Our own apple taste test
I rustled up another early Virginia
Beauty apple
along with the first ripe Liberty apple so that Mark and I could
taste test them together. The Liberty we tasted had a
simpler flavor than the Virginia Beauty, wasn't as dense, and was
sweeter, all of which led to me giving it a lower score and Mark
giving it a higher score than the Virginia Beauty. (We have
slightly different apple tastes.) For the record, here are
our variety ratings so far for our homegrown apples:
| Variety |
Mark |
Anna |
| Early
Transparent |
6 |
7 |
| Virginia Beauty |
7 |
9 |
| Liberty |
7.5 |
7 |
Yet to come in this year's spectacular
fruiting run is six Enterprise apples from our high-density
planting. I had fun lifting up leaves close to the
Enterprise fruits and seeing green spots where the fruit was
hidden from the sun, a bit like developing images on sun-sensitive
paper. Some people even stick paper shapes onto their apples to
create specially-colored fruits, but I let nature do the work for
me.
Even though all of the apples were accounted
for, there was one more fruiting surprise waiting for me.
Last year at this time, the first
Chicago Hardy fig was ripening up, but the fruits all looked
stiff and green on Monday, so I figured they were running
late. Then, out of the blue, a fig tripled in size
Wednesday, and by Saturday there were three ready to eat!
The fruits are huge and numerous this year --- maybe we'll be able
to eat our fill for the first time?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I was wondering if there is something you do to your fruit trees each year to help them grow. I have just started doing that espalier thing for my trees. It is their first year, I put in aged horse manure and mulch around each tree. But i was wondering what type of annual chores your do for your trees. Thanks for reading, JOHN
Isn't this time of year just the best? Fall berries, apples, cider, halloween, cool mornings and nights, a warm fire...and my favorite: a big fall garden. Nothing is quite as pleasant as working in the garden in the fall! No bugs, no heat, just pure cathartic perfection!
I am very jealous of your fruit trees, as we have just planted ours this March. It has been a fantastic year for them too, with our apples growing from 3.5' tall when planted to over 9' tall now (they are semi dwarf, with a max height of 15' at maturity). I can already taste the hard cider!
John --- Good question! The answer got so long it will be an upcoming post...
Robin --- The fruits really swell up as they ripen, so if they're not ripe yet, you might be surprised at how big they'll get. You might be interested in this post about how we protect our baby fig trees. As warm as you are, you might not have to protect them at all if you have a hardy variety, or you might get away with just protecting them for the first year or two while they get their feet under them.
Robert --- It is a wonderful time of year! I'll bet your trees will be producing before you know it, even though the wait feels like forever to the impatient like me.