Topic: Cooking Apples

[small]

I usually find my cooking apples store OK in my cool pantry till March. This year, many have rotted and those that haven't are unpleasantly soft. Anybody else found this?  I had a much smaller crop than usual, but I can't really see why those that did grow shouldn't keep as usual, or does the water content of the fruit vary? The orchard was under water for much of the spring and early summer...

[Vinlander]

Sorry to play the contrarian card again - but I gave up on cooking apples years ago and grafted them over to late keeping eaters - it's purely my personal taste that the ones in the shops are cheap and nearly indistinguishable once cooked.

It's also key that since you're going to peel them anyway you remove most of the horrible pesticides commercial producers use (washing doesn't work).

I would recommend Sturmer Pippin as a dual-purpose replacement - truly fantastic keeper (and cropper) with a good fresh zingy taste as an eater even now, and brilliant for dishes like charlotte or fritters where you don't actually want a bowl of froth.

Cheers.

PS. Bramley is a lovely eater in a really good summer - something that ex-pats in slightly sunnier climes cash in on (especially France and N.California).

[small]

I won't be here long enough to plant more trees......I don't know if these are bramleys, the fruit looks like what are sold as that in shops, but my year-old grandson happily ate one raw when I found my stored delicious type eaters had all wrinkled...it was a bad keeping year for them, too. On the plus side, I still have a few tomatoes ripening on a cool windowsill, so the season can't have been all bad....

[Annemieke]

What about Newton Wonder, another dual purpose one? My husband like them early, and I like them late. As to cookers - I don't know where you shop Vinlander, but I find that even small grotty homegrown ones taste miles better than bought .....

[goodlife]

Yes..bramleys can be bit temperamental..one year they give more you can cope with and other..hardly any to be seen. But still..I do like them, though they don't seem to store as well as my Stamford Pipping (bought from Deacon's nursery). It is listed as 'late keeping cooker'..but in storage it will ripen into beautiful yellow colour with rosy cheek and it is pleasant to eat as it is...so I would be tempted to say its more of 'dual type'.
I rate it much more than bramley..and I've even pulled few apples straight from tree and put on barbeque and eaten them hot..and they've not been too sour at all! As a tree its been very healthy one..not affected with problems like my bramley.

[Robert_Brenchley]

If your Bramley's doing that, it's biennial bearing. The only solution os to thin out the crop in the year of abundance. It overcrops, exhusts itself, and takes a year out to recover. By that time it's got so much energy stored up that it overcrops again.

[goodlife]

If your Bramley's doing that, it's biennial bearing. The only solution os to thin out the crop in the year of abundance. It overcrops, exhusts itself, and takes a year out to recover. By that time it's got so much energy stored up that it overcrops again.

Thining out the crop..well..absolutely impossible job. The tree is HUGE..it must be 10-12 metres tall and same wide. I can only climb upto half way and even then my extending apple picker won't reach to top of the canopy. The old girl have to be left to do her job as she pleases. Last summer it was first time it totally failed to crop..but that was to do with weather...most of my fruit trees failed.
 

[Vinlander]

I read something a few years ago that might be a more manageable solution to biennial cropping - unfortunately I can't remember where - I'm pretty sure it was an authoritative source:

Apparently if you target one half of the tree (presumably the most accessible bit) and stop it producing fruit for one year, then you can persuade that side to go biennial on the opposite cycle so every year you will get a good crop - but only from one half at a time.

You may need to do this every year until the tree settles down into its new  pattern.


On your target half do whichever is easier of:

a) Remove all the tips in winter (only works on tip-bearers - Bramley is mainly a tip bearer - though every tree is different - I think there is a spur-bearing variant available now).

Tip bearers should produce some new buds the following year - but with Bramley all is not lost anyway as there are always some spurs.

OR b)Remove all the flowers in the Spring

OR c) Remove all the fruitlets in late Spring

OR d) Remove all the baby apples after the June drop.

I think a) and d) are easiest and there's no reason you can't use 2 or more methods as a war of attrition.

I have this problem with Pitmaston Pineapple but it's so nice that I've got two (on M26) so I stripped one tree one year, and yes, I get a big crop from one of them every year.

Cheers.

[Russell]

Geting back on to the thread again, most of my apple varieties have behaved in storage in unexpected ways. That is, different unexpected ways for each variety which I suppose you might expect because most of them had already behaved in unexpected (different) ways by harvest time.
A few at random:-
My Bramleys failed to swell up on the tree, change colour and start to drop off in the traditional way so I left them on as long as possible until they did start to self detach, picked them and stored them in my giant fridge at 3 deg C which is the temperature used by commercial growers. Usually by now (Feb) the apples have turned exciting colours all red orange yellow which is a visual "eat me" signal and they are indeed fit to eat too good to cook in my opinion, academic really they have all been eaten by now. This year is quite different the Bramleys have sat in the fridge doing exactly nothing, so I have left them alone apart from last week when I used one for cooking, it was one of the larger apples but still no bigger than a decent James Grieve, it was mostly green with a slight flush (not much colour really) but when I tasted it a very pleasant surprise all the flavour was there and so was most of the sweetness, and they still look good to store for a few weeks yet.
My Late Oranges seemed to behave normally at harvest and went onto the fridge in the usual way. They are usually my best keeping apple, good until May at least but not this year, to my great disappointment about a quarter have gone over and had to be chucked on the compost heap, however a silver lining to the cloud the excellent flavour is still there.