New apple season begins

Hi everyone

just created this blog to keep up to date with all our customers. I hope to add to it with frequent, short entries through the apple season. For further details about us please check the Fruitwise website at http://fruitwise.net/, for some irritating reason I haven't been able to update this web site recently, this blog is more suitable for a running diary. Please note that the blog I mention on the Fruitwise site that I had stopped wasn't this one, this has just started and I hope will run. I will shortly put up our market dates for the rest of the season.

Comment is free for now, please keep it fruit related and polite. I'll see how it settles down, I don't mind differences of opinion but for my own sake as well as the gentle and decent people who buy our apples, I won't host abuse. I will try to answer specific questions about Fruitwise Heritage Apples, details of markets etc, but any enquiries about growing apples etc would be best directed to the website or alternatively take a look at my youtube videos, search youtube under fruitwise. I have addressed a lot of apple FAQs there especially pruning and grafting, and I am posting a series of videos about individual apple varieties.

We are just back from our first Winchester farmer's market of the 2009 season, a nice sunny day and lots of old friends who were glad to see us. We sold out of Greengage and Victoria plums all too quickly, a light crop this year. We also had damsons and some hazelnuts picked from the hedgerows in the orchard, plus a few rare apples, Irish Peach and Baker's Delicious. All gone for this year, we only have a couple of trees of each. Our main apple today, and for the next 2 weeks, is Laxton's Epicure. We also had a few Reverend Wilkes, an old cooker, and James Grieve, a dual purpose apple which eats well when tree ripened later in the season, but which is excellent right now for cooking, and with so many blackberries on the hedgerows, very good for this purpose. Bramleys will not be ripe until late September.

all the best, Stephen and Julia