Stored Apples In April

Although we still have some good, tasty apples left in the store we have started buying some the last few weeks. 

The stored ones just don't travel well now and as four of the five of us go off every day and need to take lunch the apples look very bruised an unappetising by the time it's lunch! 

so although I'm eating ours from the (apple) store, the other's aren't. It's shame, I could do with growing some that travel a bit better at this age. The middlest still takes dried appple with her every day though. 

I think it might be worth stewing up some of these and dehydrating the better ones before they loose too much condition. I had a go through the other day and I think the mild weather has made a few of them start to turn. 

If you store apples how are yours looking this year?

 

Make Sure Your Apples Are Ripe!

I have a lot of apples here (some 70 varieties) and only a few are ready this early in the season. Yet on social media I see plenty of people harvesting all they have. Sometimes we need to have a bit more patience to make sure we get the best from our own harvests, picking them when they're ripe and tasty.

This was a little video a few weeks ago, about checking to make sure the apples you're picking are ripe. 

For example, the Worcester apple above is what is classed as an early apple and it's only just ready! 

What's your favourite early apple?
 

Russets Are Best In January

 Now this is just my opinion, but I think russet apples are at their absolute peak of edibility in January. 

The ones in our store are looking brilliant. 

Canning Windfall Apples

I really hate seeing food waste on the ground, especially when so much effort and years of growth has gone into it. 

We've currently got loads of windfall apples under our trees. Each day I'm throwing some to the chickens, our apple racks are nearly full and we've got lots of dried apple. 

I decided that I would harvest some more and can them for super easy puddings throughout the year! We all love a crumble or a pie and with canned apple it's so easy, just open them up and use them, no need to defrost anything or wait for it to rehydrate. 

Natural Apple Storage Tips!

If you've followed this blog for a while you'll no doubt know that I'm slightly obsessed with apples. I'm not quite University challenge level, but I do like to think of them as a subject I know a fair bit about. 

 

I also love this time of year, harvesting them from trees I planted is just a dream. It's also lovely as I get to harvest them with my children who are also obsessed with fruit (but more about eating it!).

A question I get asked a lot is about apple storage and how I get my apples to keep for so long. Especially when I tell people I can get them to store until June some years. 

Apple Storage Rack

I made a load of fruit crates a while ago that stack together to store our apple harvest. 

These have been great in some ways. It gives a good airy store place and allows apples to sit for a long time. The downside is that because they stack you can only access the top tray. I wanted something a bit different, more like drawer unit. I'd seen many online but wanted something a bit bigger to fit the space I had.

Apple Diversity

I'm late in "summer" pruning my cordon apples this year. But as I trimmed them back I was amazed by the variety and quality of fruit in this trained hedge. 

It's a great year for apples and for the first time my main orchard is loaded with fruit, as are my cordon trees in the veg garden.

Wassail!

For one night a year our village turns truly pagan! 

These are pictures from last weekend as I've not been 100% this week and the kids and wife have been the same (full of cold and sore throats). 

The wassail was really quite eventful though. 

Lets just say that health and safety got left at the door. In fact it might not have even seen the door...

 There must have been three hundred people meeting in the village centre and then walking down to the community orchards with flaming torches. The guy giving the speech at the start even set his hat on fire! There were Morris dancers as well as entertainment to start with as well.

To see the flaming torches stretched out for half a mile and lighting the whole way was impressive. In the past I should imagine it was really something to look forward to.

We banished the evil spirits and secured a good harvest for this year, they used fireworks instead of shotguns to get he bad spirits out of the trees. Unfortunately they let them off about 5ft away from my friends and me and made 10 children cry - nevermind!

It was certainly an eventful evening and great fun to meet up with my friends in the village. This has real potential as the kids get older where we might be able to have more than one drink! We'll certainly be going again, but I'll be a bit more alert when the fireworks are being lit!

Do you Wassail where you are?

Winter tree Pruning

This is something that scares most apple tree owner. People often say to me that they don’t prune them because they don’t know what they’re doing, or I quite often see them pruned in the wrong way.

 The worst thing you can do to an apple tree, in my opinion, is not to prune it. Cutting stimulates growth, you get to shape it into a form that works for you and control it’s growth and fruiting potential.

Before

After

Before

After

Winter tree pruning can be any time from when the leaves have fallen until the sap starts to rise and the buds start to swell. I try to do mine before Christmas if I can but have been as late as March before now.
Before starting to prune your tree, step back and have a good look around it. See how it grows and the height it is. Walk around it and see it from every angle.

Now don’t fear the saw. I use a folding pruning saw and a pair of secateurs for all my pruning on my young trees, on mature trees I might use a chainsaw. If you’re not competent with a chainsaw make sure you get someone who is to do that work. It’s far harder cutting in a tree than logging firewood. I’m lucky as my brother is a qualified arborist and has taught me well.

The Dutch, who are masters at pruning and producing fruit, say that we are good at growing more wood not fruit!

mature tree before

Mature tree afterrwards  - hhandy to have two poepel on one like this, very hard to tell when you're in the tree!

As I hand pick the fruit from my trees I want them to grow at my height and no higher than I can reach. I’m not planning on grazing my orchards when they get bigger and because of this I grow all of my trees on MM106 stocks (more on this in another post). 

Before

After - not much to take off this young tree but it should help it to bush out and give more options of branches to choose to grow on. 

 The shape of the tree I’m looking for is a polo tree – one with a hole in the middle. It’s said you should be able to chuck your hat through and it not catch on any branches! 

Getting towards the right tree shape. Could do with another large branch heading towards the camera and away from it. They will come in time. 

This creates plenty of light and air flow, keeping the tree healthier, reducing diseases as well as letting in more light to ripen the fruit. 

Woolly aphid damage

Before you start cutting down branches have a look and see how much fruiting buds it has. This will give you an idea of its fruiting potential (frost and many other factors coming into play of course!). The buds are easy to tell apart, the ones growing close the branches are for leaf and the fatter ones are for flowers (and hopefully fruit). So make sure you don’t remove all your fruiting material! Also as you get more experienced be mindful if it is a tip or a spur bearer (again more in another post on that!).

First go round and remove any damaged or diseased material, looking for woolly aphid and canker, cut this material out, always cutting back to just above a bud where possible.

Look at the whole shape, make sure it’s even, look to the middle and see what’s there. If there’s a strong leader in the middle cut this out. 

Don't fear cutting big branches

Then look at the upwards growth, this will be growing the strongest, so cut some of this out or back to height that suits you. 

Any growth that is touching or covering each other is not ideal and needs to go as well. 

Remember not to cut too much any one year, I’d never go more than a third of small tree in one go. To do so encourages wood growth. Pruning can look brutal but the tree soon comes back! 

Before 

After - this tree still needs lots of work but it can be done over many years.

The key shape is a goblet, but remember you’re not trying to get his shape in one year, it can takes years to get the right shape. Also remember that if you make a mistake new branches will grow and replace them. I’ve taken a tree right back to a tall stump before now and started again! 

Try to pick out branches that are a wide angle from the main trunk. they use toothpick like things to space them on some orchards now as it will mean a much stronger branch in the future. remove narrow angle branches as they tend to want to grow upwards.

Key thing is to remember that there’s no rush. Trees are pretty forgiving, new growth will come!

Also a key thing is not to prune below the graft(the scar about 6 inches up)! Not an issue with modern trees which are grafted low down, but some older trees were grafted at head height so if there is vigorous growth low down then this can be the root stock overtaking the fruiting wood.

I wrote this for a Facebook group but decided to share it here as well. I know there are hundreds of methods of pruning but this is what I tend to do. I also summer prune my trained trees each year - but that's for another post!

Let me know your thoughts! 

Warner's King Cooking Apple

I've been pruning my cordon apple trees this week and I've been surprised by how much fruit there is in and amongst it. 

One apple I found on the floor was this Warner's King apple, the only apple that this tree produced - but it made it a good 'un!

 Nearly 2lb in weight - almost the same size as my boys head! 

I made two blackberry and apple crumbles with just one apple! One for that night's tea and one to go in the freezer - I am trying to get better at batch cooking! 

Warners King is a great cooking apple, the apple cooks down to a light fluff and tastes great. It was always the first apple tree in my parents old orchard when I was growing up and the first cooking apple that we'd have ripe - I'd look froward to it because it meant we'd have apple pancakes that week! Like any early apple it doesn't keep and they're not all this big! 

I should have a few of these trees for sale in a few months as well so keep your eyes peeled! 

What early cooking apple do you like?

Scotch Bridget Apple Still Good To Eat On The 10th Of June!

I've just been cleaning out my fruit store and found a apple that's still good to eat on the 10th of June! 

In fact it tastes amazing and has only been stored in a frost free shed with no real special care except plenty of air flow.

Scotch Bridget is a duel purpose apple and one I've planted everywhere I've lived, a great apple to have growing if you're aiming for self sufficiency or living a preparedness lifestyle or even just wanting to cut your food bill and know where your food is coming from. 

The ability to store fruit like this would have been key to survival in the past and finding the right varieties combined with using storage methods of the past is an important skill to practice. 

I've written about it before on this blog here and here. 

What's the longest you've kept apples for?

Apples From Storage

I've shown pictures of the apple store I built for my mother before but I thought I'd show you all a picture for what some of the apples look like in it now.

Scotch Bridgett - one of our favourite keepers. 

Although they're not going to win the village show it does prove that we can keep apples with no pumped in gases or artificial cooling well into April and May. 
Careful picking, storage and selection of variety is all that is needed. You need to be vigilant with checking them and remove any that go bad. Sadly keeping food in this way is a skill we're slowly loosing and one day we might all need it again. Best to practice with food storage now I think, when the results aren't quite so important! 

Apple Picking

Apple picking is good fun when you've got the right help. 

These pictures just make me smile. 

When I was up the tree she kept saying "careful daddy". What a helpful little two year old (if I can stop her eating them!)! 

Baked Apples

Sometimes it's the most simple foods that are the best. At the moment I've been cooking lots of baked apples. 

Simple pud.
These apples are Howgate Wonder windfalls.

 I'm sure there couldn't be an easier pudding. Simply core an apple and stuff it with your filling of choice, above I've stuffed it with raspberries and a little golden syrup but I quite often stuff them with mince meat. Score round your apple with a knife so it has more chance of holding it's shape instead of splitting the skin at a random place when it heats up. a bit of brown sugar sprinkled on top goes nicely as well. 

I had planned on taking a picture of a perfect baked apple but the last lot I did were a different variety and didn't need quite so long in the oven! They were tasty but not exactly nouveau cuisine. 

These fluffed up far too much! It was still tasty though! 

Good healthy pudding for my girls and me! 

Who else has a really simple pudding for me to try?

Abundance Of Fruit

Unfortunately it's not here but at my parents farm. I went for the first time in two months on Friday (I know I'm a bad son!) and the little orchard I planted years ago is doing brilliantly. Plenty of early fruit.

 My mum, the girls and me walked round eating different apples (discoveries and Worcesters) plums and greengages. I had to slow the girls down at one point or they'd get bad bellies!

 The early fruit seems to be doing the best in there this year although there is plenty of fruit for later in the season. I need to get the food drier out and start drying some again, and maybe think about attempting to can some! 

Has everyone else got a heavy crop of early apples?

Good Keeping Apple

I did a little experiment with an apple this year. I left a Sturmer Pippin in my van all winter. Just kicking around in the pocket of the door, no protection or anything.

not pretty on the outside

 I've mentioned before about this apples keeping ability but this really proves it. Although it doesn't look great on the outside the flesh inside is still edible, and I did eat it! It was just starting to go rotten in the middle (I cut this bit out),  and the flesh was a little dry but still had good flavour.

Just starting to go rotten

This year I'll try to store some in ideal conditions and see how they last. I think these could be a great self sufficiency apple and one that would be great in hard times.

Anyone else have a good keeping apple they'd recommend?

Sturmer Pippin

I guess this would be the marine of apple trees. Still clung to the tree in late November, still hard as anything.

This is great apple that we're eating at the moment. It's a good size, really sharp tasting and rock solid - no good if you have false teeth! A little like a granny smith I guess. 

I've read that this was a really important apple in Victorian times as it keeps so well. I've got one of these trees planted at my parents house (about 8 years old) and here as a cordon (two year old), but even with two young trees we've only enough to last a few more weeks - no chance to test out their keep abilities this year then! 

Pitmaston Pineapple

Our own apple trees are still too young to give us much of a crop yet so we're still relying on apples from my parents and from our friends in the village who have a good sized orchard.

You'd be forgiven for thinking these apples were crab apples but they're not!

 Our apples of choice at the moment are Pitmaston Pineapple. They are small, crab apple sized fruits that taste amazing, nothing like a pineapple but a beautifully sharp, almost nutty flavour. The trees are laden with fruit every year, covering it in almost grape like amounts, and due to the small size of the fruit they are perfect for little hands. The girls love them, Evalyn has created a fruit course after most meals and I have to fight them off Melissa on a regular basis. I'm eating about four or five in one sitting as well!

If dad won't let you have any more apples, just have a raw potato instead!

I'd recommend this tree to anyone that wants a small tasty apple that keeps until Chirstmas. It also  has one of the most interesting names out there for an apple, who could fail to be impressed if you offered a guest a Pitmastons Pineapple from your fruit bowl?

Grafting Success and Failures

I grafted more fruit trees this year than the year before and I had a fair few more failures.

This years tree nursery - a little weedy maybe...

 The apples did relatively well although I only had a success rate of around 75%, I think this is down to a number of factors: I used some "grafting pliers" for some for the grafts and the majority of these ones failed compared to the ones I did traditionally with a knife. I also stored the scion wood differently, some in the fridge (this all took well) and some in the shed, as it was much more mild than the year before, I don't think the shed was cold enough and so some of the wood wasn't alive enough to be grafted.

One of the many failed cherry grafts

 Some for the other fruit didn't do so well. Only two cherry grafts took and much the same with the plums and pears, although the two apricots I did as an experiment are both doing well. 

A successful graft with apricot wood

In total I've still got over a hundred fruit trees growing in the nursery with successful grafts and the root stocks that had failed grafts on can be used this next spring so no money lost. Next year I will trying budding some trees in the summer (although there never seems time in August) as I think stone fruit like the cherries and plums do better that way.

Has anyone else been propagating fruit trees or tried their hand at grafting?

Climbing Squash

 My Squashes have been growing like crazy in every direction. And this year they seem to like growing upwards.

The wires for my cordon apple trees has provided a great support for them and they look great growing up with the squashes hanging under them.

I've even been eating some apples this week from the same row of trees. These are George Cave, a lovely tasting early apple that's only really any good straight from the tree. 

Anyone else started eating they're apples yet this year?

I'm sorry I haven't really been on anyone's blog the last week or so. I've been so busy with work, cutting hay, harvesting produce and having fun with the kids that time just seems to disappear!