A is for Apple

Two particularly fine specimens

And so we arrive at pretty much my last fruit and vegetable post for this year, just as I finally find my 'How to grow vegetables' book which I misplaced months ago, and have clearly been referring to all summer.  There is not much to say about our apples as the trees stand there and just produce and we collect the spoils.  I know one is meant to prune ones tree into a bowl shape with no crossing branches and plenty of empty space in the middle to allow air to circulate, but as much as I tell the mother this she is intent in just loping the top off.  Despite this complete lack of correct pruning, the trees do very well and we have an annual glut.

As with all fruit and vegetables that my mother is involved in the growing of, she managed to be out of the country come picking time.  The father was left to spend hours 'peeling them off trees', his words not mine, fill endless cardboard wine bottle holders from supermarkets with them, and store them in the garage where its cool.  I am ashamed to say that I wont eat our home grown apples, instead sneakily buying Braeburns for lunch.  The threat of caterpillars somehow seems more real when you have seen the growing process rather than buying them all laid out clinically in the supermarket.  I am a bad person I know.  I will eat them if cut up and placed in crumbles and pies and the like, which the mother usually whips up, but somehow this year she didn't do very much of that.  We did have a rather nice apple cake that I will share with you shortly, but quite a few ended up merrily rotting away in the garage unfortunately.

The variety of said apples is a mystery, but having seen an article in the British paper the Independent last month on the British apple, I suspect that they are some kind of Pippin, which is British native so thats good.  Even better that they are not Knobby Russets as that is one hideous apple.  No wonder its dying out in this country.  They are rather nice apples really, having said I won't eat them.  There's not much else really to add.  My next post however is going to be a bit different!  Check back for some serious British tradition.

My favourite of the crop this year had an unfortunately placed dent in
one side, a little like a bottom you might say.