Historic Hood River
Extra Fancy Spitzenbergs
10-21-2015
Notes
I thought the website could use a little more color, so here’s a nice original fruit label from a Davidson Fruit Company copyright registration document dated 1914. It’s also a good reminder to visit your local orchard and buy some apples. Who has Spitzenbergs?
Charlott
Very few people have Spitz, which are one of my favorites. I would suggest Kiokawa’s in Parkdale. If anyone would have them, they would.
L.E.
There were several Spitzenberg trees at my husbands family home in the Vancouver area. They weren’t this pretty, but they did taste good.
Ellen
Just reading David Burkhart’s "It All Began with Appleseeds". One of the recommendations from the1924 HR Agricultural Economic Conference was to limit the number of plantings of Spitzenberg’s because of their lack of winter hardiness when compared to Delicious, Gravenstein, and Arkansas Black. One reason you can’t find them very easily these days.
J.E. Sheppard
The reason we don’t have Spitz apples: We used arsenate of lead to control codling moth which loved the aromatic Spitz better than any other apple. Lead spray is as nasty and poisonous as the name would indicate. The Spitz had an open calyx. To remove the lead arsenate, the apples were washed in a heated solution of muriatic acid. The acid would invade the apple through the open calyx and cause it to rot from the core outward. At the time there was no option for control of codling moth, thus the Spitz couldn’t be a major commercial variety. But I still have a limb of them on my apple tree!