The Secret Love Life of the Apple Tree (Apples)

Member Name: queen_rain

Product:	Apples
Date:	23/01/05 (3278 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delicious, Beautiful, Easy to grow

Disadvantages: may get coddling moth, needs a pollination partner

Did you know that the apples you buy in supermarkets may be several years old? They're almost certainly older than a year.

One local supermarket advertised 'French Apples, New Harvest' in February. I asked the fresh fruit department manager where in France apples were harvested at this time of the year. He told me, in all seriousness, that he considered apples that had newly come out of cold storage 'new harvest'.

<blink> I tried to explain to him that apples grow on trees, not in cold storage units, but he did not understand what I was getting at. A bit more questioning, and I found out that the 'new harvest' apples in question were at least 18 months old.

I reported this to the local Trading Standards office. They forced the supermarket to stop promoting the apples as 'new harvest.' This should have been a cause for joy; however, I learnt that it is acceptable for apples up to one year old to be marketed as 'new harvest'. It's only if they're older than that that Trading Standards draw a line.

Sorry for this introduction, but I just had to take the opportunity to air an opinion about something I've been fuming about for some time.


Cold storage preserves apples in an acceptable state, but even so, they gradually lose their vitamins, flavour and fragrance. Just bite into an apple fresh from the tree, and compare it with a supermarket-grown one, and you'll taste and smell the difference.

I'm in favour of keeping apples in cold storage so that we can eat them when they are not in season, but to store them for longer than that is, in my opinion, gross abuse.

The solution: grow your own!

You may think that apple growing is a slow complicated business that requires a lot of time and knowledge, and a large garden or orchard, and that you have to wait years for fruit.

Nope. Even if you have only the tiniest of balconies, you can grow apples. Plant your trees (note the plural - everyone needs two! stick with me and you'll find out why) by spring, and you can pick your own delicious apples in September.

This is what you do:

1. Buy two young trees.

2. Dig two holes.

3. Put trees in holes.

4. Eat apples when ripe.


As simple as that.

Here are a few additional tips.


WHEN AND WHERE TO BUY APPLE TREES

The best time to buy and plant young trees is between November and March.

You can buy them from

- specialist tree nurseries, which have the biggest selection.

- your local garden centre, where they are likely to be expensive.


- on Ebay, which works out cheaply if you buy several items from one seller, which I have done with good results.

- from specialist nurseries, which can be very cheap if you buy them in bulk (10 or more of the same kind).


- from Woolworths (in spring only). Woolworths guarantee to give you your money back if the trees fail to thrive.

Expect to pay between £5 and £25 for a young tree which will fruit within a year. Personally, I've bought all my apple trees for under £15 each, including postage.




WHICH TREE TO CHOOSE

There are hundreds of different apple trees to choose from. The choice can be bewildering, and the novice can be forgiven for opting for a cultivar that sounds familiar, such as 'Cox' or 'Bramley'.

However - why buy the same varieties that we can get cheaply at the supermarket? I'm in favour of something different.

It's worth mentioning that the criteria for commercially grown apples are:
- size
- uniformity of shape
- all ripe at the same time
- storage ability (remember - years in cold storage)

I don't know about you, but I don't care much about the size of apples and even less about 'uniformity of shape). I don't intend to store my apples - I prefer picking them fresh and eating them right away - and I prefer it if they don't have to be harvested all on the same day.

For me, the criteria are things like flavour, fragrance and texture - neither of which features among the commercial growers' criteria. I also like trees that don't need much pruning and are not susceptible to diseases, and for which I don't need a ladder.


Did you know that all apple trees available for sale have been cut in half and reassembled, with the upper part (graft) of one tree stuck on the lower part (rootstock) of a different one?

This is an accepted practice and has been carried out for hundreds of years, so don't be alarmed. It ensures that you get the best of two varieties: the vigorous growth and convenient height of one variety, and the delicious fruit of another.

Let's look at the 'rootstock' first.

When you read the label of trees at the nursery, you could be forgiven for thinking you're reading motorway driving instructions, with references to M25, M27 and such. For a garden, I recommend M9, M26 or MM106, or anything that's described as 'dwarfing' or 'semi-dwarfing', so that you don't need a ladder to pick your apples.

Now the graft:

Here are a few recommendations.

Egremont Russet - small fruit, sweet nutty flavour, crisp flesh, rough skin, frost tolerant.

Epicure - Very frost-tolerant, easy to grow, small juicy fruit. Supermarkets won't stock it because it doesn't store well, lol!

Fiesta - really nice pronounced nutty flavour, produces lots of apples year after year.

Jonagold - the son from a marriage between Jonathan and Golden Delicious. It's quite vigorous and produces lots of apples, which have more flavour than the Golden Delicious.

Jupiter - Produces lots of apples which taste similar to Cox.

Redsleeves - Crisp, juicy apples, needs little pruning and is quite disease-resistant. N.b it is green, not red.

Sunset - Small apples which taste a bit like cox and are suitable for storage (keep them in a cool larder for up to four months) . Very frost-hardy and disease resistent.


WHY YOU NEED TWO TREES

You can grow a single tree, but if you want apples, you need two trees, because they pollinate each other. However busy your bees are, just one isn't enough. Just as it takes two humans to make a baby. Except that some apple trees need a threesome. Jupiter, for example, is such a bigamist.
To make matters easer (or more complicated, depending on how you look at the situation), plant growers have succeeded in raising self-fertile apple trees (which don't need a partner), but even those are said to do better if another apple tree is nearby.

The two apple trees don't have to be of the same variety, but they have to flower at the same time.

Of the ones listed above, Sunset, Epicure, Redsleeves, Jupiter and Fiesta conveniently flower at the same time, so if you have space or money for only two trees, you can pick a pair from this selection.

Egremont Russet flowers earlier and Jonagold too later.



n.b. it is worth finding out what apple varieties your neighbour is growing. The pollination partners don't have to share a garden, as long as they live within convenient travelling distance for bees.


A friend had an old Bramley apple tree in the garden, one that had not fruited for over a decade. He concluded that the tree was obviously 'past it', and decided to chop it down. First, however, he planted a replacement tree. As soon as that tree had reached reasonable height, the old one would have to die.

Guess what? As soon as the young tree arrived, the old one produced an abundance of fruit, for the first time in over a decade. My friend thought the old tree was either jealous over the new arrival, or else had gotten wind of its forthcoming execution!

But the simple explanation is that the old tree still had it in him; all he wanted was a partner. :-D




FAMILY TREES

Surprisingly, 'family tree' doesn't describe a monogamous pollinator ;-) but a tree that bears several types of apples. It's like being offered a bowl of mixed fruit. Growers have achieved this 'miracle' by grafting branches from five or more different varieties on a single rootstock.

Good idea? Personally, I think they're just a marketing gimmick. They don't actually produce many fruit. If a tree offers only five fruit a year there doesn't seem much point in them being different. Besides, 'family trees' are prone to diseases, heartache, depression and suicide.





PLANTING

Soak the roots in lukewarm water for an hour or so, then put a strong stake into the hole, then put the tree in (spreading the roots out a bit); heap the soil back into the hole, stamp soil down firmly, tie treetrunk to stake, finished.


IF YOU DON'T HAVE A GARDEN, OR NO SPACE IN IT

Growers have succeeded in creating apple trees of just two metres height or less which can be grown in pots. They are usually referred to as 'pillars', 'columns', 'minarettes' or 'patio trees'.

Because they have almost no branches, they look like short broomsticks hung with red Christmas baubles, and they take up hardly any space. Even in your already over-populated garden, you'll find a space for two of them. They will also fit on your patio or even your balcony, or next to your house entrance.

I've recently bought several on Ebay, from the sellers GardeningExpress and JaneLaneNursery. Both are reputable suppliers with a good stock of healthy plants, from whom I've bought before.

I hope I have tempted some of you to grow your own apples this year!

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