posted 14 years ago
I have three of the Stark varieties -- red spire, crimson spire, and green spire. I have 2 of the crimson spire trees. I planted the original red and crimson roughly 10 - 12 years ago, and then planted the other two about 4 years ago.
I like them, and could definitely see them as being very useful in very small gardens, such as in urban situations.
The older trees have now matured out at roughly 10 feet tall, with probably a 5 foot spread. I planted them on either side of a porch in a southern exposure, and they work fairly well there.
The apples on all of them are good eating quality, nothing outstanding but certainly not any worse than old familiar mainstays like delicious or macintosh.
The fruit of the crimson spire is probably my favorite of the three. I did not thin the fruit last year, and they ranged in size from 2 1/2 inches to some as large as 6 or 7 inches in diameter -- the largest were equally as big as your typical Northern spy. Flesh is very white, crisp, sweet-tart, and probably most similar to Macintosh or perhaps Empire in flavor.
The green spire is a squat, flat apple, also quite large, up to say 5 inches in diameter, and the flavor reminds me quite a bit of Granny Smith when first picked, and then mellows to become somewhat more like ginger gold or some of the other green/yellow skinned apples. It is rather tart.
The red spire is very similar to a good, old fashioned Jonathan in all respects, especially in flavor.
The trees can be quite productive. Last year, we had a pretty hard freeze Mother's Day weekend, which did zap a fair number of the blooms. I did get a bushel and half off the mature crimson spire, as it is the most protected due to the configuration of the building it is near. The others gave me about a peck to half a bushel each.
My only real complaint with any of these is that none of them is a keeping apple -- they all mature in late August (red spire), early Sept (green spire) or mid Sept (crimson spire). For me, none of them seem to keep more than a couple of weeks without refrigeration, and perhaps up to 6 weeks in the fridge. They seem to have more in common with "summer" apples in this respect.