Apple bonanza

This is a ‘mast’ year - one in which trees and shrubs have an abundance of fruits and seeds.

How nature synchronises these things isn’t properly understood. Perhaps it is connected with late frosts or cosmic events.. All I know is that in spite of the drought our apples are cropping abundantly. Our Brown Turkey fig gave us our best ever crop. Even our quince is laden. And our garden jays are noisily collecting up the mountains of acorns and burying them for future use.

But it is apples I’m interested in today. Not only do they taste great but they do us good too. In his ‘Just one thing’ BBC radio series episode ‘An apple a day’, Doctor Michael Mosley reports on research showing that flavonoids and fibre in

apples (and especially their skins) can reduce our blood pressure and increase blood vessel health.

They also have many other benefits including improving brain health and reducing the risk of dementia. 

We’re especially keen to make the most of our seasonal abundance.

On a favoured day in the biodynamic calendar we began harvesting and storing ripe fruit. Our Lanes Prince Albert apple tree had started to drop so we collected the crop. This variety is a Victorian cooking apple and there were some large fruits as I can testify. My harvesting basket-on-a-pole contraption would dislodge more ripened apples onto the ground below than I collected. One beauty caught me on the back of the head as I reached down to collect fallen fruits. Another evaded my ineffectual bobbing and weaving up the ladder to sock me on the jaw. 

Windfalls won’t store so will be used first with the surplus piled into the wheelbarrow at our gate for passers by to enjoy.

The unblemished fruits are stored between sheets of newspaper in large plastic trays.

In 2021 our apple crop stored until March, so, fingers crossed for 2023.

This abundance of fruit is vital to wildlife. Butterflies such as commas feast on the rotting autumn fruit before going into their insect hibernation - their ‘diapause’. Over-wintering migrant birds such as fieldfares come down in noisy ‘chack-chacking’ groups to join blackbirds and robins to fill up on apples in winter. Wonderful to see and hear.

We’ve been unsuccessful so far in getting mistletoe to parasitise our apple trees. More work needed.

And the dead and decaying apple wood is vital for many invertebrates and fungi.

Apples are great for us and great for wildlife. And available as tiny patio forms or ones that Sir Isaac Newton would be proud of.

And we have thousands of wonderful apple varieties here in the UK. If our national food policy was properly joined-up we’d have no need of imported apples.

Until our country sees sense, remember that there’s an apple tree for any balcony or garden. 

Help yourself to a crunch and help wildlife. 

Plant one.