Taste the Difference
The visual
appearance of many of the apples, especially the dessert varieties.
Pock-marks, lumps, bumps, brown spots, warts; not what you would see on a
supermarket shelf! The flesh of all these apples
though was spotless, and the taste divine (poetic licence!). The
Worcester Permain and the majority of the Egremont Russet managed to
avoid these blemishes. So to did the vast majority of the culinary
varieties, many of which have been our star turns this year. “In no
particular order” I would like to mention Arthur Turner, Lord Derby,
Bramley’s Seedling, Carlisle Codlin, Keswick Spotless fleshwas produced on most apples Codlin
and last, but not least, Yorkshire Aromatic (YA) – the aficionados
favourite. Selfishly one of the three YA trees decided to have a “rest”
this year, resulting in fewer apples than last
year.
Despite my fears at the end of last year we were not overwhelmed with the harvest. Apparently the cold spring resulted in only moderate pollination due to reduced insect movement. This

resulted
in the Gorse Hill orchard only producing about the same amount of fruit
as last year despite the fact we had twice as many trees fruiting as in
2009. There were also a couple of other varieties, besides the YA, that
took a “rest” – we must have worked them too hard last year!
What are the chances of this happening?
Dennis Walton