American Agriculture History

American Agriculture History Minute: Development of the Wealthy Apple

Dan American Agriculture History Minute, Fruits, Specialty Crops, This Land of Ours

American Agriculture History
Apple of the variety Wealthy, , photographed in conjunction with the Apple Festival at the Nordic Museum, Stockholm, Sweden in September 2014.
By Aron Ambrosiani – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikipedia image

I’m Mark Oppold with an American Agriculture History Minute.

American Agriculture History Minute: Development of the Wealthy Apple

In 1860, Horace Greeley wrote in his New York Tribune newspaper, “I would not live in Minnesota because you can’t grow apples there”. Indeed, no one at that time had solved the short growing season, but that finally changed in 1868 when horticulturalist Peter Gideon cultivated and grew an apple that seemed to welcome the cool spring and warm dry Minnesota weather. Gideon named his apple variety after his wife, Wealthy.

Thus, we have Wealthy apples today.

That’s today’s American Agriculture History Minute. I’m Mark Oppold. Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.