Polk County
Living
Polk County Itemizer-Observer • September 2, 2015 7A
APPLES
for ALL
Riverwood Orchard
sports apple varieties
to fit every tastebud
By Emily Mentzer
The Itemizer-Observer
MONMOUTH — When it
comes to apples, there’s
something for every palate.
Whether sweet or tart, and
everything in between, there’s
a perfect apple for you.
Perhaps the most popular
apple is the honey crisp.
“In recent history, there
hasn’t been an apple like
this,” said Alan Frost, owner
of Riverwood Orchard in
Monmouth.
Honey crisp apples have
such large cells, that when
you bite into it, it’s a gush of
flavor and juices, he said.
“I think that’s why people
tend to like it so much,” he
said. “It’s just so different.
Plus, it’s sweet. Most people
like a sweet apple. But it
does have acid behind it.”
Frost has grown apples
since 1974, starting with just
2.5 acres in Wenatchee,
Wash. He has owned River-
wood Orchard for 25 years.
He has 40 acres of trees
with 16 different varieties of
apples and six different
types of pears.
The crop has come early
this year, Frost said, and
that means a compressed
season.
“Usually with gala apples,
we do three to four picks,”
he said. “This year, we’ll do
two picks.”
That means instead of
going out to harvest ripe ap-
ples multiple times, the
trees will be cleaned off ear-
lier. There’s still the same
number of apples as usual,
they’re just picking them
quicker, Frost said.
The warm spring and
summer has not just made
the apples ripen faster, but
earlier.
“We picked gravenstein in
July, and I’ve never picked
apples in July in my life,”
Frost said.
Frost carries himself with
EMILY MENTZER/ Itemizer-Observer
Alan Frost grows crimson crisp apples, his personal favorite for their hard, dense texture and their sweet, yet tart
flavor. The apple crop is, like all of Polk County’s crops, early this year after a long, warm spring and summer.
A quick guide
• To check if an apple is ripe, do not squeeze it, as this
may bruise it. Instead, check the background color. For bi-
color apples, that usually means yellow.
• Riverwood Orchard apples may be found at Roth’s
Fresh Markets, or in Two Towns Cider’s brews.
• Keep them cold to keep them snappy.
authority in his orchards. He
understands the trees and
the fruit, and doesn’t get dis-
couraged by whatever Moth-
er Nature throws his way.
“We got that big wind-
storm (Saturday and Sun-
day) and a lot of the sun-
burned apples got knocked
off,” Frost said.
His apples can be found
in Polk County at Roth’s
Fresh Markets and in school
lunches — he works with
the school districts to sell
fresh produce to them.
Frost also gives tours of
his orchard to school kids in
Luckiamute Valley Charter
School.
“The older kids, I try and
tell them a little about
botany,” he said. That in-
cludes explaining about
root stocks and grafting,
both of which are important
to growing apples.
Frost finds great satisfac-
tion in his trees.
“It’s the satisfaction of ac-
complishment,” he said. “It’s
the process. You prune, and
you spray, and you nurture
the apples. You do all the
work to get the apples there
and then you pick and then
you sell it, and someone
comes out here and says, ‘I
love your apples.’”
EMILY MENTZER/Itemizer-Observer
The crew is busy sorting honey crisp apples by size, care-
ful to spot any bruised ones along the way.
EMILY MENTZER/Itemizer-Observer
Apple trees at Riverwood Orchard are grown to be short,
limiting the use of a ladder to harvest them.
EMILY MENTZER/ Itemizer-Observer
Riverwood Orchard sits in the rolling hills of the Cascade foothills on the outskirts of
Monmouth. It benefits from the cool breezes microclimate of the Willamette Valley.
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