Rick Eggleston wrote:
Cat,

I have a habit of moving house just as my apple trees get reasonably mature,
so I've been through this 3 times now. In my current garden, 800ft up in the
Scottish Borders I have 7 apple trees. You need to decide some priorities.
Cox for example is more susceptible to disease than many (more modern?)
varieties, and it is difficult to get good quality fruit. Most of us choose
to grow fruit at home to get something different to what we can buy, either
in terms of variety, quality, or freedom from chemicals. Why for example
would you want to grow chemically treated cox at home, when you can get good
quality chemical treated cox in the supermarket. I've rarely seen good
quality home grown cox. So to me, its all about balancing disease
resitance, hardiness (despite milder winters we seem to be getting late
frosts) and flavour. I don't use chemicals as I get enough of those in the 9
months during which I buy my apples! Another point is whether you want to
eat straight from the tree, or put some into storage - some apples
deteriorate quickly in storage, others can actually improve.

With that in mind, James Grieve is a popular choice, having similar flavour
to cox, but much more reliable, but fruit does not store well. Another
"cox" type is Suntan, again reliable, stores well, but needs two pollinators
(do any of your neighbours grow apples?) Greensleeves (a James Grieve
Golden Delicious cross) is very reliable and is self fertile. Lord Lambourne
(James Grieve x Worcester) is another reliable variety which is reliable
with pleasant flavour. Egremont Russet is another favourite, with its nutty
flavour which people seem to love or hate, but again there are a lot in the
shops in November.

Finally, an interesting new variety is Hertfordshire Russet. This again has
a cox type flavour and produces masses of flawless peach coloured apples
maturing to golden brown, to me the most attractive apples while on the
tree. The only fault appears to be that the tree is so prolific, that if
you want large rather than medium sized fruit, you need to thin them in mid
season.. Despite being a new one, this would be my recommendation for one
of your two trees, as quality appears to be assured, and they're beautiful
at the same time.

--
Best Regards,

Thank you for all of that, Rick. My priority are similar to yours -
good home grown fruit without chemicals that I cannot find in the
shops. Keeping quality would be important - size of fruit is not, as I
munch my way through vast quantities of apples regardless of size most
days.
I take note of Hertfordshire Russet, and will ignore Cox Pippin :-)
That said, it seems you lot fare better than we do in the varieties
available in the shops! What you can find here (Ireland) seems limited
to golden delicious, royal gala, braeburn - which I like - pink lady or
cripps pink - which I also like -, and the goddawful granny smith
(cringe). The odd time you find cox pippin, but that is rare.

Cat(h)