Sacha says...
On 30/4/08 08:59, in article ,
"David in Normandy" wrote:

snip

It looks like I will have to wait and
see if my young Bramley apple bears any fruits. It has
flowers now and there is one apple tree nearby also in
flower. The neighbours also have apple trees, so I'm
keeping fingers crossed.

Normandy being cider and Calvados country, I imagine there must still be
plenty of orchards, old or new or dilapidated around? Are there many bee
keepers?


Yes, lots of cider apple trees. Not seen any hives though,
but they may be there. We have an old cider press in the
barn, or rather what is left of one. For those who still
have trees but no press someone comes around once a year
and collects the apples and takes them away to make cider.
I tried eating one once but they aren't very palatable.
--
David in Normandy.
To e-mail you must include the password FROG on the
subject line, or it will be automatically deleted
by a filter and not reach my inbox.

On 30/4/08 09:43, in article ,
"David in Normandy" wrote:

Sacha says...
On 30/4/08 08:59, in article ,
"David in Normandy" wrote:

snip

It looks like I will have to wait and
see if my young Bramley apple bears any fruits. It has
flowers now and there is one apple tree nearby also in
flower. The neighbours also have apple trees, so I'm
keeping fingers crossed.

Normandy being cider and Calvados country, I imagine there must still be
plenty of orchards, old or new or dilapidated around? Are there many bee
keepers?


Yes, lots of cider apple trees. Not seen any hives though,
but they may be there. We have an old cider press in the
barn, or rather what is left of one. For those who still
have trees but no press someone comes around once a year
and collects the apples and takes them away to make cider.
I tried eating one once but they aren't very palatable.

Ask them if they make black butter and if not, why not?!
10 gallons cider
700 lb sweet apples, peeled and cut
20 lb sugar
3 sticks liquorice, finely chopped
24 lemons, sliced
3 lb allspice

Method
Boil the cider until it turns to jelly. Add the apples, stirring all the
time to prevent sticking. Two hours after the last batch of apples has been
stirred in, add the sugar, liquorice and lemons. In the last ten minutes of
cooking add the spice. Store in jars.

We had an old apple press in a previous garden, one of those round granite
trough ones. It looked lovely on a little mound in the garden, converted
into a fountain, with water trickling over the crushing stone and into the
trough.


--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

A friend of mine in Herefordshire has a small cider/perry orchard and a press, just for personal use (production about 50 gallons). They also make some (unfermented) apple juice from the pressings. It is unbelievably, extraordinarily delicious, much better than the cider in our view. It has such concentration of flavour, nothing commercial I have ever had even comes close. Cider apples may taste horrid, but they have to have a lot of sugars to be able to ferment, and this results in a sweet intense juice. A lot of effort though, because the juice has to be pasteurised to stop it fermenting, and they claim that is a big job, and the juice wasn't as tasty when they tried an easier method of doing it.

K wrote:
echinosum writes
But Bramleys are not in that "most of the time" bit. Bramleys need
to
be cross-pollinated by TWO different apple trees. So you need at
least
two other different apple trees in flower in the vicinity at the
same
time to get your Bramley to fruit.

Are you absolutely sure of this? I've just gone back to 3 of my
references and they all agree that the second tree is to pollinate the
pollinator, that the Bramley only needs one to pollinate it. But my
knowledge of genetics is too rusty to argue one way or the other.

Correct. Only one pollen grain can actually do the fertilisation, it has
to come from exactly one other apple tree.

Some myths take some killing off.

[quote='Sacha[_3_];787672']On 30/4/08 08:59, in article ,
"David in Normandy" wrote:

snip

It looks like I will have to wait and
see if my young Bramley apple bears any fruits. It has
flowers now and there is one apple tree nearby also in
flower. The neighbours also have apple trees, so I'm
keeping fingers crossed.

Bramleys are triploid which means that they are a pain. They need a pollinator BUT they will not return the compliment.... For all your apple trees to carry fruit well therefore you need three. Have a look at Fruit Tree Pollination where there are a couple of really good cross pollination tables.

Best
H

Bramleys are tripoloid, and do require 2 other sources of pollen. Think of it this way, ( albeit rather simplified ). Say Bramley has 18 chromosomes, 9 pairs, so the female part needs a long enough chain of male parts to combine with. A single diploid tree wont be enough, too short a chain, so it needs to 'borrow' some from a third donor. On rare occasions a diploid chain will combine with a triploid one because the 'extra bits' on the longer one fall off, but the resulting seed, if viable, will be diploid and will not grow into new Bramley trees. This is why every true Bramley tree in the world is a vegative clone of the one original triploid murant.