This I tell you: Don’t buy store apples. Buy trees, heirloom varieties like Northern Spy, Esopus Spitzenberg, Wolf River, Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russets. Now these are apples like you’ve never tasted. You won’t find them in a store because they don’t look as pretty, or the trees only fruit every other year, or they fruit over too long a period. The commercial growers don’t like that. But for you? Perfect.

Another thing about apples: They won’t reproduce true from seed, so the seeds Johnny Appleseed sowed across the midwest either didn’t germinate or were genetic throw-backs to the crabapple. The odds of getting an edible apple from seed are in the neighborhood of one in a million. Rats.