Your favourite Apple?

So I'm really suddenly enjoying eating apples at the moment and am trying to try as many varieties as I can before deciding which ones to grow for myself.

So I was wondering what variety of apple are other members favourites, particularly English ones.

My current favourite apple is the Pink lady followed by the Braeburn. But I know that you can't really grow pink ladies in this country so am trying to find an equivalent that is happy in our climate.

 

Agree, and they also produce delicious juice when pressed. But I'll eat Braeburns until they come into season.

Yes, me too and I also grew up with my parents' unrepeatable comments about how awful French 'Golden Delicious' were.

 

The one I have in the garden "Sunset" plus side it makes great juices as well

 

I've got one of those and it produces our favourite pressed juice, but not such a good storer as Cox's.

Juicing (pressing) apples eliminates all those wasted excess apples/windfalls all too often seen left rotting. Small quantities of juice can be frozen, but pasteurising the juice in bottles enables whole bumper crops to be saved. The apple juice can then be used to make apple jellies/cider/wine and if bottled can then be saved until the following year to be infused with flower flavourings (honeysuckle/elderflower/rose/etc.) to make fragrant apple jellies.

 

Gala

Val

 

do you like Bingo Val

 

Another one for Braeburn and also like Jonagold

 

Ashmead's Kernel. There's a farm shop near here where I buy mine, best apple I've ever tasted.

 

Ellison's Orange,from the Cox's Pippin family,has a mild aniseed flavour,delicious

 

'Worcester Pearmain' is a life long favourite for me but they are not easy to find these days, so I settle for 'Pink Lady' like yourself JJ.

 

Worth looking for Apple Open Day venues near you - they provide loads of apples for tasting, which will help you decide what varieties would suit you Taste is a personal thing, so my favourite might not suit you Local soil / conditions come into play, so your local Apple Open Day Nursery will also help in that regard.

Then consider pollination grouping - ignore anything that says it is self pollinating, they all perform better (and some would say taste better) with a pollination partner (different variety, flowering at the same time). Self Pollinators often produce lots of pollen (which is why they manage to self pollinate somewhat - the other factor is how little fruit they June-drop) so the self pollinators, with lots of pollen, do make good pollination partners.

And then consider whether they are tip bearing, or not, if you want to train them such as Espallier.

If you are going to have a tree, rather than Espallier, you could consider a Family Tree - multiple varieties grafted onto a single tree. You can buy scion wood (in spring) so you could graft on additional varieties yourself if you want

lastly give consideration to the rootstock for the size of tree you want (or for Espallier if that is what you want)

 

On BBC's A to Z of gardening a grower actually grafted 250+ varieties on one tree



1.22mins to 11.16 mins

 

A russet eaten with cheese is my favourite.
Quite a good tree for us northerners too. Steady reliable cropper, never had an overwhelming harvest from it, but enough to keep us going over winter.

 

I'm surprised no one else has said Gala,

Val