Letter: English apples are abused

APPLES should be harvested at the correct time of year according to the variety, and handled carefully to avoid bruising, as one would treat eggs ('English apples feel Le Crunch', 21 August). A perfect apple will mature in a humid mice-proof store naturally, without artificial cold storage, at the appropriate time and taste delicious while retaining all its vitamin C.

The reason why English apples are not eaten as often as they used to be is that they have been harvested too early, roughly picked and bruised, and put into cold storage to prevent them rotting as they inevitably would. Often they are sold before they are ripe, as are Coxes, which ripen at Christmas.

To win back the apple-eating public, growers should grow flavoursome varieties such as Ribston Pippin, Sturmer Pippin, Blenheim Orange and James Grieve and market them when ripe.

John Bransden

Dyfed, Wales