To think it’s ridiculous no supermarket nearby has British apples

[Sladuf]

Not expecting a lot of traffic for this one but hear me out.

For the second consecutive year every supermarket near me has 0 British apples and it’s nearly September. British apple season is well underway and yet the “seasonal” apples (this is what they were marked up as) in Tesco when I checked yesterday were from Chile.

Some of our best varieties that actually have a decent flavour and crunch are the early ones like Discovery, which I never struggled to get hold of come August, from Tesco, Morrisons, Lidl, Aldi, Waitrose or Sainsbury’s any year before 2023. Thought it was a fluke last year but alas it’s the same this year.

Morrisons was no better than Tesco: even Polish apples were in stock last Friday! Marks & Spencer and Waitrose, supposedly quintessentially British, also letting the side down. Don’t even go there when it comes to Asda: they’re hopeless every year.
Plenty of South African or New Zealand apples. Nothing from Britain.

How do you like them apples? I’d rather British ones you can only get when they’re in season please!

Wow, my DD and I just thought the same managed to get some from France.

Terrible crop of apples so far this year due to the weather. We have a few trees in our garden. You can see they're not going to be any use - mostly damaged, disformed, and very small, lots have already rotted. Usually by this time of year, we'd have a tree full of lovely big round apples, and they'd be ready for picking in October. We've already realised we'll need to buy our apple sauce this year instead of making our own!

They had Bramleys but no eating apples.

None of the apples on our allotments and the park nearby are ready to harvest yet - Hampshire.

My greengrocer also has raspberry ripple apples, which I have been enjoying.

Bit early for apples here but Tesco does have British apples all year round. Not sure how.

Wholeheartedly agree. It’s pretty rural where my mother lives and the solar farms have exploded nearby in recent years.
Thanks for your suggestions. I’m fortunate to live within a driveable distance of a crop producing area and am visiting over the weekend. Planning on relocating there hopefully in the next year because it’s generally a nicer part of the world than where I’m living.

I always look for British ones but I think we're a few weeks away yet.

Same, and a hoard of squirrels have got to the few that would've been worth picking.

Katy apples are the best in the world but try and find them outside somerset...you can get apples by post from a farm in Somerset. Miss living down the road. Yanbu by the way. Supermarket apples are yuk

I think I got to try those myself in 2022. One website refers to that variety as “Rosette” too. The Sainsbury’s around the corner where I was working at the time stocked them in 2022 and they were bigger than the usual Discovery apples stocked in the supermarkets and mouth-watering too.

One other thing that’s obvious after the great suggestions to check out independent greengrocers and farmers markets? I need to press on with my plans to move area!

My neighbours don't have a single apple on their trees which are normally prolific.

Our early tree has done really well in terms of numbers of apples this year but we've had a lot of bitter spot because of the inconsistency in the rainfall.

Is it thar British apple orchards send their apples for processing, pies, sauce, cider? Maybe they don't need to be picked as carefully. I know a shortage of pickers has been a problem.

We have a small orchard. Only my cooking apples are ready, my eaters and cider apples won't be ready for another couple of weeks.

Haven't seen any local apples in our supermarkets at all.

We have 5 eating apple trees in our garden that are producing very differently. The Jonagold only has 2 enormous apples on it (plus the 2 we already ate). Not sure what the one at the side of it is but it's a tiny tree and it's laden. All the branches are dragged to the floor there are so many apples. Most have been attacked by pests and wild rabbits though.
1 tree has nothing, 1 has quite a few that but they aren't ripe and 1 looks plentiful but we can't get to them to try them (much older tree).

The cooking apples are ready and there are hundreds this year. My dad keeps raving about how great they taste.

Plenty of people, but not at the rates most farmers are able to pay because consumers don’t want to pay the real cost, but instead prefer cheaper apples flown in from abroad (and where we don’t pay the actual environmental cost that this should incur).

I don't think they're ready yet. Drive through Kent today and orchards all still full, apple tree at the end of our garden isn't even ripe yet.

It is a bit early for many UK varieties. However, I'm in France this week and the apples have been superb, including amazing local apple juice, cider and cakes! We've loved it all so much. Plus the local cheese, butter and delicious breads. Was talking about this with DH and they're definitely getting something right here.

My tree is some variety like discovery or worcester pearmain, they've been ready to eat for 2-3 weeks but its not been a good year, spring was too wet.

I get pissed off when i can grow blueberries in my own garden but there have been no british blueberries at all. I will pay more for them than chilean ones. I don't want fruit flown from chile in august in the uk when we should have plenty of our own.

I bought a bag of British apples in sainsburys 2 days ago (we are in Surrey).

have always been able to buy in our local sainsburys apart from a period of a few weeks in May/june.

Badbadbunny same here. I usually have more than i know what to do with, this year barely any are useable due to scab.

Yes they’re also called Rosette: I said new, but I think they’ve been around since 2010 from memory but my greengrocer’s not stocked the, before and he called them new. I found they look good but I ate some the day he got the first lot and they were disappointingly a bit soft, though definitely pretty. I’m not that keen on early apples, though I had some anonymous ones from a friend’s allotment that were good. We get a lot of interesting local ones from small orchards, from local greengrocers, but they’re not ready yet.

It is a poor harvest of apples this year. We have some apples trees and the yield this year is shit. Same in other parts of the country as we spoke to someone who makes and sells own farm cider.

I live a three minute walk from commercial apple orchards. The apples haven’t been picked yet.