Our local hedgerows are currently packed with trees full of year’s crop of apples. The number of types is mind boggling with everything from cooking, eating and brewing varieties growing in the wild. Globally there are over 7,500 varieties to choose from and apples represent one of the largest cultivated fruits in the world with millions of tonnes being produced annually.
It’s believed that the first apple trees originated in Central Asia being spread throughout the rest of the world. Like strawberries, apples are also a member of the rose family and give fantastic blossom in spring.
It takes about 5 years for an apple tree to be large enough to bare fruit and with them being so large natural fertilisation methods are most commonly used. Honey bees are the key worker to pollinate the fruits which is great news considering the challenges that the bee population has been having over recent years.
Unlike many other crops apples are still mainly picked by hand so they provide great employment to workers during the harvest time.
To make our crunchy apple wedges we use 12 kg of fresh apples for ever 1kg of dried. We use a special technique to keep them nice and crunchy and it only requires low energy to retain as much of the natural nutrition as possible.
They are 100% apples nothing added just water taken away.
Rick and James x
