868, only crab apples grew reliably in Minnesota. American Indians in the area harvested other crops, but they did not grow apples. Early White settlers to Minnesota tried to grow apples using seeds and seedlings from their former homes to the east and the south, but their plants died, usually because of the region’s harsh winters.

Peter Gideon (1820-1899), creator of the cultivar

In 1853, Peter Gideon moved to Minnesota for health reasons and took a homestead with his family on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, near Excelsior. He had learned fruit-growing as a child, and when he arrived on his new land, he planted a bushel of apple seeds he had brought with him from his former home in Illinois. In the years that followed, Gideon experimented with apple and fruit growing, planting thousands of trees, but most of his trees died within a few years, if not right away, and none of them bore much fruit.

By 1861, Gideon and his family had only one surviving apple tree, a Siberian crab apple, and they were down to their last eight dollars. Determined to find an apple that would grow in Minnesota, Gideon sent the family’s last dollars to an apple grower in Bangor, Maine, and got apple seeds and scions in return. Just one of the resulting trees, crossed with Gideon’s Siberian crab apple, produced the apple that Gideon later named the Wealthy, after his wife, Wealthy (Hull) Gideon.

By the early 20th century, the Wealthy apple was one of the top five apples grown nationally, but beyond his employment at the state farm, Gideon never made any money from the Wealthy apple. The Wealthy apple also was the parent of other successful Minnesota apples, such as the Haralson, which was developed at the University of Minnesota’s Fruit Breeding Farm in 1922.

One of our Kings is near the trail at the north end of the orchard, and has an old Heaven and Earth installation nestled between the trunk and a branch. Protected apples are still growing and should be ready for the Festival of Fruit on Saturday, September 24th.

Our Golden Russets are late-harvest, but with the early season this year, may well be ready in time for the Festival of Fruit on September 24th. Here’s information about them from orangepippin.com.

The biggest apples in the orchard are in the southeast corner – our Wolf Rivers. Though they’re already large, they will still grow. Best for cooking. Here’s the scoop on them from Orange Pippin. They ripen late, so we should have some at the September 24th Festival of Fruit.

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Not sure what the cause was, nor exactly when this happened, but our only Belmont apple tree in the northeast corner of the orchard has fallen over. It’s totally loaded with apples (as are many of the other trees). We’ll have to see if it can be pruned and righted. Everyone is welcome to join our summer pruning and orchard maintenance work party on Saturday, August 6th from 10:00AM – 2:00PM.

Did you know we have grape vines in the southeastern corner of the orchard? These are varieties which were grown in the area when Piper’s Orchard was originally planted, though we don’t believe any vines were planted here at that time. Here are some developing Gewurztraminer grapes. Probably not enough to bottle this year. Come visit Piper’s Orchard in Carkeek Park Saturday, and see Joseph Anderson’s one-day only Orchard Oculus exhibition, as well as our ripening fruit trees and grapes.

We have a nice dolgo crab-apple in the orchard, which ripens earlier than most of our apples. The dolgo is sweeter than many crab-apples, and is listed a good for making jelly, but I can speak from personal experience that there’s a lot of overhead if you’re trying to include them while making applesauce. You can learn more about the dolgo at Orange Pippin.