In this article, I will give a brief description of the 

 1991 harvest season for each of these cultivars. 



Mcintosh 



Bloom in 1991 was approximately 10 to 14 

 days ahead of normal. Throughout the summer 

 many predictions were made as to the approxi- 

 mate date of apple harvest; however, the basic 

 answer was, "Who knows!" The third week of 

 August brought Hurricane Bob, which further 

 confounded the issue. The hurricane resulted in 

 a significant amount of drop in some areas and 

 enough damaged fruit to result in further drop 

 in the last week of August. This drop made 

 many growers very concerned, and a large 

 amount of spot picking was done during the last 



week of August and the first week of September. 

 Ripening of the majority of fruit, however, was 

 not dramatically early. Figure 1 shows the 

 starch-iodine values for this season compared 

 with the previous five seasons, and average 

 values suggested that harvest should have be- 

 gun on approximately September 7, only five 

 days ahead of normal. Once harvest began in 

 earnest, the weather cooled off and by the 

 middle of the season Mcintosh were only two to 

 three days ahead of normal. 



Interestingly, even though the bloom was 

 very early (much earlier than it has been in 

 recent years), the ripening of Mcintosh in 1991 

 was later than in 1986 and similar to that in 

 1987. 



Fruit Notes, Fall, 1991 



15 



