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.
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| 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!
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| 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?
I bought the wife a James Grieves apple tree for her birthday last week. I believe they are self fertile? How long does it take for an apple tree to mature to be giving regular crops, Kev?
ReplyDeleteJames Grieves is partially self fertile, so it will produce more if there are other trees nearby in similar pollination groups (B, C or D in this case). They're a nice early/ middle season apple.
DeleteAs for maturity, depends on the rootstock (dwarf produce earlier) and the soil & conditions. Our clay soil here means that they take a while to establish but when they do they grow like crazy!
Not a name I've heard of before, I'll have a look out for one .... you can always fit in one more apple tree can't you ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnd when I was little I used to eat raw potatoes too!!
This one is great as a cordon as well as it has so many fruiting spurs on it!
DeleteNever been a fan of raw potatoes, but she seemed to love them!
My wife brought home some of those apples, at least, I think that's what they were. I liked them, never had any before.
ReplyDeleteMakes a good change from braburn or any of the other commercial ones. Taste is no longer how they choose what to grow for the supermarkets unfortunately.
DeleteI've never heard of that one before. Sounds perfect for the little ones.
ReplyDeleteIt's great as sometimes they won't finish a big one, these are about the right size for them.
DeleteWhat variety(ies) are they being crossed with? I always thought Apples were set in stone until this year when my new trees from last year kicked into bloom. It created an entirely new Apple type on my oldest tree I had never seen before. The old tree had always been a good producer but always kicked out smaller red Apples. This year it was producing fruit easily twice it's normal size and had more yellow mixed in like a breiburn type.
ReplyDeleteThe yellow types are my favorite usually though so yours look good :)
This one has been about since the 1780's. No idea what it was crossed with, but they say there is some golden pippin in there somewhere.
DeleteApple tree will keep to type but if your apple tree had been grafted in the old fashioned way, whether they'd let the rootstock grow to head height before grafting (rather than a few inches off the ground like we do now), then it's possible that the "new" apples are from the rootstock, growing out before the graft. Or possibly it was grafted over to a new variety in the past and the old type has managed to grow through. Check out this link for a well grafted tree! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2437247/250-varieties-apple-tree--thanks-bit-hard-grafting-years.html
There's no way it can just change type that I know of. they will cross pollinate but that will only affect the seeds of the apple grown (where they say you have a 1 in 2500 chance of it tasting very good if it's just random).