Norfolk Beefing Apple Trees

Malus domestica Norfolk Beefing

A big, strong apple variety hailing from the East of the country, the Norfolk Beefing is at essence a cooking apple with high acidity or a very sharp and tart eating apple! The tree itself is vigorous and large and boasts the most tremendous, beautiful dark pink and white blossom in mid-May. This turns into yellow-green apples overlaid with a deep purply-red flush with no russeting and of fantastic size. The fruits are very firm, juicy and coarse textured with greenish coloured flesh. With scab and mildew resistance, this tree is also reliable and low-maintenance.

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Norfolk Beefeating

As a cooker, this apple makes wonderful tarte tatin because it holds its shape when cooked as opposed to a Bramley whose flesh dissolves into a fluffy purée. For keen cooks, it is certainly worth having both types in your garden if you can. Including Norfolk Beefing will not only give you culinary pleasure but also makes for a visual feast when it is festooned with its glorious blossom. Build on this by growing a rambling rose like the double, creamy white rose Adelaide d'Orleans to intertwine through its branches June and surround it with daffodils and naturalising tulips for a spring show and you have already created a stunning, low-maintenance country garden. As a triploid tree Norfolk Beefing requires a pollinating partner. An apple like Bloody Ploughman would pollinate well and also has the merit of producing stunning, dark red apples in September which are great eaters. But have a look at the list of apple trees  available in Group D or C and see which might take your fancy.

Features

• Height: Bush to 3m. Half standard trees to 4.5m
• Use: Cooking, holds its shape. Sharp eater.
• Pruning: Spur bearer
• Pollination: Sterile, Group D
• Picking: Oct
• Apple colour: Yellow/Green with deep red flush
• Storage: 1-2 months

Beefing or Beaufin?

English apple names are an endless source of fascination. Many of them stem from the French from the times of the Norman conquest. Beefing is a bastardisation of Beaufin which then became Biffin, an old English name for a red cooking apple. Perhaps the name change was accelerated because the colour of the apple is that deep, fleshy colour of a really good steak! Either way this apple has been recorded since 1807 in Norfolk.

Clear and weed a circle at least 1m in diameter (and keep it weeded after planting).

Make a square hole that is comfortably wider than your Norfolk Beefing's roots but only 5 cm deeper. The hole should be at least 30cms from any wall.

Bang in a tree stake off centre and to the south west if the tree is free standing.

Soak the roots in water for at least an hour.

Mound a little soil in the bottom of the hole and settle the tree roots on it until the soil mark on the trunk is at the same level as the surrounding soil and/or the grafting scion is at least 5cms above soil level. Remove the tree, sprinkle Rootgrow in the hole, wet the roots again to ensure good contact with the Rootgrow and return to the hole.

Backfill slowly, treading down gently as you go. Use a tree tie to attach your tree to the stake if freestanding.

Fit a treeguard. Water in with about 2 gallons/9 litres of water. Mulch the whole area. Water again the next day and then weekly afterwards through the first summer.