Silver Creek Nursery Ltd.

Winesap Apple Bareroot

History: Winesap's origins are unclear but it is believed to have originated from New Jersey pre-1800s where it was popular for making cider. It is first mentioned in a couple of books on apples in the early 1800s. Winesap was popular in the US until the 1950s due to its good keeping ability but the advent of better storage technology allowed better tasting apple varieties to eclipse it. It is still quit popular with backyard orchardists.

Why We Grow It: Winesap's all-purpose nature helps to explain why it hasn't faded into total obscurity like some other varieties. The medium-large red and yellow skinned fruit is good for cooking and making cider. It has sweet flesh with some tang or 'winey' flavour that is also decent for fresh eating. On top of that, the tree is productive, very resistant to fireblight, and the fruit stores well.

$56.50

Rootstock
Size

13 in stock

Fruit Traits:

Recommended Use: Fresh eating, cooking, cider

Fruit Size: Medium

Storage: Keeps until April when stored in cold storage

Harvest: October - Late

Cider Class (if applicable):

  • Sharp

Class: Sharp
Sugar: Medium, SG 1.055
Acidity: Medium to high, TA ~7 g/L
Tannins: Medium to low, <2 g/L
Taste: Wine-like quality with flavours reminiscent of tart apple, lemon, and pear.
Recommendations: Makes a nice single-variety cider and can be used as a base for blends where it adds acidity

Tree Traits:

Canadian Hardiness Zone: 4

Soil Preferance: 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.

Flowering Time: Middle

Bloom Colour: White

Pollination Requirements: Triploid. This variety is sterile and cannot pollinate other trees. Requires a pollinator of a different apple variety that blooms around the same time in order to produce fruit.

Sun/Shade Requirements: Full sun (approx. 8-10 hours of sun daily)

General Growth Habit: Moderately vigorous, slow to start bearing fruit but has reliable and heavy crops once it does, spur bearing. Susceptible to water core and scab but very resistant to mildew and fireblight.

Overall Disease Resistance Rating*: High

*this rating is combined with our experience growing in our test orchards combined with already available information on the cultivar.

Shipping: Every year we ship thousands of plants across Canada. We carefully bag roots in damp sawdust, then box them and send them out via courier. 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.

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

  • 50-80cm grade: Smaller trees that may have some minor branching, this grade is like a "b-grade" size tree according to industry standards. This size may include trees that are over 1m but have some scarring or mild crookedness.
  • 1m+ grade: Trees that are over 1m tall, some may have no branches and others may have light feathering or a few established branches 

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 vigour (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 some conventional nursery stock larger in comparison. 


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 after a few years bareroot trees tend to catch up and even surpass larger potted trees planted at the same time.

Orders that are cancelled last minute due to size (being "too 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.

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