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Silver Creek Nursery Ltd.

McIntosh 1st Generation Apple

McIntosh 1st Generation Apple

History: John McIntosh planted several apple seedlings upon settling in Dundela, Ontario. From these, he discovered the famous McIntosh apple as a seedling in his orchard. The family began selling the fruit and grafted McIntosh trees in 1835 and in 1870 it entered commercial production. By the 1900s it was one of the most popular apples in northeastern North America, although its popularity waned over time as varieties such as Gala were introduced. Nonetheless, McIntosh apples still remain some of the most popular in North America. The original tree died in 1906 after being damaged by a house fire and a commemorative plaque marks where it stood. The apple has since been named Canada's national fruit. The Macintosh line of Apple computers was also named after this variety.

Why We Grow It: For fans of Canadian heritage apples in particular, this one is hard to beat. To the best of our knowledge, this is the original strain of McIntosh. Aside from its storied past, McIntosh apples boast soft, slightly tart flesh with high Vitamin C content. It is excellent for fresh eating and making applesauce.

    Fruit Specs

    Recommended Use: Fresh eating, cooking, cider

    Fruit Size: Medium

    Storage: Keeps until June when stored in cold storage

    Harvest: September - Mid

    Cider Class (if applicable): Class: Sharp
    Sugar: Medium to very high
    Acidity: Medium to very high
    Tannins: Low
    Juice Yield: Low to medium
    Taste: Rich and complex
    Recommendations: Can be used to make a single-variety cider or in blends
    Notes: Normally these apples have medium sugar and acidity but when heavily infected with scab they create an extremely rich and sweet juice gre

    Growing Specs

    Canadian Hardiness Zone: 4

    Soil Preference: Sandy loam, loam, clay loam. Prefers average to moist conditions, avoid planting anywhere that floods for more than two weeks in the spring. Generally quite adaptable to different soil conditions. Drought tolerant.

    Flowering Time: Early

    Bloom Colour: White

    Pollination Requirements: Requires a pollinator of a different apple variety that blooms around the same time

    Sun/Shade Requirements:

    Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)

    General Growth Habits:

    Moderately vigorous and precocious with heavy crops, spur bearing. Susceptible to scab and canker but resistant to cedar rust and quince rust and very resistant to mildew and fireblight.

    General Disease Resistance Rating: High. This is a combined rating of how the cultivar produces and grows in our test orchard, along with the cultivar's known disease resistences/susceptibilities. Remember, just because a variety is susceptable to something does not mean it will get it. The microclimate, pests and disease present within your orchard/area will differ from ours too, creating a unique growing condition that may or may not induce certain pests or diseases.

    Shipping vs. Pick Up

    CLICK HERE to see how shipping compares to pick up.

    Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of trees across Canada (except BC due to CFIA regulations). We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them and send them out via courrier. CLICK HERE to see our shipping policy.

    Pick-up: We also have thousands of trees picked up from our nursery each year. The pick-up options is free, though you must wait until you have been emailed a confirmation that your order is ready to pick up, which will have further information such as hours, locations, etc. We really appreciate if you can make an appointment to pick up, then we can be as organized as possible during our busy season.

    Size at Purchase

    Our grafted fruit trees are graded into three categories, and the size includes the rootstock:

    • 50-80cm whip: may have some minor branching, this grade is like a "b-grade" size tree in industry standards; we include in this price category trees that are over 1m but have some scarring or mild crookedness.
    • 1m+ whip: may have some minor branching, aka feathering. This is like a typical one-year whip in industry standards. 
    • 1m+ branched: these trees must be over a meter and have 3 or more branches 30cm or longer, as well as a central leader. They are essentially a two-year tree in industry standards. 
    • For stone fruits only - 1m+ whip/branched: We have combined these grades based on the way these trees grow and are grafted. Plums, apricots, cherries, and peaches naturally tend to grow more vigorously compared to apples and are more likely to form larger trees with more branches. However, we only chip bud them so they are a one-year old tree by industry standards. Apples and pears are partially bench grafted, and using the knip-boom method the grading becomes more complicated, hence the reason they are split into different grades.
    grafted tree grades at silver creek nursery
    Please keep in mind, bareroot trees appear small if you are unfamiliar with them. Size can vary year to year due to weather conditions and every single variety has a unique amount of vigor (some varieties naturally are smaller and some bigger, much like humans -and when you propagate hundreds of varieties, there certainly is variation). While we remain competitive in our plant size, it's also worth noting we don't use synthetic chemicals to push vegetative growth, therefore you may find conventional nursery stock larger in some instances comparatively. 
    Why plant small? It's best to transplant a tree when it's young so it can establish its roots before it has a lot of vegetative growth. This is much less stressful on it and bareroot trees tend to catch up and even surpass larger potted trees planted at the same time, after a few years.

    Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "to small"), will still incur the applicable cancellation fees if the trees are true to our grading standards as per the agreement of sale when the order was placed.

    Rootstock
    Size
    Regular price $53.00 CAD
    Regular price Sale price $53.00 CAD
    Sale Sold out
    Shipping calculated at checkout.
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