Blue Pearmain apple

Blue Pearmain apple is one of our larger apple trees.  A biennial bearer, we only get to enjoy the great flavor every other year.  

The apples are beautiful, a dark red with white spots (lenticels) covered with a bluish bloom. They are a wonderfully flavorful fresh eating apple, rumored to be the favorite apple of Henry David Thoreau.  
Blue Pearmain is an American cultivar, one of those fortuitous seedlings that became a widely planted apple in the 1800's in New England.

Our Blue Pearmain was planted in 1970, on standard rootstock, and provides welcome summer shade.  It is the first of the larger trees in the path of winter winds from the northwest, and can sometimes suffer severe wind damage.  Coddling moth damage can also be medium to severe on this apple.

We can usually start harvesting Blue Pearmain the first week of October (or the last week of September) and can expect to still be harvesting the third week of October.