Topic: apples
We've been making applesauce from the Rescues and the Dolgos. The Rescues are a very small but sweet apple. It's a dwarf tree that needs pruning and is shaded by two other trees, yet it yielded 12 quarts of applesauce and still has more apples on it that I'm letting ripen a bit more. The Dolgo is 20 or more feet tall, completely unpruned and going wild, but covered with apples. We're barely started harvesting its oval, deep red, extremely tart fruit. A batch of Rescue sauce needs 2 to 3 cups sugar, a batch of Dolgo maybe twice that. The Dolgo sauce is a pretty deep pink, pinker than the Rescue, and more acid. Ideally I'd mix them 50/50 in a batch but the Rescue was in a hurry this year.
There was a very light frost last night. It may have nipped the tomatoes on the deck. Last night we picked all the remaining Norlands, some as large as a red delicious.