a gardening guru speaks!
The wild times of apple trees
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Date February 24, 2013
Without cultivation in the equation, roadside fruit is often the best to be found, Jackie French writes.
Apple trees.
Hands up: has anyone ever found an apple tree along the side of the road that failed to bear apples? Has anyone ever picked roadside apples and found they were full of fruit fly or codlin moth?
As dedicated feral apple sampler, I can duly swear I have never come across a bad wild apple.
Apples originated in central and western Asia and possibly travelled to the rest of the continent via horse droppings along ancient trade routes. Horse eats apples and apples germinate in horse droppings; pretty much the same way that kid eats apple in car, throws core out the window and apple trees grow on the side of the road these days. Apple problems come as a result of cultivation, in backyards and orchards where pests breed up year after year, or where woolly aphids are attracted to the scent of sap when the trees are pruned. Commercial growers need to produce apples of a certain size (too big can be almost as bad as too small), with no blemishes, shiny and bright red or green.
Our apples crop decade after decade with no spraying or pruning, except for the Lady Williams outside the bathroom that has to be hacked back every few years so the apples don't clog up the gutters. My only big intervention was growing flowering umbellifera near them (parsnips mostly) to attract the predators to eat the pests and to introduce geese to eat the fallen fruit to help control codlin moth and fruit fly. The geese are now gone but the wallabies and possums get very fat in apple season. The possums have even learnt that it is easier to eat an apple fallen from the tree than to pick one (or, worse, take a single bite out of several up in the branches).
Every house needs an apple tree, though if your neighbours don't agree you may need two compatible varieties for pollination. Every school needs at least one apple tree for every four students. Grow them as a hedge; tie commercial protective calico bags over the fruit to keep out pests, birds and possums, or make cut up old pantyhose to into sections, slip them over and tie. Even white cockatoos don't like to chew through pantyhose. A small mob of cockies woke me up this morning shrieking when they discovered that ''their'' Prince Alfred apples had been sabotaged. They are not amused. Our resident rosellas and king parrots, on the other hand, prefer to eat small sour crab apples - they are perched in the crab tree outside my window, munching on crabs too small even to be using for jelly, ignoring the big yellow and red striped Wandin Glory two metres away.
Once an apple tree is established - two to three years of feeding, watering and mulching - it will survive droughts, neglect and frost, though not necessarily over-enthusiastic pruners. Grow them as hedges along a fence or instead of a fence; in pots on patios (look for the true dwarf varieties, not the semi-dwarf ones often sold as such); and very definitely in every school, but only late varieties like Lady Williams or Yates or Democrats, which will crop when the kids are at school and can eat them, rather than ripening in the school holidays where they'll rot on the ground.
A good apple tree will bear for more than a hundred years, a wonderful legacy to leave for the future.
Meanwhile, we are eating apples, both straight from the tree and peeled and sliced with the device that Virginia just gave me: turn the handle and the apple falls off in exquisitely neat sections and, no, I don't know where she bought it except the vague hint that, ''I'm going to Pialligo and I'll get you an apple peeler while I'm there.''
I'm stewing apples, for winter's crumbles on days when I need to feed guests but am also pushing a deadline: it takes 74 seconds to mix up a crumble, bung it on top of a defrosted carton of stewed apple and leave it to bake while we eat the main course. An apple cake is almost as fast.
I'm giving bags of apples away and almost regret that the white cockatoos have flown, though I don't really want them to feel too welcome. I've also been watching kids' faces - and adults' faces too - as they pick their first apple, bite into it and realise that there is no such thing as a decent supermarket apple. Cold storage destroys flavour, leaving only sweetness. If you want to understand humanity's devotion to apples for the last few thousand years, you need to pick your own.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Date February 24, 2013
Without cultivation in the equation, roadside fruit is often the best to be found, Jackie French writes.
Apple trees.
Hands up: has anyone ever found an apple tree along the side of the road that failed to bear apples? Has anyone ever picked roadside apples and found they were full of fruit fly or codlin moth?
As dedicated feral apple sampler, I can duly swear I have never come across a bad wild apple.
Apples originated in central and western Asia and possibly travelled to the rest of the continent via horse droppings along ancient trade routes. Horse eats apples and apples germinate in horse droppings; pretty much the same way that kid eats apple in car, throws core out the window and apple trees grow on the side of the road these days. Apple problems come as a result of cultivation, in backyards and orchards where pests breed up year after year, or where woolly aphids are attracted to the scent of sap when the trees are pruned. Commercial growers need to produce apples of a certain size (too big can be almost as bad as too small), with no blemishes, shiny and bright red or green.
Our apples crop decade after decade with no spraying or pruning, except for the Lady Williams outside the bathroom that has to be hacked back every few years so the apples don't clog up the gutters. My only big intervention was growing flowering umbellifera near them (parsnips mostly) to attract the predators to eat the pests and to introduce geese to eat the fallen fruit to help control codlin moth and fruit fly. The geese are now gone but the wallabies and possums get very fat in apple season. The possums have even learnt that it is easier to eat an apple fallen from the tree than to pick one (or, worse, take a single bite out of several up in the branches).
Every house needs an apple tree, though if your neighbours don't agree you may need two compatible varieties for pollination. Every school needs at least one apple tree for every four students. Grow them as a hedge; tie commercial protective calico bags over the fruit to keep out pests, birds and possums, or make cut up old pantyhose to into sections, slip them over and tie. Even white cockatoos don't like to chew through pantyhose. A small mob of cockies woke me up this morning shrieking when they discovered that ''their'' Prince Alfred apples had been sabotaged. They are not amused. Our resident rosellas and king parrots, on the other hand, prefer to eat small sour crab apples - they are perched in the crab tree outside my window, munching on crabs too small even to be using for jelly, ignoring the big yellow and red striped Wandin Glory two metres away.
Once an apple tree is established - two to three years of feeding, watering and mulching - it will survive droughts, neglect and frost, though not necessarily over-enthusiastic pruners. Grow them as hedges along a fence or instead of a fence; in pots on patios (look for the true dwarf varieties, not the semi-dwarf ones often sold as such); and very definitely in every school, but only late varieties like Lady Williams or Yates or Democrats, which will crop when the kids are at school and can eat them, rather than ripening in the school holidays where they'll rot on the ground.
A good apple tree will bear for more than a hundred years, a wonderful legacy to leave for the future.
Meanwhile, we are eating apples, both straight from the tree and peeled and sliced with the device that Virginia just gave me: turn the handle and the apple falls off in exquisitely neat sections and, no, I don't know where she bought it except the vague hint that, ''I'm going to Pialligo and I'll get you an apple peeler while I'm there.''
I'm stewing apples, for winter's crumbles on days when I need to feed guests but am also pushing a deadline: it takes 74 seconds to mix up a crumble, bung it on top of a defrosted carton of stewed apple and leave it to bake while we eat the main course. An apple cake is almost as fast.
I'm giving bags of apples away and almost regret that the white cockatoos have flown, though I don't really want them to feel too welcome. I've also been watching kids' faces - and adults' faces too - as they pick their first apple, bite into it and realise that there is no such thing as a decent supermarket apple. Cold storage destroys flavour, leaving only sweetness. If you want to understand humanity's devotion to apples for the last few thousand years, you need to pick your own.