Ripening Map
Twelve apple trees that all come ripe the same week is twelve bushels in one weekend and nothing in September. This map shows when every variety we sell comes ripe, at your place, so you can pick a spread instead of a pile. It also shows what will not finish before your first hard freeze.
Pick across the season
An early apple in August, a couple in September, a keeper in October. Three trees can cover three months instead of three weeks.
Ripening moves with your climate
Stone fruit tracks heat closely. Apples and pears barely budge in a warmer place and shift nearly day for day in a cooler one. The map handles that for you.
Late does not mean no
A variety that finishes after your average freeze is a gamble, not a guarantee. A warm fall gets you a crop. Plant it if you want to, with your eyes open.
These are estimates
Only the varieties with a green dot were picked and dated here in Missoula. Everything else is worked out from published sources and converted to your climate. Real years swing about a week either way.
Set your place
The season, variety by variety
Done before the earliest freeze
Done before the average freeze
Finishes after the average freeze
Freeze window, early year to late year
Picked and dated here
Where your season is thin
How many of the varieties above are ripe in each half of the month. Red means nothing is ready.
How these dates were built
Every variety starts from a Missoula date. Ours came first: 41 varieties we have picked and dated off our own trees. The rest come from published sources that state where they were grown, converted to Missoula's climate, with "ripens with Wealthy" style comparisons weighted highest. 909 cited sources were re-opened and checked one by one; 885 said what was quoted.
From there, each place gets a heat anchor: the day its normal season (1991 to 2020 daily weather) builds up 16,000 growing degree hours. Missoula airport hits that on June 27. Stone fruit shifts 0.8 days for every day of difference, apples and pears 0.3 days in warmer places and a full day in cooler ones, everything else 0.8 days. Tested against 122 dated harvests at 25 stations, the model lands within a week 56% of the time and within two weeks 83%.
Freeze dates come from NOAA daily station records, 1991 to 2020, with hours below the threshold estimated by the Linvill hourly model. The band on the chart runs from the early year (1 in 10) to the late year (9 in 10) and the line is the median.
Varieties we are not offering for spring 2027 are left off. Confidence on the underlying Missoula dates: 50 high, 137 medium, 188 low across the full catalog. Low means the date came from the type, a parent or thin sources, so treat it as a placeholder. Updated September 2026.