BLACK STRAWBERRY

SKILLCULT APPLE BREEDING PROJECT

This page is for sharing information on my new seedling apple variety Black Strawberry.

A problem child with some amazing traits, Black Strawberry is a Grenadine seedling. I’m fairly certain that it is a cross between King David and Grenadine. If I had to guess I’d say King David is the seed parent, but who knows. I go on the working assumption that those are the parents. This apple narrowly escaped destruction. I had a bed of apple seedlings that were unlabeled from my first year of apple breeding. Most of them I decided to toss, but a few of them that had the reddest bark were grafted onto a nearby tree to see what would become of them. I figured that the ones with redder bark were more likely to produce red fleshed apples. Well, one of those turned out to be Black Strawberry, and another one that I left growing in the bed where those seeds were originally planted became Cherry Crush. Good thing I spared those! You have to wonder what the ones I pulled out would have been like.

Black Strawberry is what is sometimes called a black apple, meaning it is very dark red. Others in this class include Black Oxford, Black Winesap and Arkansas Black. The appearance of Black Strawberry is very striking on the tree and photos rarely communicate the unusual and beautiful appearance of this fruit.

I have thought for a long time, that there might be a synergy between apples with very heavy red pigmentation in the skin, and red fleshed apples, which would encourage more red fleshed offspring. That idea is still in question, but preliminary evidence seems to hint that this suspicion may be true. Regardless, in this case, we have both the dark red skin and red flesh. That red flesh also comes with some truly remarkable red flavor.

Like it’s parent Grenadine, Black Strawberry has a complex fruity flavor hinting of berries. But while Grenadine is kind of a mixed berries or fruit punch flavor, Black Strawberry leans heavily toward strawberry. I have heard of other Strawberry flavored apples, but haven’t tasted any, except for my other seedling, Pinker Lady. The flavor of Black Strawberry is maybe a bit more like fake strawberry than real. It reminds me of strawberry flavored kids cereal, or strawberry flavored milk maybe. There are other flavors in there too, though I couldn’t name any. The flavor is this apple’s best trait, and can be truly unique and remarkable, followed by it's appearance, then things go downhill lol.

Like It’s parent Grenadine, Black Strawberry has some major issues. Both apples are quite tannic and puckery, especially the skin. That tannin could make this apple very useful for cider, but it can be a bit much for dessert use, at least as grown here. They both tend to go meally as ripening proceeds, often suffering in texture a lot by the time the flavor is at it’s best. These are serious faults, and if it were not for the flesh color and flavor, neither of these apples would have much to offer.

What Black Strawberry did not seem to inheret is Grenadines tendency toward early drops. In some years, much of the Grenadine crop will develop greasy skin, ripen early and drop off the tree before there is any real development of flesh color and flavor.

It is pretty susceptible to apple scab.

Other traits, the bark of the shoots is noticeably dark red. The fruit is highly variable, in size, shape and quality. I have only one branch grafted onto an established tree to assess at this point, so I can’t say much about growth habits right now.

As I’ve said all along, I think of this more as a stepping stone fruit for breeding, than a legend in the making. I think it has high potential as a parent to use in pursuing the refinement of highly flavored red fleshed apples, especially the strawberry angle. It may have good promise as a cider apple as well. It is also worth putting up with its not so desirable characteristics for the remarkable flavor. I’m very curious to hear how it does elsewhere. I hope that somewhere it will be of much better eating quality, while retaining the great flavor.