The Apple Club Newsletter

Summer 2005

Welcome to the summer edition of our newsletter, which this year seems appropriately titled. I hope the fine weather lasts, and that you can sit down with a cool glass of apple juice while you read on.

Plums and related stone fruits

Plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries and almonds: these are all closely related fruit plants. So closely related in fact, that they can even inter-breed, so you can now get pluots and apriums (plum/apricot hybrids). But that’s another story.
Peaches are native to China, and most varieties are quite similar to eachother. Nectarines are a type of peach bred to be hairless, but they are otherwise identical. Most peaches are self-fertile, and I have seen nice peaches grown to maturity in a sheltered outdoor garden in Cahir last summer.
Plums and apricots are very close. There are American, Oriental and European species of plums. The European domestic plum is thought to be of recent origin, as its seeds were not found under the ash of Pompeii. It must be a hybrid, as there is no known wild form. Green gages are a sub-division of plums, and the variety Opal is one of these. Needless to say, they are not all green. Damsons are also plums. Many plums grown in California are oriental species rather than European. Plum varieties suitable for Ireland include Opal, Victoria, Tzar, Avalon, Excalibur and Valour. The normal rootstock is St. Julien A, which gives a medium sized tree, but a new type called VVA-1 gives a smaller tree suitable to modern gardens.
Apricots are native to China and Siberia. They were introduced to Europe about 2000 years ago, but are not grown in Ireland.
Cherries can be divided into sweet and sour groups. Sour cherries seem to have originated from a single crossing of two sweet cherries. They grow wild in hedgerows in Ireland, and fruit well here, though the taste is quite sour except in the hottest of years. Sweet cherries originated between the Black and Caspian seas, and were probably carried to Europe by birds. They can be grown in warm locations in Ireland, and new rootstocks that give rise to small trees have recently been introduced. The best of these is Giesla5, so if you want a small cherry tree for your garden (less than 2 metres tall), this is the rootstock to choose.

GMO’s

In response to the article about genetically modified plants in the spring issue of our newsletter, I received a note from Richard Auler, one of Ireland’s pioneering organic farmers, and he had an additional point to make. He said that the reason that negative effects on human health from eating GM foods have not been reported in scientific studies, is because no long-term study has ever looked for this type of effect, focusing on the plants rather than human health effects. I am glad to pass on Richard’s comment.

George Ing

George Ing was an American fruit-grower. He died suddenly at his home, aged 69, on May 11th. He wrote about fruit production for the Good Fruit Grower magazine, and about important or interesting events in his own life. He was a great believer in the value of research, and over thirty years raised many millions of dollars to be spent on learning how better to grow fruit. While on a trip to South Africa, to visit fruit growers, he wrote the following piece about Kruger National Park.

As we rounded the bend, we saw a huge elephant surrounded by greenery, some being stuffed into its mouth. Soon we came upon a herd of giraffes eating tree tops. It was like a Disney movie.
We had earlier seen zebras, wildebeest, and hundreds of impalas, referred to locally as “lion lunch.” The elephant was the first sighting of one of the “Big Five” – elephant, giraffe, leopard, cape buffalo and lion.
Leader Piet Stassen, who had lived and worked in the area, and Wanda, his wife and “crisis control agent,” led us through Kruger Park, as well as plantations of bananas, mangos, macadamia nuts and citrus. He also exposed us to kiwi, avocadoes, sugar cane, maize, and pine and eucalyptus farms and nurseries.
Kruger Park, hot and humid in its summer, was a mixture of trees, shrubs, open areas, and water courses. Animals thrive. Crossroads about every five miles enhance viewing. Kruger’s animals preclude getting out and strolling around.
Zebras, horses with beautiful stripes, were so plentiful that after a time the bus did not slow down. Dangerous Cape buffalo are cows with head armour. Giraffes raise the question of why God made something so beautiful but ungainly. We saw hippos, rhinos, waterbuck, hyenas, and another of God’s weird creations, the extra ugly warthog.
Leopard sighting is difficult. We saw one in a tree with a dead impala. The park has 1500 lions, but they were invisible until we took a detour to get out of the park and found some sleeping by the road. Kruger has many large and small winged creatures, plus crawling types, including crocodiles. Tour director Piet noted that if bitten by a black mamba snake, we should find a shady place to be as comfortable as possible during our last 20 minutes on earth.
Snakes and lions actually trail hippos in the danger department. If a hippo believes you are between it and water or its young, you are a goner. We saw four hippos, and they move fast.
Fences have been partially removed between Kruger and Mozambique’s adjacent park so animals can roam more freely. The open fences have become a pathway for illegal immigrants from Mozambique and further north, seeking to live and work in South Africa.
They don’t all make it; some are eaten by hippos and lions. One account said 13 “travellers” had been eaten in the last year. But who knows, since a hippo can swallow people whole.
Kruger supplied a traumatic experience. After an evening tour, our safari-type vehicle unloaded about three blocks from the housing, turned off its lights, and we were in total darkness. We gingerly walked down the roadway. As we sought our cabin, I vividly recalled that the deadly puff-adder snake is known for lying in wait along paths at night to jump on passing prey.
When we found our cabin, Muriel could not find the big key in her big purse. In addition to malaria-type mosquitoes and other biting bugs, I was sure I could see eyes in the night, undoubtedly lions.
Muriel dug in the purse. Tony Webster, a long-time researcher friend from England, whose cabin was nearby, appeared with a small torch. Tony shone his light into Muriel’s purse, declared, “It’s dreadful down there,” did not see the key, and left to help others find their cabins.
It was a tense time in the 47-year old marriage as Muriel asked, “Are you going to divorce me?” After more scrambling that produced various interesting but useless items from the bowels of the purse, Tony Webster returned. He and Muriel went at it with vigour and eventually found the key. I can’t remember any time in my life when I was more relieved to get inside a house.
Interestingly, about a week after we were in Kruger, in the same lodging area, a worker was trapped in an out-building and eaten by a lion, “except for his head.” Thus the risk was real.
We survived, as did the marriage. And despite being forced to take photos only through the windows of an often-moving bus, we did get some memorable shots.

George will be missed by all his readers, and the fruit industry in general.

Dating machine

This is not a machine to help you find the perfect date or match (unfortunately), but a device to mark our bottles of juice with individual batch and date stamps. It is a clever device, like a computer printer, which instead of printing on paper, prints on bottles or caps, as it senses them approaching on a conveyor belt. So from now on, each bottle of juice that you get from us will have a code on the cap, and thus can be traced back to the exact apples that went into it, and these back to the trees on which they were grown.
So perhaps I was wrong at the start. In a way it is a machine to help make a match, but only between apples and juice.

Recipe: Baked Strawberries

Ingredients:
450g (1 lb) Strawberries
2 tbsp. Chopped almonds, toasted
3 tbsp. Apricot preserve
2 tbsp. Cointreau or Grand Marnier

Method:
Heat the oven to 180 C / 360 F / Gas mark 4.
Wash and hull the strawberries. Warm the apricot preserve and liqueur in a small saucepan.
Put the berries in an ovenproof dish. Pour over the liqueur and apricot preserve. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake for 5 minutes and serve immediately.

Education, By Willem Traas

In the spring newsletter I wrote about the sport I do now; cycling. This time I will write about learning in schools. To begin I will write about my own school education.
First I went to baby-school at the age of four years. That was in 1940 when the 2nd World War started for Holland. We only played in that school; mainly in sand outdoors. We fought for the biggest wheelbarrow to bring sand from one heap to another. My friend Adrie always had the best one; a big red one. The baby-school was run by two ladies. The first day they told us to put up one finger if we wanted to ask a question, and two fingers if we wanted to go to the toilet. The first time in school I made a mistake. When I had to go to the toilet I put up one finger and the teacher ignored me. As Joe Rea later said to me: “It’s like talking to a politician, a nice warm feeling in the beginning, but left with an unpleasant feeling after a while.”
After baby school we went to primary school. That was from six until eleven years. We only went for half days because the German troops had taken over the school, so we had classes in Church. I remember the first day well. It was the first time I met children from our village and I must have talked all the time; the teacher put sticky tape over my mouth.
On the whole I was a good pupil. I know because I still have the reports.
In the last year of primary school it was decided what your further education would be. Most children went to work at the age of eleven or twelve. Only the teacher’s children and two of my brothers went to secondary school.
I was not so lucky: my father needed me on the farm. My friend Adrie and I worked in the orchard where we would see girls and boys cycle to secondary school nearby. I learned from nature and the people working on the farm. As Arthur Carter would say: “from the university of life”.
If I were young again I would keep going to school as long as possible. Education leaves you with something after you stop going to school.
So I am writing this also for the young people who are doing exams and will have to make up their minds what to do. I would study, and get summer work if I could. Many young people did that on our farm.
Philip Coleman picked strawberries and is now a lecturer in Trinity College.
David Hallinan thinned apples and is now an architectural technician.
Sharon Smith greeted campers, and is studying law. Seanie Lonegran is now a county councillor.
Siobh n Hyland packed apples and is now a dentist. Gary Hallinan is a Garda in Dublin. Martin Harrigan is a computer scientist, and his brother Peter a pharmacist. Mark O’Donovan is becoming a carpenter. I could go on, but now for the competition. 


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