In it’s first year the tree only produced a couple of fruits which were unfortunately not really good enough to use butsince then it has lived up to its name and been extremely prolific.

 

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Young quince fruits are green and have a felty overcoat rather like that of the peach. The pale green colour turns more of an olive green.  Once they are ripe they turn yellow and become smooth skinned. Also as they ripen the fruits become aromatic. The fruit needs to be picked

 

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Quinces are very hard with the centre having a particularly hard core. They can't be eaten raw so we wondered how we were going to use the fruit. We don’t really use jams and jellies and so wondered how we would actually eat our quinces so I searched the Internet and found quite a few recipes that use quince in desserts. In fact they can be substituted for apples or mixed with apples.

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We made a quince and apple crumble with the first quinces that we picked. Basically you can make your favourite apple crumble recipe and just substitute quince for some of the apples.

 

As the fruit cooked the kitchen was filled with a honey like fragrance and the honey theme continued in the taste of the fruit. It tasted delicious and as I have never seen quinces for sale the decision to grow a quince tree was a good one! Apparently quince will store for two to three months in a dark frost free place.

 

 

One problem that we have had was that one year most of our fruits were spoiled. They looked perfect but peeling revealed that they had been affected by bitter pit, a condition that can also affect apples. It seems that the problem is due to a lack of calcium distribution within the tree - similar to that which is said to cause blossom end rot in tomatoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In autumn the tree also provides a splash of colour with the leave turning golden. It's worth buying the tree just for that.

 

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I've also posted about quince on my blog here