Author Topic: I`m helping the june drop  (Read 2657 times)

strawberry1

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I`m helping the june drop
« on: June 22, 2017, 11:54:37 »
I have a huge amount of apples on 4 out of my six apple trees. Some have cluster upon cluster of multiple apples. I went out today and decided it was time to take some stress off the trees and give those 4 a helping hand. Hundreds of applets are now in the compost bin. I will wait now for three weeks and then I will do the final thinning, so I get decent apples. The main thing though is the stress on the trees and they need help from me. It will help them to produce another good crop next year

squeezyjohn

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2017, 16:40:19 »
If you're making jam from any strawberries or raspberries, thinned baby apples work really well in small amounts to help the jam set as they contain a lot of pectin.  Later in the year you can use crab apples.

Digeroo

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2017, 16:58:24 »
I have to do this too, neither golden delicious or discovery are big on june drop and tend to hang on to everything which means the apples turn out rather small.

I made some very good sage and mint jellies one year.   Preferred the mint, the sage was a bit like my childhood cough mixture. 

We used to have pigs on our plot site, and they adored the unripe apples, they must have cast iron digestive systems.

Has anyone any more recipes?

strawberry1

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2017, 15:39:31 »
I haven`t even waited the three weeks as now the apples are swelling fast because of the rain after very hot. I have taken off any small apples and poorly looking ones and did a final thinning on one tree in particular, bardsey. All apples on all the trees now look comfortable and as though they can breath. I have put hundreds into the hotbin. I also cut some thin end branches that were almost at ground level, having taken most of those apples off as they get very heavy. I would much rather have fewer good quality larger apples. Its hard enough to process and store as it is

ACE

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #4 on: July 01, 2017, 16:56:52 »
If you're making jam from any strawberries or raspberries, thinned baby apples work really well in small amounts to help the jam set as they contain a lot of pectin.  Later in the year you can use crab apples.

You can just use the small apples to make pectin and freeze it to use later. A lot cheaper than jam sugar or a bottle of pectin. Freeze it up in the ice cube maker.

Russell

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2017, 01:56:44 »
I started thinning my apples a few years ago, I had some biennial bearers which is not to be tolerated - easier said than done. According to East Malling, I understand thinning should be done early for best results i.e. before the fruitlets are the size of your little finger joint. It took a few years to get right by trial and error but it is well worth the bother.
Three years ago, I decided to try thinning all my apples whether or not they needed it, just to see what happened. I only did light (stage 1) thinning or singling as some call it. The results surprised me. About half my varieties, no effect found so no surprises there. The others showed increases in yield partly by weight partly by number of fruits. There was no June drop until this year. I don't  have an explanation for most of the previous sentence so maybe I have raised more questions than I have answered.

strawberry1

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2017, 07:35:02 »
I wait until my apples are definite individuals before I start to remove, it is easier  to spot the diseased and undersized apples. I did three thinnings this year and the results are looking very promising indeed, all remaining apples are looking much larger and appear glossy and healthy. I have ended up with nicely spaced apples and stress-free trees. The only ones I didn`t get are the ones at the top of one M26 tree, only five years old but now about 8 foot tall. I`ll have to find something on a pole that will snip them off. I am not taking a ladder up to the allotment to stand on wonky ground

pumkinlover

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2017, 08:13:46 »
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pectin

Having read Ace's post I am processing the discard apples. The article on Pectin in Wiki is really interesting.

galina

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2017, 08:34:47 »
If you're making jam from any strawberries or raspberries, thinned baby apples work really well in small amounts to help the jam set as they contain a lot of pectin.  Later in the year you can use crab apples.

You can just use the small apples to make pectin and freeze it to use later. A lot cheaper than jam sugar or a bottle of pectin. Freeze it up in the ice cube maker.

That is exactly what I do too.  Wash and cut them up small (skin and all) or blitz them for just a couple of seconds in the kitchen machine, into a saucepan with enough water to cover, boil the lot for a few minutes, drain and into the ice cube tray.  Freezes nice portion size cubes that can be taken out of the trays and stored in ordinary freezer bags.  :wave:

tricia

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2017, 12:15:40 »
My method is even easier! I've done my final thinning now and in batches of a kilo or so, washed them and with a small cup of water, cooked them for 6 minutes on 1 and first ring in my Silit Sicomatic pressure cooker. It then takes me less than five minutes to sieve the resulting mush. Some I have frozen in portions to use in cakes or with pork and I have a bowl of suitably sweetened puree in the fridge which is delicious stirred into yoghurt (my standby dessert :thumbsup:).

Heaven alone knows what I will do with the bumper crop from my four trees in October - Jonagold, Golden Delicious, Braeburn and a Lidl, supposedly Cox's Orange Pippin (it isn't, but crops prodigiously!).

Tricia :wave:

pumkinlover

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #10 on: July 19, 2017, 08:51:09 »
I've done one batch of dropped apples by cooking and one by putting through the juicer.
Of course they then got put in the same bag in the freezer so no idea if one method is better than the other!

Galina- do you sieve out the pips and stalks or do you not include them?

strawberry1

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Re: I`m helping the june drop
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2017, 22:15:50 »
I am not getting many dropped apples now, just have four on the sink unit, waiting to be turned into something. The apples on the trees are really becoming very big, much bigger than last year and they look healthy. I have a wooden apple store with drawers and will be storing the keepers, I especially like christmas pippin, which tastes just like cox. My freezer is already full to bursting, so I am going to have to dehydrate rather than puree for freezing, the ones that don`t keep for long, like bountiful. I have these varieties, all on M26 rrotstock
bramley, bountiful, christmas pippin, red windsor, bardsey, pig skin and pigs snout

 

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