Written by
Sabina
Description
Sun
Moderate
Flowering
Pet and kids friendly
Edible
Attracts pollinators
Directly to
A gnarled trunk, a broad crown with green leaves, white blossom that flutters down like snow and a juicy harvest: even Eve found the apple tree irresistible.
Care
- Apple trees like to be placed in the sun with some partial shade during the day as well.
- Plant an apple tree deep so that it is firmly secured in well-draining soil.
- Feed once a season, particularly if the tree is in a pot or tub.
- Prune in March, immediately after winter and before flowering.
- Blossom and night-time frost? Cover the tree with fleece or spray the blossom so that it freezes. This will give you a good chance of harvesting apples later.
Crab apples, eating apples, cooking apples - they all start with a fabulous apple tree (official name: Malus) which flowers from mid-April to the end of May with beautiful white blossom with a yellow heart. The green leaves appear on the branches at the same time. Cultivated apple trees usually don’t grow taller than 4.5 metres. There are often smaller, so that they can also be grown in a pot, container or tub. In the wild an apple tree can reach the lofty height of nine metres. The fruit of the apple tree can be very sweet or tart, depending on the variety. They grow during the summer, ripen in late summer and are picked in early autumn.
Greetings from Kazakhstan!
The apple tree is a member of the Malus family, a group of small deciduous trees and shrubs. It grows throughout the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, and is very popular. Apples were being gathered in the wild 10,000 years B.C. Cultivation started in the Near East some 4000 years B.C. The apple probably spread along the old Silk Route. Apples - stored cool, dried, preserved - have been an important source of food for humans for thousands of years, particularly in the winter. Today’s eating apple is derived from wild apple species that were bred in Central Asia. The sweet wild apple that it all started with - malus sieversii - can still be found in Kazakhstan, where it is known locally as the shakar apple. The Romans spread the apple tree throughout Western Europe through their conquests. There are now some 7500 cultivars.
Apple tree trivia
- Adam and Eve, William Tell, Snow White - apples appear in many stories, fairytales and legends, from Greek myths to the Norse Edda sagas.
- In symbolic terms, it is usually the 'fruit of knowledge' that brings about awareness.
