We enjoyed our first apples in late August, and we’ve recently been harvesting our late apple varieties .
There are three varieties – Annie Elizabeth*, Pixie and Katja. We (my children, husband and I), did a taste comparison of each. All four of us voted the Annie Elizabeth as our favourite. It being the sweetest of the three; our vote may just indicate we all have a sweet tooth! In fact, the Pixie apples were very similar in flavour but were very firm. So we’ve put these into store. The Pixie is also a smaller apple. An ideal size of a children’s lunchbox.
The Katja apples have a good sweet flavour too. The flesh shows some pink flushes, and is softer than either the Annie Elizabeth or Pixie.
In terms of cropping, both the Katja and Pixie have given a reasonable crop for the size of tree. In fact, it is the best crop we have had from the Pixie. The Annie Elizabeth however had a much heavier crop last year, compared to this year. So we will savoured the few apples we did have and hope that next year it will return to it’s bounty of the 2016 season.
It always pays to grow a couple of varieties of fruit tree, as we have certainly found they all have good, and bad years.
*Interestingly Annie Elizabeth is listed as a cooking apple on many websites. The Victorian Nursery website (UK) does say it is so sweet it doesn’t require sugar. So I am not sure we have it properly labeled. I double checked in my garden notebook and it is definitely listed as Annie Elizabeth and was planted in 2006, but it could be the original label was incorrect.

Apple tree – Annie Elizabeth in 2016
They look delicious! I have 3 apple trees, must look up their names.
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Hope you had a good crop this year.
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What fine looking apples! I’m envious of your growing your own. Pests and disease killed every single one of ours, mainly fireblight spread by sapsuckers.
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Fireblight is not something we have, thankfulky. But did have scab on one tree and on pears.
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Lovely to read about your family doing a taste test 😊. We recently did a taste test to find our next apple tree.
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Would love to know what you chose?
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Margil – it has depth and sweetness 😊
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Not a variety I know, but I look it up:)
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I should imagine it is fairly obscure.
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I’ve never heard of those varieties. Thanks for telling us about them, and for the gorgeous photo at the bottom!
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Prompted by your comment i just checked to see how many apple cultivars there are – it’s an estimated 7500! I knew there would be a lot but that number surprised me!
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Me too!
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I see cider!! That’s all I see!!
My second, simple brew is being magiced in the press… free apples from a friend! Fun!! 😉
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Let us know how it tastes.
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I’ve had a taste or two of the first batch! I’ll live!! Used a bit to do a lamb roast. NICE! 😉
A week later… there’s a zing to it… however, not much kick yet! So, I’ll leave leave the batch longer to see if the clout grows! 🙂
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