August news 2018

Hello - we are definitely in Apple season as I am receiving  emails about identification.  It is always interesting to hear from people but I cannot accurately identify apples from photos.  The reason I started painting and drawing apples  was because I just needed so much more information about an apple to identify it.  So I started recording the apples that came in for Apple Weekend after I had identified and checked them either at Deacons (now gone) or at RHS Wisley or with an tree that I knew absolutely was correct.  Trees lose their labels or people forget and misremember what they are so this was really confined to ones we had planted and could vouch for as being correctly labelled.

It is a strange year - this is the first time ever that Arthur Turner (picture above) has not had any apples - well a few, but mostly unusable.  This is my favourite early cooker and baked apple, cooking to a puree and with a good flavour.  Usually so many we can put them in the freezer.  It was covered with very attractive blossom as usual.  Tydemans Early was good and reliable as usual, Crawley Beauty has some good big specimens but the Bramley's Seedling is very poor - enough for us to use but nothing like the usual bounty.  The John Downie crab is as good as usual and I have already made jelly but the other trees are having a disappointing year.

What sort of year are you having?

March News 2018

It seems a long time since I wrote anything here - I think June last year.  We had problems with the site which Barbara

put right for me - Many Thanks.

I remember Mary Case saying to me that every apple has it's year and looking back at which apples cropped well and which stored well this year the surprise has been Beauty of Kent.  We were threatening this with eviction and looking to plant something else in its place.  (As you know Dave likes to graft new varieties so we do have a changing number of apples in the garden)  But this year Beauty of Kent out performed itself and is safe for a few years to come.  We ate the last few from the shed last week - and I have never rated it as a keeper!  This is definitely the year of Beauty of Kent.  We only chose it in the first place because of the name - my mother came from Kent

I also realise this site has not been updated for some time and I need to do something about it.  All my emails etc have come from the USA lately.  Maybe no one in the UK or the continent can find me any more?  I had a very interesting correspondence about commercially grown apples in America and discovered that Idared and Jonagold are well known, grown and sold in their tens of thousands .  Interesting, because we grow them here on the Isle of Wight in our garden and I know the varieties well. 

Can I just repeat that I do not sell apples or apple trees - this is purely a site for those interested in apples which grew out of our attempts at identification at Apple Weekend when it happened here on the Isle of Wight - pre 2008.  However the information on this site is not out of date and I hope still useful.