I picked the last apple tree clean just now. It’s a Fiesta, which is a green, crisp apple with a lovely juicy bite and a clean, appley, Cox like flavour.
Ken Muir, the grower, says that the season is October to December, and as you might expect from that, they weren’t ready to come off the tree, they were resisting! So I had to cut the stems with scissors. I didn’t want to pull the fruiting spurs off as that would affect next years crop. With the storm we have due tonight, I didn’t want to leave them, as they would probably not be on the tree in the morning, and that would simply be too awful 🙁
I picked just over 12kg, 12kg! I have just looked at mySupermarket to price them and those horrible, sort of fluffy and cotton wooly Red (not very) Delicious are £3.50 a kilo!! Several other varieties are also £3.50, that’s an awful lot to pay for apples, especially when the UK has just had such an outstanding year for this fruit. At a more middle of the road £1.80 a kilo, which is more what I would pay, 12kg works out to £21.60, so just from this picking, not counting the other apples we have had from this tree, it has paid for itself. It is a cordon tree, which grows straight up and down, and can be grown in a large pot. I have let it spread a little as there is room where it is, but even so, you get great value from growing your own if you have even a tiny bit of outside space
So now I have to think of ways to use them
This evening, I will make a compote, top it with sponge and cook it in the microwave for six minutes and have it with some custard.
DP is looking forward to a great many crumbles. I shall peel and core some and freeze them, make compote and have it with breakfast with either yogort or Raisin Pancakes. I will bake some in the Remoska with dried fruit and butter in the middle (I love those sort of chewy skins you get with a baked apple). I shall definitely have some as creamy apples with croutons for breakfast. I may dry some
I shall see how they keep, as I would like to have one most days just as it is, we shall see
oh do – it’s so lovely picking stuff from the garden. They taste twice as nice you know 🙂
That’s a lot of apples. I might just buy a tree once I have the garden under control. I foraged 10lb of apples yesterday, many of them very small, but they can go to make a jelly. I’m hoping that because they are not windfall apples I’ll be able to keep some for a while to eat fresh.
Your apples look lovely. Funnily enough I’ve just baked an apple stuffed with blackberries. It was delicious.