Apple of my eye

By Margaret Griffin

Apples are probably the easiest tree fruit to grow and the most popular with gardeners. You may be lucky enough to have one in your garden already, but if not, they are easy to establish.

There are thousands of different types of apples, but they broadly fall into two categories: dessert apples for eating, and cookers, as the name suggest, for cooking.

If you don’t have an apple tree in your garden, planting one is a good investment, for there is nothing like eating the fresh fruit straight from the tree in autumn.

The ideal position for an apple tree is a sunny, sheltered site. Avoid poorly-drained or shallow soils.

In order to have successful pollination, it is necessary to have two different varieties of apple trees that flower at the same time.

Topaz

Looking for an easy and fairly reliable apple tree for the garden? Topaz may be just the one you need.

This tasty yellow, red-blushed apple is also valued for its disease resistance. Topaz apples are crispy, medium to large apples with a distinctive, sweet-tart flavour.

Topaz apples are usually eaten fresh or in fruit salads, but they can also be used for cooking or baking. Growing Topaz apples isn’t difficult, and the trees tend to be resistant to most apple diseases. Topaz apple harvest occurs late in the season, usually from mid-October to November.

Elstar

A juicy, sweet smelling apple with firm flesh and a tart but sweet flavour, the Malus Domestica Elstar apple tree is a compact grower. Rather versatile, this apple makes great apple sauce, terrific apple tart or can be eaten freshly picked. Everyone wants this apple in the garden!

Jonagold

Jonagold apple trees are a cultivar that have been around for a while (introduced in 1953) and have stood the test of time – still being a great choice for the apple grower. They are super crisp, large, yellow/green apples blushed in red, with creamy white flesh with a good balanced sweet/sharp flavour.

Braeburn

Braeburn trees are a popular variety of apple trees to grow in your home garden. They are favoured because of their delicious fruit, dwarf habit and hardiness. Braeburn apples will produce a plethora of white, sweetly scented apple blossoms in spring. These blossoms are an important nectar source for many pollinators. When the blooms fade, the trees produce large orange to red streaked apples for you to enjoy in autumn. Braeburns are self-fertile, meaning you can still get fruit even if you only have one tree. For higher yields, it is still recommended that you plant another suitable apple tree nearby.

Bramley’s Seedling (AGM)

This is the apple we normally buy as a cooking apple in our shops. The are many reasons that Bramley’s became so popular. From the viewpoint of the gardener, Bramley is an easy apple to grow, is disease and pest tolerant, producing a good crop of apples almost every year, without attracting too many birds or wasps, as the fruit is sharp-tasting.

From the cook’s perspective, this sharpness or acidity is also a great quality. When cooked, the natural fruit acids help break down the apple into a delicious fluffy texture.

The acidity also balances the sweetness of the pastry and any sugar that is added, meaning that the flavour is never over-sweet. Add to this the large size of the apple which makes peeling easy, and you can see why this apple became so popular in the kitchen.

Lastly, these are very easy to store. It’s Granny Griffins’ favourite for her apple pies.