Autumn Apple Review

Eckinville seedling Apples

Here if an apple drops off a tree 101 slugs appear in a flash to devour it. I picked up one last week and I'm not exaggerating when I say the whole surface was covered in black slugs-I really should have taken a picture! I have nothing against slugs eating the odd apple but in a lean year once the apples start to fall if you are not quick off the mark there will be nothing left to eat!

Wiser, more experienced people than me have written in depth about the rubbish year it has been for fruit, apples and pears in particular. Despite that Autumn is the time to taste any new apples and review the progress of the apple trees themselves. Even if this year we will have very few to review.

Oddly enough, despite poor crops across the board one little tree coughed up enormous perfect apples as it does each year very reliably. It's called Eckinville seedling. I got it from ISSA and it has the most amazing cooking apples. The tree itself has grown very little in the 6 years it has been here but what it lacks in stem and leaf growth it more than makes up for in enormous fruit. The two branches on it are almost entirely horizontal from fruit production over the last few years and but for the support of nearby blackcurrants one branch would be on the ground. This year it began to put out more branches so hopefully it will start to grow a little more next year. Trees are funny, it can take them a while to really settle in on a new site.

Redlove Era

Another apple that produced fruit this year on only it's second year on site is a strange variety I got from Suttons called Redlove Era. Inside it looks like a beetroot but it's a nice apple for eating if somewhat a little tarty in taste. It looks like a bigger version of the Lough Key Crab apple I grow for making crab apple jelly and Suttons tell you that you can bake as well as eat it. This year the yields on the Lough Key Crab are pitiful. Margaret met a crow carrying one of those apples with him as he left our garden the other morning but this year I don't mind, they are welcome to the few that are on it, its hardly enough to make a pot of jelly. The tree itself is growing well and is a useful pollination partner for the other trees around it and in a good year it crops well. It's also one of the most beautiful trees I have so it's definitely staying.

One incredibly delicious braeburn

The other surprise of this autumn was a Braeburn apple tree that produced 1 apple in it's first year. It was turning into a bit of a comedy here, two of us watching one perfect red apple ripening, checking on it every day to see if there was any signs of a give in the stem. If you are picking apples for the first time the apple is ripe when it can be twisted 180o and pulled upwards snapping it cleanly off the tree. If there is no give it's not ready. Still watching this one red apple was driving me mad! Once I found a small bit of damage to it's outside I decided that was it-couldn't take it any more! I snapped it off, it came reluctantly, but it turned out to be spectacularly delicious. Probably the nicest eating apple I have eaten in a very long time. The tree is young but it's healthy and has a good shape. I hope it will ramp up production next year.

The most important thing I think you must do is taste and assess your apples as early in the life of the tree as possible. Most of us have only so much space. We should grow only fruit that we love to eat or find incredibly tasty to cook. So if any of the apple trees produce inedible fruit they should go. Jack gave me an ornamental crab apple tree called Golden Hornet which he assured me was great for wild life. I have never seen any bird take fruit off that tree. In fact the fruit has often stood on the tree all winter into the following spring!! but it's too small to be useful to me in making crab apple jelly. It might be useful for pollinating other fruit trees but its hopeless in every other respect. I didn't like to throw it out as it was a gift so instead it went into a gap in the hedge where it continues to flower and fruit each year. Likewise I have a pear tree that produces tiny pears. Apart from being tiny they are very woolly in consistency, not amazingly flavoursome and they go off incredibly quickly.Guess where that tree is going this winter?

The only apples left on the trees here are the Keegans crabs, an eating apple again from ISSA. Last year we took a fine bucket of fruit off the tree, this year it will be more like a small basket. Since they don't fall ripe until late October there is plenty of time for the birds to attack them or winds to fell them. In the end it might only be a handful of tarty green apples to make wonderful juice from or eat fresh.

Storing Apples

apple store from www.worm.co.uk

 Apples don't like to be stored with crops like onions and garlic, it speeds up their demise so keep the winter crops apart. If you have the money you can buy beautiful apple storage racks but anyone on more of a budget can store apples in old potato bags, just be careful not to overfill them. As with everything for long term storage the fruit must be handled like eggs and only perfect unblemished, unbruised and undamaged fruit are put in to store.Keep them in a cool place, no heat or direct sun. Some varieties are better to keep than others so know what you are storing to get the best out of them.