December 13: SnowSweet

Sharon x Connell Red
University of Minnesota, 2006

SnowSweet is a crowd pleaser: its firm, fine-grained flesh is low in acid with a sweet, rich flavor. It has bright white flesh that’s slow to oxidize (turn brown) when exposed to air.

Sharon is a cross of McIntosh x Longfield (Glogkerovka), developed in Iowa in 1906. Connell Red is a chance bud of Fireside, an apple variety released by the U of M in 1943, which itself is a McIntosh x Longfield cross. Apple genetics are so interesting, aren’t they?

I find SnowSweet to be a very good apple that, while delicious, will never reach the heights of popularity that Honeycrisp has because SnowSweet’s texture is a bit more pedestrian.

Read Adam’s Apples account of SnowSweet.

Growing Notes

SnowSweet is relatively easy to grow and has the same weeping growth habit as its parent (Connell Red) and aunt (Fireside). As usual, look out for an overcropped tree and thin to one blossom per cluster by June 15. SnowSweet ripen somewhat late, toward the end of the first third of October.