James wrote:
I've learned that location is very important to growing apples. I will
never get good apples from my trees because they are in my back yard
instead of a hill somewhere.

What's the problem with your yard? Too much shade? Poor drainage? A lot
of back yards can grow pretty good apples.

Someone used to have an apple show a bit north of here, up near the
Canadian border. They managed to have about 100 varieties to show and
they would cut a little slice of most of them for tasting. Then you
could vote on your favorite top 10. It was great fun.
The trouble was that more than half of the apples were brought up by
someone's relative who grows a bunch of varieties in Pennsylvania. My
personal favorite was an apple that was originally named Arlet (and
still called that by most people). It was given the name Swiss Gourmet
as a marketing ploy to try to make it competitive on the mass market.
(I've still not seen it in a store yet.) Anyway, that was a great
tasting apple. I obtained some scion wood and grafted it as the top of
one of my trees. Well, it's not great up here. Not very edible at all in
fact. I'm trusting that the scion wood I used was the correct variety. I
would never guess it was what I tasted years ago as grown in
Pennsylvania. I'm not having much luck with my Honey Crisp either. Other
varieties known to be good in the north are much better.

Steve (in the Adirondacks of northern NY)