The James Grieve apple was bred in Edinburgh in the 1890s. Our little apple tree has Scottish pedigree! It is a dessert or eating apple, but is also good cooked if picked early. They are also easy to bruise, and get soft if stored. We did notice this with the apples we picked and saved for taking to Apple Day.
We hear that they make the best apple cider ever, and that they are also reliable producers. That's great news! Now we just need to convince the tree to make a few more...
Our James Grieves ripened and started falling off about a month ago, around mid-to-late-September, and now they're all gone. We were eating the windfalls and then realised that these were actually quite tasty. The ones we went to pick, around early October, fell off into our hands. They fit the description on this apple identification website perfectly.
This first picture was taken in early September before they were quite ripe.
This next picture was taken at the end of September, when these apples were probably at their best.
The fruit are good sized, and beautiful, with streaked red and gold skin. They don't seem to have too many problems with scab or disease. We are really excited about our James Grieve. These are really tasty apples that you can't buy in any supermarket. We want to take good care of this tree, prune it appropriately and give it some good mulch to make it even happier.
Apple trees need particular pruning to keep them producing well. This is something to work on over the winter! As you can see, the tree as it is now is quite spindly. Hopefully we can help it become stronger and more productive with a bit of care.
Oooh, thank you so much for linking to that website! I've been trying to identify my apples and this will be a great help.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! Let me know what kinds of apples you have! We are working on identifying our others.
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