Horace Greeley. In 1860, he said "Never move to Minnesota - you can't grow apples there." But exactly 100 years later, the University of Minnesota proved Greeley wrong when it created the HoneycrispTM apple, a cold-hardy cross of Macoun and Honeygold apples. The apple was introduced commercially in the early 1990s.

Marty’s dad planted a Honeycrisp tree at our lake place in 1995. We're in Zone 3, just the bone-chilling climate in which the Honeycrisp delights. It was a good choice, except that we've been waiting twenty years for the first apples to appear! Maybe Greeley was right.

Not! Incredibly, this summer we have a tree loaded with beautiful, bug-free apples! We have no idea why it's taken so long for the tree to bear fruit. Online research shows that our twenty-year wait may have set a world record, clobbering the previous record-holder by seven years!

But what’s a twenty-year wait when the object of one’s affection is a Honeycrisp? If you’ve had one of these apples, I need not tell you why it is so popular. If you haven’t, get thee to the produce store. A Honeycrisp apple is super sweet and super juicy. It has an explosive crunchiness because its cells are much larger than those of most apples and release a burst of juice when bitten.

How remarkable is the Honeycrisp? It was selected as one of the top 25 innovations in over a decade in the 2006 Better World Report. You might recognize a few other innovations mentioned in that report…Google for one.

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