We have five apple trees in our garden, all of which were already well established when we moved here six years ago. I've never really paid much attention to them, tbh. Never really been sure what to do with them, how to look after them (both in terms of pruning and pest control) and get the best out of them, and not really had the time or inclination to deal with all the fruit. My wife has made a bit more effort than me to use the fruit but we've never really benefitted fully from having them.
However, this year, we've had a bumper harvest and the fruit is looking good. It would be a crime not to make the most of them, so I've started taking a proper interest…
Two of the trees are early varieties, both cookers. They've been badly pruned at some point so don't produce as much fruit as they might. Having browsed the database at
orangepippin.com, I've come to the conclusion that one is probably Bountiful and the other is probably Golden Noble.
Some of the fruit from these two trees is now in storage, some of it has been processed into applesauce.
The other three trees are late varieties - two eaters, one cooker. They're all heavily laden with fruit at the moment. This weekend, I've picked 85kg of apples from two of the trees and barely made a dent in the crop. We could well end up with over 250kg of apples between the three of them.
One of them is (I'm fairly certain) a Cox's Orange Pippin and the fruit is particularly good this year, with exceptional depth and complexity of flavour. Tbh, I'd forgotten it was possible for apples to taste as good as this. Those things you buy in the supermarket labelled as Cox's? A very poor imitation. I've been plucking them off the tree to eat as I walk past. Wonderful. Just wonderful.
The other eating variety isn't quite as good but is still vastly superior to most shop-bought fruit. Crisp, with a sweet-sharp flavour. My best guess is that it's a Falstaff.
I think I've identified the third cooking variety as Annie Elizabeth. It's very good - similar sized fruit to Bramley but much sweeter flavour. We'll probably get over 100kg of fruit off this tree alone (and we've already lost a fair bit of fruit to windfalls/pests - I try to retrieve as much of these as possible but don't really have the time or inclination).
We'll be making
lots of chutneys and suchlike over the next few weeks.
And I'm thinking of investing in a cider press for next year.
d.