Rhuby Apple (Spring 2027)

First year for us, so the notes below come from the Geneva breeding records and from St. Lawrence Nurseries, who have grown it far longer than we have.

Overview

Rhuby is an apple that was never supposed to be sold. It is a breeding parent, a numbered seedling out of the Geneva program in New York that got used to make something else and then set aside. A northern nursery decided it was too good to leave in a research block, and here we are.

Origin and History

Its real designation is NY 18491, and it is Macoun crossed with Antonovka. Geneva raised it as breeding stock and never released it under a name. Its claim to fame in the records is as a parent: crossed with Monroe, NY 18491 produced the seedling that Geneva released in 1974 as Burgundy, which we also sell. So the Macoun quality and the Antonovka hardiness that make Burgundy work came through this tree.

St. Lawrence Nurseries in Potsdam, New York, who have been propagating cold hardy fruit and nut trees for over a hundred years, picked it up, kept growing it, and eventually just named it themselves after Ella Rhuby, the MacKentley family's granddaughter. That is the only name it has ever had.

Fruit and Uses

Large red fruit ripening mid to late September. Good fresh, good for baking, and good for sweet cider, which is about the definition of an all-purpose apple. Two things make it especially practical for a home orchard. It ripens over several weeks rather than all at once, so you are not picking a whole tree in one weekend. And it carries real resistance to both scab and fireblight, which is rare to find together in one variety and will save you a lot of grief in a wet spring.

Growth Habit and Spacing

Ours are grafted onto Malus baccata full size rootstock, the hardiest rootstock we work with. Expect a full size tree and plan on 18 to 20 feet between them.

Pollination

Rhuby needs a pollenizer and blooms mid-season, so most of our apples and crabapples will overlap. Honeycrisp, Liberty, Cortland, Dolgo and Chestnut all work. Burgundy works too, and there is something fitting about planting the two of them together.

Cold Hardiness

We have it listed at zone 2. Antonovka is one of the hardiest apples there is and it sits directly behind this one, and Potsdam is a genuinely cold place to have grown it for decades. We have not yet taken it through a Montana winter at our own sites, so we will tighten the number up once we have.

About the photo: this isn’t Rhuby itself. Photos of Rhuby are either under copyright or simply unavailable, so we picked the open-source image that looks closest to the fruit. Photo: “McIntosh” by Markus Hagenlocher, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.