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Archive for August, 2013

We’re picking apples!

Friday, August 23rd, 2013

Today, in the lovely high-summer sunshine, we picked Discovery – the first dessert apple to be harvested in the UK season.

Discovery is a long-established variety, and in the absence of any realistic challenger to it’s early ripening qualities, looks set to be the curtain raiser to the domestic apple season for some time to come.

It’s always a treat to taste the first apples of the year. Of course, you can buy perfectly decent southern hemisphere fruit in the supermarkets, but nothing even comes close to the wonderful texture and flavour of a freshly-picked Kentish apple on an August afternoon!

All this joy has it’s price, though. Discovery is a soft apple, hopelessly susceptible to wasps who can’t get enough of it’s creamy flesh. Swarms of the little horrors strafe us as we take away their breakfast, lunch and tea, and the local chemist can be seen running for the airport on the proceeds of today’s Anthisan sales.

Wasps notwithstanding, after just one day all is now safely gathered in, and we look forward to the arrival of the Worcesters and Early Windsors in a week or so’s time.

The apples in the picture will be taken away in their bulk bins for onward packing and distribution to the supermarkets, so look out for them (or, more realistically, others like them) on your next shopping trip!

 

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Summer in the Weald…

Friday, August 9th, 2013

…is three fine days and a thunderstorm (to paraphrase Charles II), although this time it’s been three fine weeks and a thunderstorm, which provided the latter doesn’t feature hailstones is altogether good news for our fruit.

Here’s Chris dodging the showers to do some summer pruning Cox in the Church orchard at Egerton. He’s cutting out this year’s woody growth to allow more light to reach the fruit and add colour to the skin and sugar to the flesh. It also has the added benefit of making winter pruning easier, but you have to be careful not to chop off bits which might carry next year’s fruit!

After a slow start due to the cold, gloom and hideously low soil temperatures, the recent heatwave and a bit of actual summer has energised the trees; the fruits are growing beautifully and whilst this doesn’t equate to anything approaching a bumper crop, what’s hanging on the trees is in rude health.

Persistent heat isn’t ideal for fruit trees – they go into shut-down mode during high temperatures, which obviously stops fruit growth. However, you still get activity either side of the temperature spike, so whilst it undeniably slows down growth in an already late year, it’s not completely disastrous.

Those growers across the region that benefited from the downpours are delighted – the Cox are motoring and the Bramley look great – and whilst things are undoubtedly positive, we’re still behind in the calendar, and looking at a start date of a week to ten days from now for picking Bramley and Discovery, with Early Windsor and Worcester not far behind.

We’re picking Opal plums in west Kent now for supermarkets, and the cherries are all but finished after what is widely thought to have been a successful, if late season.

 

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