Do we still grow British apples.

I have been buying British apples from Tesco. No problem.

BTW you can slightly stew dessert apples if they are too hard for you.

Discovery soon be ripe.

Prefer to buy British & in season when possible. I bought a pack of 8 grown in Kent (I)mperfectly Tasty Gala apples in Sainsburys yesterday. I like them because they are not too large which suits me better than the very big imported ones.

We have got too acustomed to being able to buy every food staple all year round.

In recent years, I have been trying to return to seasonality in what we eat. We only buy locally grown asparagus. for example, and this year had to accept that the weather meant there was little and the quality was poor.

Yes, there is 'perfect' asparagus in the supermarket, flown in from Chile or somewhere similar and pulled up to a week before it makes it to the supermarket shelf, but nothing compares with the local crop, pulled the morning I buy it and eaten the same day,

Is it an option for you to shop at businesses that specifically source locally, such as farmer's markets or similar?

Well, yes, of course we do. Just look at the number of cider farms we have ?

We have enough apples on our apple trees to keep the country going for several years.

There are plenty of apple growers/grown in Kent, but the season starts about now with Discovery. It’s hard to keep apples in prime condition over the lean months of spring, hence the ones from the Southern Hemisphere.
This year, with the erratic weather, there will probably be a shortage due to bad pollination.

I have reluctantly had to buy apples from NZ and Chile recently but always look for British ones.It would be wonderful if there was a way of storing them and prolonging their season of availability.
And unfortunately my love of bids and feeding them and the excitement of seeing a bullfinch visit our garden has been tempered by the fact it looks like we wont be getting any on our own tree this year!

Wish we could get them. Most of ours are from Tasmania and very nice but there was something special about the Cox’s.

nanna8

Can you still get Cox’s Orange Pippins ? They were such a lovely little apple and I still think of them.

Yes you can.

We had some Court Pendu Plat at our "old" house that kept well (obviouslynot as long as in these modern chiller units). Really fabulous apples though from the 1600s - they grew increasingly mellow as they aged.
Wish we had room here for apple trees.

I do not think apples are flown in from other countries. I think they come by sea in atmosphere controlles conditions.

In the past I have had trees in my garden cropping from late July, but the earlier the apple the poorer the keeper so they hve to be eaten or peeled and frozen quite quickly. The good keepers are the later apples.

Can you still get Cox’s Orange Pippins ? They were such a lovely little apple and I still think of them.

I usually get my main shop from Sainsburys online. They always have British apples on offer. I’ve no idea what variety they are but I wouldn’t buy anything else. I know exotic fruit has to be transported, but not apples!

Ok. So just found this article:
theenglishappleman.com/journal_2019-05-24-Home-Grown-Royal-Gala-season-extended-into-August.asp

Apparently we can now have some apples "fresh" in summer as we can store them for nearly a year!

I stand corrected!

Braeburns come to mind, Notspaghetti. I’d have to visit a shop to look at the other names!

I think Gala may be in stock soon. I think they are maybe earlier?
Unfortunately we find those a bit dull.
Oh and Bramleys should still be about.

Which varieties are you finding now SueDomin?

Our apple trees ( garden) won’t be ready until late August.
Actually I would like some softer apples...my teeth aren’t up to the rock hard ones in the shops.

The apples on my tree won't be ready for a few more months, I'm excited to try them!

There are plenty of British apples in my stores. I’m in the NE of Scotland and apples manage to make their way up here from Worcestershire and Kent etc.

Liz Truss was very excited about the possibility of selling British apples to India - anyone else think that’s mad?

British Apples are in season September to about April.

Do you remember the soft apples of our youth when they had been stored too long?