New Variety

This is my new variety found in the field beyond the house growing near the railway track several years ago. The windfalls were pretty far gone, all very over-ripe but the appearance and taste seemed good, so I popped back a couple of months later and took a scion. Only a months later, the tree was destroyed as part of the A34 bridge replacement. It's taken several years for the grafted scion to produce fruit.

So far so good. The crop is heavy, a good size without too much thinning. The fruit extremely healthy and has attractive even pink flush all over, which should turn bright crimson later. It will be quite a late one, ready late Oct-Nov but not a long keeper if my memory serves me right. It will fill the gap between the mid-season varieties and the those that ripen in the New year. Fingers crossed it tastes as good as I remember!

I regularly look for self-sown apples along side roads and tracks. Most are healthy and vigorous and edible to some degree but usually have some flaw that lets them down (tough skin, lack of sweetness, lack of size etc), this is the first I've thought worth grafting to evaluate further.