Evening harvest

mortaltree

Rather impressed with the size and quality of the “Red Delicious” apples I picked this evening.

A little buffing brings out the bright red as you can see.

A bit early in their season. So only 2 willingly alighted from their happy hanging spot to my hands.

Over a decade since it was planted in the food forest, this guild has been producing for a while.

An example guild: 1. Fruit Tree 2. Comfrey 3. Siberian Peashrub 4. Amorpha fruticosa 5. Japanese Wineraspberry 6. Honeyberry 7. Blueberry 8. Turkish Rocket 9. Crambe cordifolia 10. Stepping stones, (or in this case, stepping logs). The green base is a ground cover of mint. See the original post this picture was made for here.

The apple is just a hardware store buy my mother picked up. Grafted on dwarf rootstock, it is only 7 ft tall and nearly as wide at this point.

Last year was a heavy fruit bearing year for everything in the food forest. So I was delighted I still got a light crop this year -especially considering the size and quality.

Despite the light mottling on the outside, the inner flesh was sweet and clean all through.

The two apples before buffing, an Asian pear, and persimmon. Jerusalem artichoke and edible flowered lespedeza in the background.

Elsewhere in the food forest, I grabbed an Asian pear, and a persimmon for an evening treat.

If you’re curious to learn more about this guild’s history, you can see one of the earlier posts about its production here.

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