The Apple Club Newsletter

Winter 2002

As Christmas approaches, I can’t be sure whether you will receive this newsletter before or after Santa arrives. At the moment it doesn’t look like a white Christmas is on the way, although you never know… In any case, we hope that you enjoy our winter newsletter.

How can I have a small apple tree?

People who visit us often wonder how they can grow a small apple tree in their garden, rather than a big one like you would traditionally find. The secret to this is to grow the apple tree, not on its own root, but rather on a root of a naturally small apple tree. This practice of growing one plant grafted or budded onto another has been used since ancient times, although it only became more widespread from the seventeenth century onwards. At this time, it was fashionable for the owners of big houses to adorn their gardens with miniature trees, including apple trees. Among the popular small trees at the time were the aptly named “Paradise” apples. However, because these paradise trees all produced similar apples, alternative varieties needed to be grafted onto them to give a better range of fruits. Among the apple types that were grown on the miniature paradise rootstocks at this time were Permains, Gilliflowers, Pippins, Reynets, Nonpareil and Ruffetings.
Of course, with so many apple types, and more than one paradise rootstock, over the following centuries, there ensued some considerable confusion as to which rootstock was which, and what one had the more desirable effect on the variety which was grafted onto it.
The first scientific efforts to sort this out were undertaken at Wye College Fruit Experimental Station at East Malling, England, when in 1912 they decided to “start from the very beginning and put on record detailed descriptions of various types (of rootstocks)”. After a few years, twenty-four distinct rootstocks had been assessed and classified, and these were numbered M1 to M24. After this some breeding work was done, and numbers including M26, M27 and MM106 (which is resistant to woolly aphid) released.
The success of this approach is evident today, with these exact rootstocks still being used by growers. The rootstock on which a variety is grown will have various effects on the apple. For instance, the fruits from a Bramley’s Seedling cooker on M27 will be smaller than on M9, but may contain more calcium. Also for example, varieties grown on MM106 trees tend to produce more apples than on other similar-sized rootstocks. However, the most obvious characteristic will be the tree size, and it is this feature which is of greatest interest to people in general.
So, what rootstock should you ask for? If you are looking for the smallest possible tree, unlikely to exceed 5 feet (1.5 metres) high, then M27 is suitable. If you would prefer a tree up to eight feet tall (2.5 metres) then M9 is the best candidate. For a twelve-foot tree (4 metres), M26 is suitable, and larger than this, MM106. Remember that all these trees will require a stake, as their roots alone are not secure enough to hold them up, and the weaker the rootstock, the stronger the stake should be.
Here on our farm, almost all the trees you see are on M9 rootstock, which is a safe choice. In the future we may use some M27’s, as although summer drought can be a problem with these, dry summers are not a problem that we seem to have very frequently.

A new way to try apple juice

We have just begun to try making our juice in a new package. The system is called “bag-in-box”, and you may even have seen wine in this type of pack before. The technology for putting the juice into the box is more complex than we use for our glass bottles, so we had a group of people over from Germany with their own equipment to do the operation. According to them, this system has become very popular in Germany because the package is much lighter than a glass bottle, and also because the box part is re-usable and the plastic bag part can be completely re-cycled (at least in Germany).
Another advantage is that less heat is required for pasteurisation, providing further environmental benefit.
The package size that we have tried is five litres, and it comes with a one-way tap. This means that you can place the package in the fridge (if you like the juice cold) or on a shelf in your kitchen, and use the tap to fill a glass whenever you like. As long as the box is not moved from this position, air will not re-enter, meaning that the juice will stay fresh in the bag for up to five weeks, even though you are using the juice from it.
And just like our glass bottles, unopened, the bag-in-box juice will hold for a year.
When you finish the five litres (and this does not take long for some people), you can open the box and dispose of the bag (there will be re-cycling facilities for this type of plastic from next year), and come to us for a new bag for your box.
If you are interested in trying this system we have a small number ready in our farm-shop for you to try. It’s only an experiment this year, but if you like how it tastes and how it works, we will do some more from next year on. 

Recipe for Royal Apple Pies

The recipe for these small apple pies dates from medieval times, although at that time real meat would have been used.
You will need:
Shortcrust pastry
Four Bramley apples, peeled, cored and grated.
Four heaped tablespoons of pre-prepared mince “meat” (as used in mince pies)
Three tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of mixed spice
The whites of two eggs
2 oz (50grams) castor sugar
For the shortcrust pastry you will need:
8 oz (225g) plain flour, 2oz (50g) icing sugar, 5oz (150g) margarine, one egg yolk, one tablespoon ice cold water, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice.
Beat the latter three ingredients (egg yolk, water, lemon juice) together.
Then make a firm dough using this and all the remaining pastry ingredients;
wrap in cling film and leave in the refrigerator for one hour.
Roll out the pastry and line eight individual greased tartlet tins.
Bake blind in a preheated oven at 190 C (375 F) for 10-12 minutes.
Mix the grated apples, mince meat, three tablespoons of sugar and mixed spice; then spoon into the tartlet shells.
Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding the two ounces of castor sugar gradually.
Spread or pipe this meringue mixture over the filled tartlets and bake for a further 12-15 minutes, until the meringue is light brown.

Winter in the fruit garden

Raspberries
All your raspberries should be dormant by now. However, if ours are anything to go by there are probably still some green leaves about. Now is the time to prune out old canes and tie in the new growth that arose during the summer. When removing old canes use a good secateurs and cut right back to soil level leaving as small a stump as possible. You can remove some new canes also so as to leave the healthiest ones spaced at about 4” (10 cm) apart. Tie in these canes firmly to their supports.

Strawberries
Strawberry plants are now dormant. Little is now required although the mild autumn has meant that weeds continued to grow, and these may need attention.
When the leaves have died off and gone brown (which is still some time away), they can be removed to help prevent the spread of diseases into next seasons crop.

Apples
Winter is pruning time. There are a number of principles that you can consider when pruning. Remove any suckers (shoots coming up from the ground level). These will compete with your tree. Remove branches hanging on the ground. Remove diseased branches or diseased parts of branches. Try to get your tree into a pyramidal (or Christmas tree) shape. Do not take off too many branches – this will just encourage lots of new shoots next year. Try to assess how many fruit buds you have – these are the fat rounded buds. A 2 metre tall tree (6 feet tall) only needs perhaps 100. If there is an abundance of fruit buds then prune some off. If they seem scarce then preserve the branches on which you see them.

Plums
At this time of year you can assess whether your plum trees have Silver Leaf disease. Those that do will have many little toadstools (up to 1 inch in size (2.5cm)) growing from the trunk or main branches. If the tree is badly infected it should be removed to prevent spread to other trees, although if you only have one tree it can be left in place in the hope that it may recover.
Do not prune plum trees at this time of year, as it facilitates spread of silver-leaf. Wait until May, when the disease is not active.

Apple growers open day

In our previous newsletter I mentioned the two apple growers days that were going to be held. These have now taken place, and it looks like they will bear some fruit.
The most interesting new apple varieties that were mentioned were some disease-resistant types which, when planted in a garden would need no spraying at all.
So, to add to the list of good garden apples like Discovery, Katy, Bramley’s Seedling and James Grieve are some new types like Santana, Topas, Retina, Alkmene (Early or Red Windsor), Pinova and Delcoro.
While not all these new types are immediately available to gardeners, over the next two or three years they should become more widely available. Keep an eye out for these easy-to-grow apples.

Children’s Section by Willem Traas

This time I wish to teach you a lesson in the Dutch language.
Dutch is spoken by sixteen million people living in Holland. And Holland is only as big as Munster. It is also spoken by many people in Belgium, and by some of the white people living in South Africa. They do not call it Dutch but Afrikaans.
And then it is of course spoken by people like me who were born in Holland but do not live there anymore.
So now we begin our lesson:
Father – Vader
Mother – Moeder
Children – kinderen
Animals – dieren
Plants – planten
Pears – peren
Plums – pruimen
Strawberries – aardbeien
Raspberries – frambozen
Apples – appels
House – huis
Fruit – fruit
One – een
Two – twee
Three – drie
So if you go to Holland when you are older, for a holiday, or perhaps to work there, you can tell them that you had your first lesson in Dutch through our newsletter.
But don’t worry. Most Dutch people can speak good English, because it’s taught to all the children in school.


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