My love of Honeycrisp Apples started when I moved to Austin, Texas. I remember one of my first trips to the grocery after arriving on campus for graduate school, “The HEB” had the biggest display of apples I had ever seen! It was also probably the biggest grocery store I had ever been to…everything is bigger in Texas right? The Honeycrisp Apples happened to be on sale that week, so I filled up my bag and hoped for the best.

And I have to say…THEY WERE THE BEST APPLES I’VE EVER HAD!

Fast forward about eight years, and I now have a husband, a house, a cat, and my very own Honeycrisp Apple tree in the backyard! Yippee!

For those of you unfamiliar with Honeycrisp Apples, they are a hybrid apple tree developed by the Minnesota Horticulture Research Center and only recently, as of 2008, did the patent on the apple tree expire which means people like me can have a tree of their own! Here is our little tree waiting to be planted back in September last year…see it on the left still in its pot?

And here it is today…it’s grown quite a bit and even bore fruit this year! Honeycrisp trees are known for their sweet, firm, and tart flavored apples which make them the perfect apple to snack on raw. They’re divine!

The apples are pretty darn big considering this was the first year. However, we did run into some bug problems and we’ve had to cut around some of the imperfections as we enjoy the apples. To thwart the bug next year, I plan to plant chives around the base of all our apples trees…apparently bugs hate chives, who knew?

Just look at all of those apples…it’s a dream come true!