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bcskye

Yea! Crabapples!

bcskye
10 years ago

When I was reading the thread concerning crabapple jelly and applesauce, I was wishing I could find some crabapples, but not the teeny tiny ones. Well, I saw a tree in an unkept field on my way to town yesterday that was just covered with beautiful bright red crabapples a little smaller than my fist. I stopped at the house alongside the fence line and asked if it was their tree. The elderly gentleman that answered the door said they were not his, but he takes care of the mowing up to it and the person who owned the house on the other side of the tree had died. He said no one used them and to go ahead and park on his place and pick all I want. Will be going on Weds. and picking as many as possible before I wear out. I'll finally get a chance to taste crabapple jelly or jam or whatever. Yippee!

Comments (10)

  • myfamilysfarm
    10 years ago

    Process the same as apples, they will just be more tart than regular apples. I don't notice much difference except that. They usually aren't the 'pretty store apple', but lots of bumps and such, like a tree that has never been sprayed.

  • calliope
    10 years ago

    The fruit this year has been stellar. The crab apples I picked from a wild tree were beautiful with no 'uglies' in the bunch. My apples were beautiful as well. I grow them strictly organic with no sprays of any sort. Sometimes it just all comes together and this year it did. Crab apples per se are just apples of a smaller ilk and congratulations on your find. Enjoy.

  • myfamilysfarm
    10 years ago

    Our apple tree finally had a good harvest year, and wasn't as bumpy as I expected. Grandma's trees were loaded also, we were allow to pick what we wanted and still picking. Grandma's place was sold a few years ago and now just a corn/bean farm with those few trees left.

  • myfamilysfarm
    10 years ago

    sorry for double post.

    This post was edited by myfamilysfarm on Thu, Oct 3, 13 at 16:02

  • malna
    10 years ago

    Dumb question - but how large are crabapples? There is a tree in the park and the maintenance guys told me to take them if I wanted some. But these are about the size of a large grape or small cherry.

    Is that about right or are these just ornamental ones and not worth the hassle since they're so small? They taste nice and tart, but there sure isn't much to them.

  • myfamilysfarm
    10 years ago

    Those would be the ornamental crabs. You could use them, but they are ornamentals. True crab apples are the size of small small apples.

  • calliope
    10 years ago

    A rose by any other name......it's all in the semantics. Ornamental crabapples are still 'true' crabapples, just that the fruit is bred down purposely to not be messy upon fruit-shed or bred to cling to the tree instead of shedding. Crab apple is a name given to any apple smaller than the typical eating or baking apple. When farmers, old timers or people into food preservation use the term crab apple, we are typically referring to the old-fashioned tree most folks kept for the specific purpose of making pungent jellies, obtaining pectins or using for pickling. Fruit size? Larger than most ornamental crab apples popular today but actually a good many of the older varieties of ornamental crab apples used in landscaping a few decades ago were large enough to mess around with for culinary purposesm and many of them are still around and kicking. It's large enough translates to whether there is enough flesh on it to make it worth your while to process. Would you want jars of them so small that there isn't much to them but skin and core? I used myfamilysfarm's criteria............small, small (eating) apples are big enough for me. The ones I used this year are maybe an inch to an inch and a half across. With very tiny cores and seeds. A little bigger would have been nice, but these are perfect for garnish and a few bites per unit.

  • thatcompostguy
    10 years ago

    I would think the marble to cherry sized ornamentals would be best for jelly since you can cook them whole or just sliced once and then strain them. No need to pare, peel, deseed, etc. Not much pulp there to deal with for sauces or butters. And pickles might be annoying to eat at that size.

    A coworker brought in some this morning that he wanted me to identify. They're dirty, sappy looking, but they're crabapples. Golf ball size or larger, but not much larger. He says they are just there and the neighbors don't do anything with them. So I'm going over this weekend to clean the trees. He says they're short pruned shrubby looking, but loaded. I hope he's right.

    He also had some Asian persimmons that he wanted me to identify. I didn't know what they were at first, but had an idea that they were AP's. They're still green and highly astringent. I told him I wanted to know when they turn deep orange. So he's going to watch them. I hope. I'm leery of persimmons of any kind. Bad experiences with astringency growing up and with AP's from the store. And he has blueberries and grapes... Next year... :-)

  • myfamilysfarm
    10 years ago

    Persimmons are best after a frost, or you can put them in the freezer for a couple of weeks to 'untart' them some.

    We don't peel or anything, except quarter our apples for sauce or butter. I do strain the pulp for juice, after running the cooked apples thru my Kitchenaid or Foley mill. Our apples aren't sprayed. We do wash thoroughly.

  • skeip
    10 years ago

    After mother sold the big house and moved to an apartment, I never paid much to the very generic landscaping there, until this Fall. One crab apple tree in particular. The branches were loaded with fruit the size and color of wild purple plums. Every time I went to visit I would try a few just to see how they were. They finally reached a point where I felt they were ready. I picked a bag full, took them home and used the NCHFP recipe for Apple Jelly. I had never made jam or jelly before, don't really care for it, but this stuff was fabulous tasting, and the color, such a perfect magenta, and it set up very firmly.

    So, I went back, picked a big bucket full and made 14 half pints to sell at a fund raiser! It may have been a one time thing, but I'll be watching that tree next year!

    Steve

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