Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

Virgil was born in the year 70 B.C., and died, age 51, in 19 B.C., so that over nineteen centuries have elapsed since these words were written; as he was an excellent farmer, he would not have mentioned the practice unless he considered the advice sound. It is quite possible that the vertical cracking of the bark on one side of a young transplanted tree may be due to a change from the cool north aspect to the heat of the south. At any rate the experiment is well worth trying, and nurserymen would not find it much trouble to run a chalk line down the south side of each tree, when lifting them, as a guide for the purchaser.

As showing how conservative is the popular demand for apples, Cox's Orange Pippin, which is absolutely unapproached for flavour, and is perfectly sound and eatable from early in November till Easter if carefully picked at the right moment and properly stored, was cultivated thirty or forty years before the British public discovered its extraordinary qualities! I find it described as one of the best dessert apples in Dr. Hogg's Fruit Manual, and my copy is the third edition published in 1866, so it must have been well known to him some years previously, though we never heard much about it until after the twentieth century came in. Though the colour, when well grown, is highly attractive to the connoisseur, the ordinary buyer did not readily take to it as it is rather small. In 1917 Cox's Orange Pippin, however, really came into its own; I myself, here in the New Forest, grew over 3,000 pounds on about 120 trees planted in 1906, each branch pruned as a cordon, and very thinly dispersed, and the trees restricted to a height of about 14 feet. The apples were mostly sold in Covent Garden at 6d. a pound, clear of railway carriage and salesmen's commission. In 1918, a year of great scarcity, these apples were selling in the London shops up to 3s. 6d. apiece! Now that its reputation is fully established, it is likely to be many years before it becomes relatively low in price, as the foreign apples of this kind cannot compare in flavour with those grown in our own orchards. I appreciate the man whose attention was wholly given to some particularly dainty dish, and, being bored at the table by a persistent talker, gently said, "Hush! and let me listen to the flavour."

As an early market apple there is none more popular than the Worcester Pearmain, first grown in the early eighties by Messrs. R. Smith and Co., of Worcester, and said to be a cross between King of the Pippins and the old Quarrenden (nearly always called Quarantine). It is a most attractive fruit—brilliant in colour, medium size, with pleasant brisk flavour—and is an early and regular bearer. I recognized its possibilities as soon as I saw it, and getting all the grafts I could collect, and they were very scarce at the time, I had the branches of some of my old worthless trees cut off, and set my old grafter to convert them into Worcester Pearmains; they soon came into bearing and produced abundant and profitable crops.

This apple is not much use for keeping beyond a month or so, as it soon loses its crisp texture and distinctive flavour, and it is its earliness and colour that makes it so popular in its season. Its regularity as a bearer is due to its early maturity; it can be picked in August, which allows plenty of time, in favourable weather, for next year's fruit buds to develop before winter; whereas with the late sorts these buds have very little chance to mature while the current year's fruit is ripening, with the result that a blank season nearly always follows an abundant yield. The Worcester Pearmain is so highly decorative, with its large pale pink and white blossoms in spring and its glowing red fruit in autumn, that it would be worth growing for these qualities alone in the amateur's garden, and in any case it is an apple that nobody should be without.

An old apple, not sufficiently known, is the Rosemary Russet; it has the distinctive russet-bronze colouring, always indicative of flavour, with a rosy flush on the sunny side, and Dr. Hogg describes it further as, "flesh yellow, crisp, tender, very juicy, sugary and highly aromatic—a first-rate dessert apple, in use from December to February." In my opinion it comes next, though longo intervallo, to Cox's Orange Pippin, but it wants good land to make the best of it. It may with confidence be produced as a rarity across the walnuts and the wine to the connossieur in apples.

In Covent Garden Market King Pippins are known as "Kings"; Cox's Orange Pippins as "C.O.P.'s"; Cellinis as "Selinas"; Kerry pippins as "Careys"; Court pendu plat as "Corpendus"; and the pear, Joséphine de Malines as "Joseph on the palings"! The Wellington is sold as "Wellington," but in the markets of the large northern towns it is known as "Normanton Wonder."

In Worcestershire St. Swithin's Day, July 15, is called "apple-christening day," when a good rain often gives a great impetus to their growth, and a little later great quantities of small apples may be seen under the trees; this is Nature's method of limiting the crop to reasonable proportions, the weak ones falling off and the fittest surviving. The inexperienced grower may be somewhat alarmed by this apparent destruction of his prospects, but the older hand knows better, and my bailiff always said: "When I sees plenty of apples under the trees about midsummer, I knows there'll be plenty to pick towards Michaelmas."

The Blenheim Orange was the leading apple at Aldington; some kind person had, sixty or seventy years before my time, planted a number of trees which had thrived wonderfully on that rich land. The Blenheim is a nice dessert apple and a splendid "cooker"; the trees take many years to come into bearing, and then they make up for lost time. Nature is never in a hurry to produce her best results. As a market apple the Blenheim has a great reputation; if an Evesham fruit dealer was asked if he could do with any apples, his first question was always: "Be 'em Blemmins?"

"September blow soft till the fruit's in the loft," is the prayer of all apple growers; it is pitiful to see, after a roaring gale, the ground strewn with beautiful fruit, bruised and broken, useless to keep, and only suitable for carting away to the all-devouring cider-mill, though, even for that purpose, the sweet Blenheim does not produce nearly so good a drink as sourer accredited cider varieties.

Many of the gardening papers will name apples if sent by readers for identification; I was told of an enquirer who sent twelve apples from the same tree, and received eleven different names and one "unknown"! Apples off the same tree do differ wonderfully, but I can scarcely credit this story.