rugbymatt

People... we have the new Pit Bull of the forum!

Relampago

It is a honor to be the pit bull of the forum. You will be the lapdog, no?

rugbymatt

Hell yeah, I'm the forum lapdog, blatantly.

Fred James

Can we get back on topic please.

So Matt, what are your recommended cooking apple varieties to bring to Spain?

rugbymatt

Nearly all the apples will grow in Spain mate, you have to remember that the apple is originally an asiatic tree, and if they grow in the heat of Australia they will happily thrive in Spain.
That said I would say for the OP they should go for types like the Howgate wonder, its not got that horrible acidity that the Bramley has, or the Peasgoods Nonsuch, an absolutely amazing cooking apple with one of the most amazing flavours.

I am fully aware that these are English names, but their genus are widely known all over the world and as I said in my gardening guides I used to do if you know the latin, Speaking Spanish is no longer an issue.

What pisses me off however Fred is that as a professional I offer my advice for nothing, so to have people aggressively demand to be told something is a little galling to say the least, maybe its just a lack of education or something eh?

Fred James

I can see what you mean Matt but I couldn't possibly comment.

Thanks for the advice - it seems that there are so few interesting varieties available in the supermarkets - but then that applies to more than just apples!

As I said before, I am not convinced of the need for "cooking" apples unless you want a mushy filling or a sauce - or perhaps for that almost forgotten culinary delight - a baked apple.

Personally the best flavoured apple I have found in Spanish supermarkets is the New Zealand Jazz - as crisp as a Braeburn but with even more flavour.

rugbymatt

For a commercial apple you would go a long way to find anything as nice as the Pink Lady, its as reliable as hell to grow and is a heavy producer in almost any condition and I know for a fact they are sold in Spain.


On another note if there was one piece of advice I could give it would be this, there is little or no point in growing huge fruit trees, the M27 and M9 rootstock, they grow only to the height of the average man and will produce as much, if not more fruit as a full size tree and they are easy to manage, train, keep and more importantly harvest.

stuart from barnsley

Granny Smith is fine to cook with also Cox, indeed just about any apple that isn't totally red in my opinon.Pink Lady is also know as Pink Kiss this is to get around paying a fee for using the name and another similar variety is Cripps Pink.

Fred James

Yes, I have bought them in Spain. Very nice but, IMHO not quite as good as Braeburn/Jazz from NZ.

The NZ apples are not always available so if Pink Lady is local I must try it again.

We have quite a few fruit trees but apples are not one I have considered as I believe they need some good cold (near freezing) days in the winter for best results - which, luckily we don't get!

The most successful (and possibly unusual) tree we have is a black Mulberry which after only 5 years as a €10 sapling, is now 4m high and wide and now produces 20kg of fruit.

bigglesworth

WOW! Thanks for that Fred, that one definitely goes on the list. In the local market here though, when we were out in April, there was a stall selling fruit trees and bushes - including black red and white currants. So I was planning on trying just about everything but had not thought of a mulberry.

And up here we get blackberries in the hedgerows. Do they grow elsewhere in Spain. (I would open your gardening hints RugbyMatt for that one,but have too low a connection to open files up without losing the connection).

My favourite cooker by the way is a Reverend Wilks which starts as a cooker, but if you leave it, the sugar level rises and it turns into a very nice (but very large) eater. I think he was the chap who established either Kew Gardens or the Chelsea flower show for a bit of trivia.

ForHotspot

What is mulberry? Are they like raspberry or blackberry? Can you get blackcurrant plants in Southern Spain (Rojales, Alicante)?
Thanks.

bigglesworth

Mulberries are sweeter and juicier - they really are a great berry, and the trees (which can grow enormous) produce a LOT of fruit. Don't know about currants in the South, I am afraid, but RugbyMatt is the one to ask I think

rugbymatt

They are an amazing tree, absolutely beautiful in the way they grow and the Mulberry is one of the most important, if not THE most important tree in history, without which its fair to say, Marco Polo would never have been able to move East, we would never have had many of the things he brought back including Spaghetti, changing the face of Italy, and China, India and the East would never have had the wealth they did, meaning the ages of enlightenment would never have happened, and who knows where that would have left us!
All because of the humble Bombyx mori


Currents should happily grow in Spain, they grow in the North for sure and are found in many spirits and foods up North. There are a few little tricks you may have to try but generally they will do fine.

Fred James

Yes, they are a bit like a sweet blackberry. The problem is that they produce the whole crop over about 2 weeks so you either have to eat them fast or make lots of jam/sorbets/ice cream etc.

They make superb jam (recipe requests on a postcard) as the fruit does not break down like other soft fruit.

Don't ever plant one near a terrace as the fruit is terrible for staining.

Soft fruit generally is not easy in areas of high temperatures in Spain. We have a Tayberry which looks OK (bought this year) but the Blackberry bought at the same time is totally frizzled up.

Apart from Strawberries which are cheap and plentiful, most other soft fruit seems very expensive which suggests it is not so easy to grow commercially.

As Rugbymatt says, we owe the Mulberry to the silk trade (Bombyx mori is the silkworm) but it actually feeds mainly on the white Mulberry not the black Morus Negra - which is presumably why silk is not bright purple!

stuart from barnsley

Bit more info on the Jazz apple---it is a cross between a Braeburn and Royal Gala,with a long shelf life (important for supermarkets). At the moment it is only New Zealand that has the licence to grow Jazz.