On September 19th the UW Farm and UW Botanic Gardens hosted the Annual Harvest Dinner Fundraiser, at the Center for Urban Horticulture. Attendees celebrated the harvest season and a new Heritage Orchard along with a feast featuring locally caught salmon and UW Farm fresh produce. The Heritage Orchard, planted in an area between the Cultural Kitchen and the Wapato Pond, presents another facet of the farm for learning, food security and much needed biodiversity in an era of climate change, the Anthropocene. 

Apples are a fruit universally enjoyed by humans, wildlife, and insects around the globe.

Apples unite us. You may have picked apples when you were young. Some of you still do. Others grow apple trees, or are eaters of apples as sauce, pies, or even spread apple butter on bread. We dry apples for chips, drink cider, and even sip appletinis. But few of us know the history, origin and significance of this pomological crop. Over the past two years, in no small part due to Althea Ericksen, ’23, Environmental Studies, College of the Environment, who propelled the planting of the orchard as part of her capstone project, I have learned more than expected.

Apple Lore and Significance

We are familiar with apple lore in our culture. It is said that an apple started the Trojan War. The Norse gods owed their immortality to apples. The Arabian Nights features a magic apple from Samarkand capable of curing all human diseases—predating the belief that an apple a day will keep the doctor away.

On a personal note, apples were part of my upbringing on the east coast. Tales of Johnny ‘Appleseed’ Chapman were well known to me, and apples were part of my school lunch nearly every day. 

My mother planted two apple trees in our backyard in suburban Long Island, New York. Though originally for landscaping purposes, the trees were prolific and we made plenty of pies. I have a hunch they were Macintosh. 

In Maine every summer, I visited very old apple trees that lined my aunt and uncle’s yard. The thick, old trunks and twisted branches bore small fruit, too sour for eating, so we used them as shuttlecocks in games of badminton. For sure, this was a privileged upbringing.

And then came my college days in Vermont, where apples reigned king. Every fall, coupled with the famous foliage, saw state-wide apple pressing events combined with Vermont sharp cheddar. 

When I moved to Washington in September of 2012, I was not aware of the significance of apples as part of this state’s history and economy.  I dove into statistics on apples in Washington history’s and as a commodity crop.

The average American eats 16 pounds of apples per year, and it is common knowledge that Washington is the top producer of apples in the US. NY comes in second and Michigan, third. WA’s production hovers in the 6,000-8,000 ton/year range and goes up and down due to climate, pests and politics.

In 2010 five varieties dominated the WA market: Red Delicious, followed by Gala, Granny Smith, Fuji, and Golden Delicious. 

Today only two dominate: Gala and Honeycrisp (a Minnesota creation). 

Honeycrisp – as it turns out outsells them all…..until Cosmic Crisp, a WA original that made the scene in late 2019-2020, which initially topped the record books by commanding $1000 more per ton than Honeycrisp. 

If you haven’t guessed by now, apple production is very competitive. It is also very vulnerable. Labor, limited and unpredictable scion or cuttings of new varieties, availability, pollinator health, climate variability, pests and chemicals used to control them, politics and succession are all part of a complicated industry. Succession is an important consideration. Who will be running orchards in the future?

Apple Origins and Propagation

England is not where apples originated. DNA indicates that apples originated in the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and northwestern China.[5][25] In fact, the capitol of Kazakhstan is Almaty, meaning “Father of the apple.” Wild apples still thrive there today. 

Apple growing is very particular. The fruit is a product of two parents, Therefore the seed could be any combination of the two, or perhaps traits that go further back. To get a known, predictable apple, scion (or the small new limb end) must be cut from the tree and attached to a root stock, which becomes the trunk. The root stock not only brings with it traits of disease resistance and vigor, but tree height. The scion carries the flavor, color, type – fresh, baking, storage, cider. Historically, standard root stock was used, this being the largest in height and breadth. Today dwarf, semi-dwarf and now columnar are more popular BUT these are more subject to drought, high winds, and flooding. 

Apples planted by seed led to many regional unnamed varieties with unpredictable results. Grafting led to known varieties. 

A century ago, Americans grew thousands of varieties of apples. Nowadays we’re down to just a handful, among them McIntosh, Jonathan, and Red Delicious—the last of which, a lot of people argue, may be red but isn’t exactly delicious. 

Genetic uniformity in crops seldom pays off, and the American apple—attacked by pests on all sides—now needs a battery of chemicals to survive. Ancestral genes may give our apples the resistance and versatility they need—to say nothing of a new world of flavors, colors, and shapes that we’ve forgotten apples ever had. Climate change is also leading to less red in our apples – one of the markers that seems to be affected by higher temperatures.

Enter the UW Farm Heritage Orchard. One of the key goals of students, who founded the UW Farm in 2006, was sustainability, along with education, food production,  and a place for discussion. Holding true to the founders, today the farm follows this path, with a new Heritage orchard. This orchard strives not only to preserve ancient apple varieties and their associated stories, but to enhance food security. Recent studies have shown that 25% of college students across our nation have to skip meals or cannot afford basic food needs. In Seattle that number is even higher. The UW Food Pantry, which surveyed its users recently, found that the number one request is fresh, raw vegetables and fruit. Because our academic calendar does not line up with the growing calendar, apples seemed like a good fit. Not only are they a part of all cultures, but they store well in the cooler for staggered distribution during the winter months.

Capstone Project and Planting at UW Farm

During the planning process for the Heritage Orchard, Althea Ericksen, an Environmental Studies Student and UW Farm student Staff, researched available apples.  She and I centered on apples with a story. The orchard today is planted with histories from the east and west. Some of the apples were grafted by Althea, with the help of David Benscoter of The Lost Apple Project and Eli Wheat, UW faculty and farmer at Skyroot Farm. The Lost Apple Project is a nonprofit organization that searches abandoned farms and orchards in the Pacific Northwest to locate old apple varieties that have been thought to be lost. At one time, there were approximately 17,000 named varieties of domesticated apples in the United States, but only about 4,500 are known to exist today.[1]. As a result of Althea’s efforts, today, Nero, Arkansas Beauty, Shackleford and Pristine join Baldwin, Northern Spy, Fall Pippin and Esopus Spitzenburg as our Heritage Orchard group. We hope you come visit the farm soon to see the orchard.