Apple Season Returns

As I walked through the garden I heard a thud.

It was a particular type of thud, one that has become familiar to me over the last decade of gardening. The first apples fall from their trees with a particular sound that tells me it’s time to begin the harvest.

A sound that will be very common to gardeners across my region over the coming weeks: I live in apple country.

The Long Decline

Apples have been grown in Devon and Cornwall, here in the South West of England, long enough for them to have become an important part of the local heritage.

The climate here is very favourable to them, and while we do not have the monopoly on British apple growing that heritage has held on here a bit more than in other areas. There was a time when orchards were far more common across Britain; it’s generally received wisdom that orchards vanished after the Second World War with the increased reliance on imports from overseas, but this isn’t quite true.

Gathering in the harvest

Orchards were in decline as early as the late 19^th century, and while imports from overseas won’t have helped Britain’s homegrown apple growers the exodus of agricultural labour from the countryside to the towns and cities had a far bigger impact. Why would families want to struggle on the unpredictable low incomes that have always been part of rural life when they could earn more from the new factories of the day, and have a better quality of life in the towns?

Apples, Juices And Ciders: a heritage lived

Rural Cornwall and West Devon were not immune from the massive losses of agricultural workers, but the heritage of apple growing has held on a bit better here.

Indeed there has been a bit of a resurgence of interest around old apple varieties, thanks in no small part to the efforts of enthusiasts who kept such varieties as ‘Pig’s Nose’, ‘Cornish Pineapple’, ‘Sops In Wine’ and ‘Pendragon’ growing in specialist collections.

There are few big orchards left in this area now but there are quite a few smaller domestic orchards if you know where to look. Unlike cherries, plums and pears, apples are a reliable fruiter and a few trees will supply a family or two.

The only way to get fruits of ‘Herefordshire Redstreak’ is from your own tree

The more enterprising gardens and farms make scrumpy, a rough cider which often sits somewhere on the scale between a refreshing drink and usable gasoline. I knew a guy for many years who was an avid cider drinker but, when sampling some of the more boisterous scrumpies of the area, found that even he had to watch his tolerances. I remember him telling me about a place he went to where cider was served only by the half pint and they made patrons walk from the bar to the door and back to gauge whether they would be able to physically tolerate another glass.

Some ciders are smooth like the nectar of the gods; others will leave you with the sense that at some point in recent time a week of your life went missing.

Yet cider remains an integral part of the local identity.

Best Impressions

I have on my shelves a delightful book called The Anatomy Of Dessert by Edward Bunyard. Unlike my other books about fruit and fruit growing this book is more a series of tasting notes.

When The Anatomy Of Dessert was published in 1929 a meal would usually be finished with fruits and nuts, not the elaborate desserts as we know them today. Bunyard’s notes are fascinating and discuss the flavour profiles of various more popular apples of the time, alongside the practicalities of harvesting, storing and serving them.

What’s really interesting, however, is his brief discussion around why store-bought apples don’t taste as good as those from the tree. Even in the late 1920s there was a sense that shop-bought apples were inferior to those grown in the garden.

Straight from the tree

To get apples from the orchard to the consumer in the freshest possible condition apples are, and were even then, picked from the tree before they were fully ripe. This allowed the fruits to be refrigerated and transported without deterioration, to ripen as best they can when they reach their final destination. Apples were already being transported great distances, not only within countries but also internationally.

By contrast an apple taken straight from the tree in the garden is picked at the very peak of its ripeness, when the sugars and juices are at their absolute best. The flavour profile of an apple eaten straight from the tree is vastly superior but storing them becomes a bit more challenging, depending on variety. Some apple varieties taste terrible from the tree but, after a month or more in storage, mature to become delicious later.

Many apples are delicious straight from the trees, but others less so

But what’s certainly true is that while shop-bought apples are not as flavourful as those straight from the tree, this was a known phenomenon a century ago and is not the result, as some of the more excitable elements will tell us, the nefarious result of modern apple breeding.

Grow Your Own

If you think of how many apples most of us have eaten in our lives, it would have to be a really special fruit that leaves a lasting impression. That bite of an apple at its very zenith, with the sweetness of the flesh and the juices rushing to excite the palate, will always beat the experience of an apple that was picked early and then stored.

This is why you should have an apple tree, not because of a belief that apples used to be better years ago.

A large domestic orchard at Cotehele Manor, Cornwall

But be warned; if an apple tree likes where it is it might very well yield rather a lot of fruits. The three trees I’ve already harvested from this year were not big by any means, but still produced 10 full sacks of usable apples.

Fortunately there is someone locally who will make them into juice, otherwise there would be a lot of apple pies, apple crumbles, apple sauce, apples for eating…