Good Keeper

Our use scores are our own 1 to 10 ratings, adapted from the grades S. A. Beach used in The Apples of New York (1905). A 6 is a solid good, and 8 and up are his higher grades, the ones that land on our Best Of lists. The top keepers here scored 9 out of 10: Arkansas Black, Black Oxford, Colorado Orange, Honeycrisp, MN 1628, Newtown Pippin, Reinette Simirenko, Roxbury Russet, Thunderbolt and Yates apples, plus D'Anjou pear and Taylor Asian pear. The apples that scored 8 and up are also on Best Apples for Winter Storage.

For the coldest sites, Honeycrisp and Taylor are rated to zone 2b and MN 1628 to zone 3. Kerr applecrab (scored 8) and September Ruby (scored 7) go colder, both to zone 2. Black Oxford, Colorado Orange and Reinette Simirenko are rated to zone 3b, while Newtown Pippin, Roxbury Russet, Thunderbolt and Yates need zone 4. Run your address through the cold hardiness calculator if you aren't sure.

A lot of these get better in storage. Black Oxford improves till spring, and Colorado Orange was said to be "palatable in December and improves from then on to July." Prairie Spy is better after storage, and Glockenapfel's flavor builds after harvest. Concorde pear keeps till April in cold storage, and it's about as self-fertile as pears get.

Every apple here needs a pollenizer, so plan on at least two. Our pollination maps show which ones bloom together. Not everything is a tree fruit, either: black walnuts store all winter in the shell, and horseradish roots get dug in fall.