Quince - Sobu

This is my second half-standard quince tree, Turkish variety Sobu. The reason I added another quince variety despite having a large, productive tree of Vranja is that I hoped it would be of a higher quality, for cooking and exhibition. Certainly for the latter, the fruits are large, smooth skinned and a regular shape. The only problem is that they don't ripen on the tree, but stay green until they drop. I think in future I will need to pick in early September and bring inside to ripen/yellow in time for Autumn shows. The other slightly annoying thing is the amount of 'bloom', impossible to pick without damaging. However, it does 'polish' off very easily.

One of the probles with some quinces is that they remain very woody next to the core, which can be quite a large proportion of the fruit, so the best quality ones have a small core relative to flesh which makes preparing them before cooking much easier.

I cut one open, and it was quite easy. The core is small in relation to the flesh area. However, this one had bruised internally without showing any sign externally.

The tree has only been in about 3-4 year, so cropping is very light, half a dozen fruits of varying sizes.