Making Apple Juice

Drinking the Fruits of Your Labour

Drinking fruit juice is the easiest way for our bodies to digest all of the naturally occurring enzymes, vitamins and minerals that are present in fruit. In its liquid form the body doesn’t have to expend energy ‘working’ to extract the goodness, it takes it all up straight in to the blood stream delivering maximum nutritional value.  Most commercially produced fruit juice has been pasteurised (heated) to stop the juice going bad and increase its shelf life – all good and well, except that in the heating process nearly all of those beneficial enzymes, vitamins and minerals are lost. The best solution of course is to make your own, getting the tastiest juice with all the health benefits! In fact, why not try planting some apple trees specifically for juicing? Even in the tiniest garden, dwarfing rootstocks will keep trees small but still give you enough fruit for some delicious homemade apple juice.  Here is some advice for matching the right variety with the tastes you hanker after!

Flavours

Sweet juice: Ashmeads Kernel, Egremont Russet, Claygate Pearmain, King of the Pippins

Medium juice: Jonagold, Laxton’s Superb, Cox

Sharp juice: Bramley, Browns

Blending a sharp juice like Bramley with a sweeter juice will give you a more complex flavour.

Juiciest

Jonagold is a particularly juicy apple so great for home juicers! Katy and Discovery are also good.

Storage

If you’ve got room for a few trees, plant some varieties that will ripen at different times, or varieties that will keep in store, to give you juice throughout the season – Winston will stay on the tree until November, Kidds Orange Red, Ashmeads Kernel will keep well until January.

Colour

Sops In Wine will give you a lovely pink juice – mix it with Discovery for a delicious

and colourful blend.

Vintage Cider

‘Vintage’ varieties will make excellent cider without the need to blend with other apples:

Black Dabinett is a good ‘bittersweet’

Kingston Black is a good ‘bittersharp’

Browns will make a good sharp fresh juice and a sharp vintage cider

Top picture: Vigo apple crusher

Above: A table-top Vigo apple press

What are these spots on my apples ?

It is generally a pretty poor result for apple yields this year. With the unrelenting rain that occurred over late spring/summer, our insect friends were denied much opportunity to pollinate the flowers. But whilst it might not be a good year for fruit, it has been a good year for scab! Scab is an air-borne, fungal disease that affects apples and pears and is easily recognisable by the black-brown spots that appear on the leaves, fruit and bark. It is a disease that favours damp climates and wetter regions, so all that rain provided the perfect environment for scab to flourish.  Infected leaves will develop blotches early in the season that can merge and cause premature leaf fall. Scabby lesions can also develop on the bark and young shoots. Similarly on infected fruit, brown-black spots and patches form on the skin that can scab and crack as the fruit grows, allowing further infection from other diseases. However, light infection on fruit skin is purely cosmetic and will not affect the flesh – so don’t be too hasty to throw your fruits on the compost heap! 

 

Above: Scab infected leaves and fruit

Is it worth spraying ? By the time you have noticed scab, it will be too late to control. Besides few chemicals are available to the amateur, and you would have to spray the whole tree from May until July to be effective.

The two best forms of defence against scab:

1.       Natural Resistance - Planting suitable varieties of fruit tree that have some natural scab resistance. Mostly these are varieties that are happy to grow in the wetter, Western regions of the British Isles like Discovery or Lord Lambourne. Similarly older varieties and local varieties, which were grown before the modern commercial use of fungicidal treatment, tend to have good scab resistance, apples like Ashmead’s Kernal, Beauty of Bath,Pitmaston Pineapple and Tom Putt.

2.       Good house keeping – Correct pruning practises will remove infected wood and maintain good airflow inside your trees, reducing the damp microclimate beloved by scab.  Scab will also harbour in fallen leaves over winter only to infect next year’s new growth, so it’s a good idea to either rake up fallen leaves in the autumn or collect them with a mower. 

Pitmaston Pineapple 

 

Please contact us for further advice on suitable planting varieties and information on pruning services.

Easy Apple Gallette - French Apple Tarte

Apple Gallette

Credit for this very easy and quick recipe goes to our friend Sian. This will work well with apples or pears.The best apples to use are Belle de Boskoop [ used throughout France for apple tarte] but any firm aromatic variety will work well.[Suntan,Ribston Pippin,Cox,King of the Pippins etc.]

Belle de Boskoop a large dessert / cooking apple from Holland ...quite tart

 Pears,if used want to be a touch under ripe Conference is as good as any. 

Other ingredients ;

1.Just Roll Puff Pastry

Roll out Thin

2.Carnation Caramel 

Commonly Available

Apply thinly and sprinkle with salt to counter the sweetness

3.Apricot Jam

Thin the apricot jam to a glaze by adding water and warming gently

Peel and slice the apples arrange semi circles neatly, you can probably do better than this

Why not make one for the freezer

Glaze with the jam and bake until golden brown

Put the kettle on

An Apple Affair -Trained Fruit at West Dean Sussex

Don't miss a definitive Apple Day at West Dean in Sussex

One of the best places to see what can be achieved by training fruit are The Gardens of West Dean College near Chichester in Sussex www.westdean.org.uk.The gardens feature two restored kitchen gardens of the late Victorian period;the restoration is largely the work to Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain it has been beautifully done to the last detail.

Apples and Pears trained on free-standing metal framework edged with neatly trimmed Buxus'Suffructicosa'

Comice Pear trained as a Goblet

Conference trained as a pyramid

Much of the trained fruit has been inspired from the gardens of Versailles, these newly trained apples have been tied in to thick copper wire left over by the electrian

The pear walkway produces a huge crop of excellent quality as the branches are not conjested and the air can flow freely around the fruit reducing scab and brown rot

Excellent fruit quality - close-up of conference on espalier at Wisley

Double apple cordons trained to criss-cross, rubbing branches could eventually graft naturally, they havnt yet done so here

A fan trained Merryweather Damson - of age

In the glasshouses trained fruit includes melons, figs,vines,peaches and many many varieties of heritage tomatoes as cordons-to make your mouth water

General Principles of Training Apples and Pears  

1.Horizontally trained branches are fruitful, vertical branches produce wood and not fruit much. With this in mind to fill the space to be trained vertical growth is encouraged, as the space is filled growth can be tied down to produce fruit.

2. Autumn is a good time to pull down vertical growth produced in the summer so that it will bear fruit buds the following year.

 3.Summer pruning of established trained fruit reduces growth and encourages next 

years fruit. This because it shocks the tree by removing leaves and it exposes the wood to sunlight which initiates fruit bud.

4.Winter pruning will encourage growth so should only be used on young trees to fill the 

cropping space or to rejuvenate older trees where there is not enough vigour. Of course pruning can be employed at anytime to remove diseased wood especially canker,don't delay on this one.

5.Remember trained fruit can be developed into almost any shape you like although you might have read the gardening books and magazines the fruit trees havnt, they don't know the 

difference between a cordon,espalier,palmette,fan,goblet,or a pyramid.And don't forget 

tripovers or are they called stepovers.

Katie gets a new Bike on the nursery

www.adamsappletrees.co.uk

In order to get our apple trees to grow straight they all require tying in to a cane. We grow many thousands of fruit trees each year so this can mean alot of bending; but we think we have the answer......

Katie Worker of the month on Our new bike...mid July

Katie down amongst the trees

Katie tying in the trees....no bending

All the trees this year should be nice and straight thanks to Katie and her bike

Recognising and treating Canker on Apple trees

www.adamsappletrees.co.uk 

Fungal Canker is a common problem on apple and pears especially in the wetter west of the U.K.

It will infect young twigs in the Spring and cross infect to older wood, it can infect the trunk and rarely it will kill a tree. On the positive side older trees badly infected will often fruit well, as the tree is put under pressure where the sap flow is constricted, it can infect fruit and effect storage qualities.

Look out for young stems/leaves dying back, this was in July but it can occur from Spring onwards

Stem infection is more noticeable in wet weather

The stem becomes constricted and growth beyond dies back 

The cure - a multi - pronged attack is required

1.Recognise and remove on a regular basis, in the west of Britian check trees monthly, remove any infected wood  cutting back a foot from the infection at least. Burn the wood removed, treat cut surfaces either with 10% bleach, or use armillatox from a garden centre, or rub wound with soil[this contains so many competing organisms the fungal canker is crowded out]. Treat secateurs with 10% bleach  dip between cuts.

2.Encourage strong hard growth, regular pruning of apple and pear trees rejuvenates trees and keeps them healthy, though excessive winter pruning will give too much growth and little fruit. Summer pruning is good in August to encourage fruiting and remove unwanted growth.
Dont overfeed apple and pear trees with fertiliser, or even manure, as this encourages sappy growth prone to canker infection.

3.Apply Lime, calcium applied in the form of ground limestone or garden lime encourages hard growth resistant to infection. It also improves fruit storage. On sandy soils apply lime every year on clay soils every other year. For a young tree a few years old a few good handfuls, for a large mature tree half a bucket. Sprinkle a handful of lime on the soil used when backfilling around a newly planted apple tree.

4.Choosing the right tree, some varieties are more susceptible to fungal canker than others. Bramley has been shown to be resistant, Spartan more susceptible.


5.Live with canker under control,doing all of the above will greatly reduce fungal canker and keep trees healthy. Older trees may have a lot of infection that cannot easily be pruned away, though paring with a sharp knife and treating as above [point number 1.] will help. In the long term keeping older trees and living with canker can be more acceptable than loosing the tree, they maybe fruiting well. There is evidence that trees will heal over cankerous wounds.

www.adamsappletrees.co.uk

International Craft Cider Festival - Rocks

Adams Apples took a stand last weekend at the FIRST International craft cider Festival near Caerphilly

Jess and Rowan [Daughters of Adam] on the Adams Apples Stand set up and waiting for business

The Northern Ireland Brothers want to give up the day job to major in their sweet cider business

Normandy Perry naturally carbonated this one slips down

These Normandy craft ciders can only be made in small quantities on the farm

Bill Bleasdale with the pony tail - amazing guy lives up a mountain, grows cider apples ,makes cider, sells trees ,builds and restores old cider presses and has written a terrific book 'Grow Apples and Make Cider' check out his website www.welshmountaincider.com..........he also makes stained glass...GO BILL

Rachel Matthews show organiser [Apples growing from her dress], Andy Hallet show sponsor.........Thanks for a good weekend

Expensive £7/bottle but worth it

Saturday Morning ,before drinking began ,visit Caerphilly Castle

 .......its enormous

It is hardwork but the tasting of the cyder must go on.............My favourite Black Dragon Cider make with Kingston Black and nothing else