Apples: good year, bad year

First the bad bit. With the extreme heat and lack of rain this year, the apple trees have produced very little fruit and most of those have critters living in them. Completely different from last year’s bounty. I predict I’ll be out of apples by midwinter (last year was so good that I still had apples in store in May, though by then they’d reached end of storage life).

Now the good bit. Two of the pippins that I grew from seed have produced their first fruit and are eatable! As in, actually nice to eat, not “could eat them in an emergency”. These trees are in pots and have perhaps benefited from being on the north side of the house (slightly less full sun) and fairly regular watering.

Both pippins were grown from seeds taken from apples that were given to me late in 2025 and were described as “Cox-like”. They came from the orchard at Kittyfield farm near Galashiels. The two trees look fairly similar in growth / leaf type but the apples are quite different.

Tree A: four apples. One fell off, one I picked today. Both these were quite blemished but I cut off the good bits and they were tasty, reasonably sweet, definitely nice to eat. Two larger apples (maybe 6cm long?) remain on the tree. They are slightly elongated in shape.

Tree A: germinated seed in 2021 from an apple grown in 2002 at Kittyfield farm near Galashiels and described as “Cox-like”. The apples are hiding round the back but there are three good ‘uns!
Tree A: three apples still on the tree. The bottom one is smaller and blemished, that’s the one I picked today.
Apple from tree A, suffering from what I think is “bitter pit”, a disorder due to stress and not a disease
Apple from Tree A. Quite a lot of blemishes but the eatable portions of apple were good.

Tree B: six apples. One fell off, the others have disintegrated on the tree, alas. I ate some of the fallen one, and again it was tasty. These were smaller apples, maybe 4cm for the biggest, and more flattened, similar in shape to a russet, but still bigger than a crab. They are not unlike the Wyken Pippin apples in appearance, and that produced really tiny apples its first year or two, so I hope this tree will grow larger / better apples in the future.

Tree B: same origin (Cox-like from Kittyfield) but the apples have gone bad on the tree, alas.
Tree B: fallen apples

Both are worth planting out if we can find a space!

Last year, two other trees produced their first fruits but they were small, sour crab apples. One has been planted in the hedge and the other should also be found a place out in the hedge.

Crab A (first fruited in 2025), grown from a Cripps Red (France) that germinated in May 2021. I think this was an apple that I bought and the seeds were germinating in the apple, so I planted them.
Last year this tree had several apples, this year only one. It’s a perfect miniature apple but very small and last year they were sour crabs, not worth eating raw.
The other tree that produced crab apples in 2025 and it was planted out early summer 2026 in the hedge. It’s put on a fair bit of growth and I hope it will carve itself out a space between the hazel, dogwood etc. We really ought to hack the surrounding hedge trees back while it gets established…
Pretty crab apples on the orchard tree. This grew from a Gala bought September 2020 at the Co-op in Kings Sutton, germinated in spring 2021

Five years into the Quest for the Pippin of St Rumwold, and I have:

  • 82 (approx) mystery pippins in pots, various sizes and conditions
  • 2 crab apples
  • two eaters!

I count this as a win. My original guestimate was at least five years to get any results, and we have two valid candidates for the Pippin of St Rumwold. The plan is to plant out the two eaters and the remaining crab, which will free up a bit of space on the patio. I also need to weed and pot up most of the remainder, and hope that we’ll see some more fruiting next year.