Having just talked about our plum trees, it seemed the right time to segue into the rest of our fruit tree collection. Unlike the plums, which went unnoticed for the first few years, the apple trees were impossible to miss. They are all large, mature trees growing in clear areas with little to obstruct one’s view of them. We often use them as landmarks when we’re trying to explain where something is on the property.
One of the main reasons I wanted to buy a home with more history was the high likelihood of mature apple trees being in the garden. You know what they say about fruit trees — the best time to plant one is 10 years ago. The next best time is today. Or better yet, just move somewhere where someone else planted them more than 10 years ago.
This particular tree is a cultivar called Malus domestica ‘White Transparent’ (omena ‘Valkea kuulas’), also known as ‘Yellow Transparent’ in North America. It was very popular across Europe in the 19th century and is still sold in some nurseries today. Its main claim to fame is being a very early variety that will provide ripe fruit by the tail end of summer in most places. This makes it especially nice to combine with the many soft fruits and berries that are usually ready to harvest around the same time.
The tree, like most of the other heirloom plant varieties in our garden, was planted in the 1950s. By all accounts, it should be nearing the end of its lifespan (50-80 years). It doesn’t seem to have realized this and has provided us with a glut of apples almost every year that we’ve been here. We only recently started learning how to prune fruit trees and thin fruit, so I am hoping to help it stay in good form for another few decades.
We usually start picking the apples when the first few turn pale yellow to creamy white. We eat those right away since they don’t last long when that ripe. The greener ones can sit in boxes awaiting processing for up to a week. The fruit is juicy, with a nice balance of sweet and tart that you don’t find in most supermarket apples.
Apples are useful for such a wide variety of recipes that I doubt I’ll remember all the ways I’ve cooked them over the years! I bought an apple coring and peeling gadget and a steam juicer specifically to get through the glut more efficiently — one season of doing everything by hand was more than enough.
About 3/4 of the apples are peeled, cored, then run through the steam juicer. The white flesh of these apples makes a beautiful clear golden juice that is easy to mix with other drinks. The remaining pulp is made into applesauce, apple butter, and apple leather. A good portion of the apples are also sliced and frozen for use in baked desserts such as apple pies, apple crisps, and apple brownies. I just saw a video on how to make apple cider vinegar, so it looks like I will even have a use for the cores and peels this year as well!
Final count:
- Malus domestica ‘White Transparent’ – 1 elderly but productive tree
Little Blue and White House 
6 responses to “Garden Inventory | Malus domestica ‘White Transparent’”
My life was made much simpler with the purchase of the apple corer gizmo. Love it. Cannot imagine ever going back to peeling and coring by paring knife. Only problem of course is those soft apple varieties which can split or crumble in the corer as it’s working. It helps to have a larger size apple to work with. You’ll get those once the tree is pruned. Pruning will force the tree to grow fewer apples, but of larger size. I too once had large unpruned mature trees, and they all made millions of tiny apples. It’s so much better now to have a decent sized apple. Some years, the trees produce less, it’s a three-year cycle of glut to not so many apples, then the cycle repeats. Or so it’s been in my garden. When the tree casts off early all sorts of apples which fall to the ground unrippened, you know the tree is really struggling to rippen all that fruit. It will hand onto only as much as it can rippen. The rest just get cast off. This year, despite the shortage of rain, our trees are heavily-ladden with apples. Which is a big surprise, I thought for sure the trees would just cast off everything as they were surely too thirsty. But having very mature trees does mean they have large and deep roots. 🙂 I don’t do much with all our fruit anymore. Fresh currant pies, with a few bags weighted and stored in the freezer for pies through the year. Apples and cherries, are usually pies made fresh. The juice and dried fruit I thought we’d love for cereal and with oatmeal never came to pass. Which now will save me lots of time. We end of giving lots of everything away.
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That makes sense, about pruning the apple trees — we just didn’t have the time or know-how to do it when we first got the house. We’ve been slowly cutting back the two eating apples, but are still letting the two crabapples do what they want since I only manage to get around to harvesting those every few years. I try to use up the eating apples, either through recipes or preserving, and use the crabapples to pad out juices when needed. Those, along with smaller and uglier apples, usually go into the steam juicer whole because the only thing extracted is the juice and the leftovers go onto the compost. You’re right about there always being more than enough, which is why pruning actually appeals to me. I wouldn’t mind having less or if they have a mediocre crop sometimes so I can use up everything else 😂
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I’m so impressed with your gorgeous-looking apples. My mouth is watering just looking at your apple juice and the salted caramel apple butter! I’m intrigued by ‘apple brownies’ – I’ll have to google for a recipe (though it will, sadly, have to be with store-bought apples!)
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Thank you! Part of the fun of having a glut is getting to try lots of different recipes you dig up online, I think! The recipes I used are linked in the post, if you hover over each of the words (‘brownies’, ‘butter’, etc).
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[…] our other apple, but often doesn’t bear as much fruit. They get used in much the same way as our other apples, and I often steam juice them together with sour crabapples that are available around the same […]
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[…] are the biggest and most floriferous by far. The garden smells amazing right now. That’s the ‘White Transparent’, our oldest apple tree, in the photo. I love how the entire tree sounds like it’s buzzing, […]
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