FROM AUGUST THROUGH OCTOBER, the natural symphony outside has the oddest percussion section: Thud. Plunk. (Short silence.) Thud-thud-thud-plunk.
(Long silence.) Thud. That’s the sound of apples picking themselves, giving in to gravity, buckets and bins full daily from my giant trees. The word for fallen fruit is windfalls—and indeed, they are my great good fortune, my frequent breakfast or dessert.
All I had to do was love the ancient trees with regular pruning, and they delivered more than enough material for all that—and for this week’s Fall Fest topic: apples. Want some great recipes from my co-conspirators?
I admit it: I was too busy making applesauce to cook up anything else for you today. Mea culpa.
But I do put up 40 or so containers a year, so it’s no small feat. Those are just two days of windfalls (top photo) waiting by the door for their chance to become sauce, or even easier, juice, thanks to my old Acme juicer—and it freezes well, too; just leave lots of headroom for the liquid to expand, and use straight-sided and/or wide-mouth freezer-safe jars. More on freezing in glass jars here.
Because I know my apples are not sprayed, I don’t peel when juicing or making applesauce—except to remove serious blemishes.
For sauce, I simply quarter and core the fruit, and pile it up in a covered spaghetti-sized pot with barely a coating of water in the bottom, and cook on low until it all breaks down. You could also use a slow cooker. A potato masher helps once things are softened, but I don’t blend, either—a matter of personal choice.
I like mine chunky, and pink (above). The red skins provide the dye.So if you’re looking for me, knock on the kitchen door–or maybe I’ll be up a tree out back, between batches. My.
The website greengrove.cc is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Q: We have a Malus (ornamental crab apple tree) in our back garden, which has grown from small to its present 20ft over 15 years. It buds and flowers nicely, but then turns a bit shabby. It doesn’t seem like a healthy tree. Can you help? We are debating whether we need to remove it and replace it. If it does need to be removed, what replacement would you suggest? CF, Co Kilkenny
Discover how to summer prune apple trees to get more fruit in this helpful film. Pruning trees often scares people, but we show you how to cut back new growth in a few simple steps. Tamsin Westhorpe, gardener at Stockton Bury Gardens, shows how easy it is. Winter pruning is focused on growth, but summer pruning is done to make sure you get a really great crop of fruit next year.
Great April weather has produced a harvest of blossom on my apple trees. With no danger of frost and plenty of insects there should be no problem with pollination. Even the later flowering apples trees have open blossom and this means the essential cross pollination by more than one species will be taking place.
Late blossom arrivals in 2015 looked like being a good year for apple blossom and thus fruit in the North of England. And iut was with some great crops in my Yorkshire garden.
There are over 7000 different varieties of apple tree including those classed as eaters, cookers, crab or cider apples. 10% of these are available from RHS plant finder recommended nurseries.
The flowering crab apples, Malus Rosaceae, are excellent floral trees with the added bonus of small usually edible fruit. The Malus Red Sentinel above has a profusion of small hard red autumn fruit that can be admired in the garden, left to feed birds, converted into a jelly or added to other food dishes. Crab apples generally contain a deal of pectin and are seldom eaten uncooked.
An apple a day is not possible if you only get an apple every other year and that is the fate of some trees. Biennial bearing or a high crop followed by virtually no crop is not the sort of apple production a gardener needs.
There are a couple of apple trees in the garden that, during early autumn, I should really be making the most of. Alice usually makes big batches of apple sauce to go with roast pork or into a crumble; and I tend to make at least one batch of my blackberry and apple ice cream. It’s a fabulous, fruity ice cream that’s not overly sweet.
A: As much as wild ivy provides a very important habitat for birds and insects, and the arboreal form (the older, shrubby growth which produces flowers), and is a really valuable source of nectar, it can also be problematic in established gardens where it can damage built structures as well as some established, older trees such as your apple tree. With the latter, very heavy ivy growth can eventually cause death by overburdening the tree’s leafy canopy, which in turn can result in (a) broken branches, leading to an increased risk of disease and (b) destabilising of the tree’s root system, increasing the risk of it falling in a storm. Very heavy ivy growth in the canopy of a fruit tree can also reduce the amount of light needed for healthy growth, interfere with blossom set and slow down ripening of the fruit.