APPLES
Did you know that only 30% of the apples we eat in the UK are grown here? That means 70% of the apples we eat are using valuable fuel by travelling round the world. Yet apples are so easily grown at home and especially here in Shelford!
Growing apples
Apples are really easy to grow, as long as you have room for a tree. If you don’t have much room, you can grow a very small tree – modern “dwarfing rootstocks” will produce a tree which is only about 4 feet high, and produces a good crop of apples.
Apple varieties and storing apples
If you grow your own apples, you can take advantage of the fact that hundreds of different varieties of apples have been bred. As well as having terrific flavour, there are varieties which are for eating at different times through the autumn and winter. This means that you can plan to have apples to ripen at different times. Many varieties can be stored for eating through the winter. Did you know that the Bramley, for instance, will keep in a cool frost-free place until March/April?
Want to know all about different varieties? Then visit Brogdale, an apple-lover’s heaven.
Brogdale, National Fruit Collection
Identifying apples
If you already have an apple tree, do you know what variety it is, and whether it can be stored? If not, take a sample to one of our local apple days, where experts offer an apple identification scheme.
Cambridge Botanic Garden Events Burwash Manor Events
How to store apples
Storing apples is easy. You need a cool, frost-free place – a shed, a garage. Pictured is an apple store, which is a stack of slatted trays. You can buy one, or you can improvise by acquiring fruit boxes from Cambridge Market or the greengrocers. People often say you should wrap the apples, but I find you don’t even need to do that.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
