Fruit Harvest Highlights – Autumn 2025 Edition

Welcome to part two of my 2025 fruit harvest write-up. Here in our part of the UK it’s been such a great year for growing and harvesting fruit that I’ve had to divide up my annual “wow, look at all that fruit!” post into two more easily digestible parts.

Here in part two I’m talking autumn apples, pears, medlars, quinces and more. If you’re at all interested in stone fruit (peaches, apricots, gages, damsons and plums), soft fruit (mainly black, red, white and yellow currants), summer apples, melons, figs and Japanese quinces, then take a look at part one: Fruit Harvest Highlights – Summer 2025 Edition.

Part one also includes a few thoughts as to why it’s been quite such a good year on the fruit-growing front, so I won’t repeat those here. Instead, I’ll just get right on with the fruit photos, starting with…

Autumn Apples (And Others)

The following photo was taken on October 15th, and shows just how many different varieties of apples (and others) I’ve been able to pick this year. There are a few of this year’s croppers missing from the line-up, either early ones that were finished and done by mid October, or one or two of the later-ripening types that I hadn’t picked when the photoshoot was ready to go.

There are two non-apples in the below photo, if you want to see if you can spot them ? (Click on the image to see a larger version, if your screen is big enough to display it.)

The variety / cultivar names of those apples (and others) are listed below. Those marked with a (?) are where a tree label has been lost, or the records are unclear, in which case I’ve had to try to identify them myself. If you spot a (?) below, that means I’m 90% to 99% sure of the identification. And (??) means I’m not quite as confident just yet.

First (Top) Row, Left to Right:

1. ‘Howgate Wonder’
2. ‘Withington Welter’
3. ‘Nine Square’
4. ‘Catshead’
5. ‘Bramley’s Seedling’
6. ‘Blenheim Orange’
7. ‘Belle de Boskoop’
8. ‘Grandpa Buxton’
9. ‘Gravenstein’ (?)
10. ‘Scotch Bridget’

Second Row, Left to Right:

1. ‘Peasgood’s Nonsuch’
2. ‘Monty’s Surprise’
3. ‘Rajka’
4. ‘Adams’s Pearmain’
5. ‘Norfolk Beefing’
6. Quince ‘Meeches Prolific’
7. ‘Egremont Russet’
8. ‘Wareham Russet’
9. ‘(Delbard) Jubile’
10. ‘Charles Ross’
11. ‘Golden Noble’
12. ‘Royal Jubilee’

Third Row, Left to Right:

1. ‘Ribston Pippin’
2. ‘St. Edmund’s Pippin’
3. ‘Falstaff’ (?)
4. ‘Nanny’ (??)
5. ‘Kerry Pippin’ (?)
6. ‘Red (?) Ellison’s Orange’
7. ‘Winter Gem’
8. ‘Orleans Reinette’
9. ‘Laxton’s Superb’
10. ‘Saturn’
11. ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’
12. ‘Kidd’s Orange Red’
13. ‘Herefordshire Beefing’

Fourth Row, Left to Right:

1. ‘Golden Delicious’
2. ‘Keswick Codlin’
3. ‘Worcester Pearmain’
4. ‘Lord Clyde’
5. ‘Lord Derby’
6. ‘Lucombe’s Pine’
7. ‘Lord Suffield’
8. ‘Ashmead’s Kernel’
9. ‘Exeter Cross’
10. ‘Herefordshire Russet’
11. ‘Duke of Devonshire’
12. ‘Bismarck’
13. ‘Court Pendu Plat’

Fifth (Bottom) Row, Left to Right:

1. ‘Lord Lambourne’
2. ‘Winter Pearmain’
3. ‘Ten Commandments’
4. ‘Nutmeg Pippin’
5. ‘Pitmaston Pine Apple’
6. ‘Knobby Russet’
7. ‘Sure Crop’
8. ‘Court of Wick’
9. ‘First and Last’
10. ‘Golden Spire’
11. Chaenomeles x superba (Japanese Quince)
12. ‘Downton Pippin’
13. ‘Red Sentinel’ (crab)

That’s a total of 59 apple varieties (and two others) that were available to be harvested, or stored well into mid-October, from the orchards at NT Quarry Bank, or my allotment plot. Tat’s a pretty good range to choose from, I think you’ll agree. I hope to be able to add a few more to the total next year, as more of my cordon trees reach fruiting age, and then several more in years to come, as I plant yet more cordons down on the allotment.

I also took a few group shots:

Red Apples

Yellow Apples and Quinces

Russet Apples

Cooking Apples

And here are a few of my personal favourite autumn ripening apple varieties, and/or ones that did particularly well this year:

‘Howgate Wonder’

I’ve written a separate post on the wondrous ‘Howgate Wonder’, which is easily one of the best dual-purpose apples around. And one more time, just for the bragging rights, here’s the single ‘Howgate Wonder’ that I crowned the “Champion Apple of 2025”:

That’s 822g, or 1lb 15oz in old money, even with a bit missing (courtesy of a gang of woodlice). A worthy winner!

Ashmead’s Kernel

I’ve noticed high praise for this variety in a number of fruit manuals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and this year I can see why it has always been so well-regarded. These apples hung on the tree until the end of November and were a very welcome burst of rich flavour and crisp texture when most of the other dessert apples had long finished.

‘Withington Welter’

Another impressively-sized apple, a pure cooker this time, as they’re quite early to fruit and tend to drop when the wind picks up, so they seldom ripen well on the tree. But if you’re looking for an apple to fill a pie – and sometimes you’ll only need one apple to do just that – in late August or early September, then the ‘Withington Welter’ is a great apple to reach for.

The largest ‘Withington Welter’ I picked this year was 704g, which was pretty hefty, but not enough to take the title away from ‘Howgate Wonder’. Better luck next year, W. W.

‘Egremont Russet’

I absolutely love russet apples – the appearance, the texture, the flavour – and ‘Egremont Russet’ is definitely one of the best russet types for all of the above. This year they were particularly good, ripening really well and with a depth of flavour verging on pear-like.

‘Winter Gem’

Although the photo below was snapped in late September and the apples looked ready to pick, this late-ripening apple stayed on the tree well into November this year. I’m glad I waited to pick them, as they developed a lovely, rich flavour, with an aroma to match.

‘Worcester Pearmain’

2025 was another great year for “Worcesters” and the veteran tree in the kitchen garden at Quarry Bank produced hundreds of apples. A great many were picked and juiced in September for our Apple Day event, but some of the taller and harder-to-harvest-from branches held onto their fruit well into November, and they definitely developed much better flavour the longer they stayed on the tree.

Honourable mentions also go to ‘Nine Square’, ‘Catshead’, ‘Scotch Bridget’, ‘Rajka’, ‘Royal Jubilee’, ‘Ribston Pippin’, ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’, ‘Lord Clyde’, ‘Lord Derby’, and ‘Court of Wick’, all of which performed very well indeed this year.

Pears

We have a few different pear varieties at Quarry Bank – ‘Durondeau’, ‘Louise Bonne of Jersey’, ‘Buerre Hardy’, ‘Williams Bon Chretien’, ‘Winter Nelis’, ‘Conference’, ‘Clapp’s Favourite’, and one or two more whose names escape me – and it was a good year for the ones that grow against the walls in the walled garden, but not so great for the standard treess in the Apprentice House orchard. I think the latter may need a bit of a regenerative re-boot this coming winter.

I don’t have any pears on my allotment plot, but my plot neighbour has a tree right on the boundary, overhanging our plot, which he never seems to pick from, so I was able to salvage a few windfalls. I have no idea what variety they are, but they’re very tasty indeed.

‘Durondeau’

A very handsome, reddish-russet pear, with good flavour.

‘Winter Nelis’

These smallish, russet-speckled pears are quite a late variety, seemingly happy to hang on the tree until at least the end of November. I tried one today and whilst it had a pleasant, pear-drop intensity, it was a little gritty, and had that slight mouth-drying effect that you get from some pears when they’re just under-ripe. I’ll leave the other two another week or so before trying them again.

Mystery Pear

As mentioned, I don’t know which variety this one is – although I’m confident that it’s not a ‘Conference’, as I’m very familiar with the appearance and flavour of those – but it does have a very good flavour, and is superbly soft and buttery when ripe.

Looking through Jim Arbury and Sally Pinhey’s essential book Pears (1997) and cross-referencing with Joan Morgan’s equally essential The Book of Pears (2015) and its companion website, I think this might be ‘Concorde‘. But I’m happy to stand corrected. If you think you recognise it, please do let me know, via the comments.

Medlars

We have a single medlar tree at work. It didn’t provide much fruit last year, but this year was better, and I was able to pick a few dozen before they were all taken by local foragers / jelly-makers; someone had already been at the tree, judging by the footprints and flattened grass around the base. I’ll just have to be quicker off the mark next year.

There’s also a medlar tree on the orchard plot down at the allotment, but I haven’t salvaged any of the dropped fruit from that one yet. Perhaps I should, before it all rots, as we’re running out of medlar jelly; a shocking state of affairs to find yourself in.

Medlar ‘Nottingham’

If you’re wondering what the heck a medlar is, or what you might be able make with them, then you should definitely find the answers in Jane Steward’s definitive book Medlars, Growing and Cooking (2023), which does indeed contain all you need to know about growing and cooking with medlars. Or you could skip straight to my method for making medlar cheese and medlar jelly, if you happen to have a batch of medlars to-hand and are short on time to do the homework.

Quince

We have a single quince tree at Quarry Bank, a ‘Meeches Prolific’. Last year, it barely fruited. This year, it produced a lot of fruit that were quite healthy-looking, until we had a hot dry spell in August, followed by a wet spell in early September. At which point, almost all the fruit on the tree split from top to bottom:

Interestingly, some of the splits seemed to heal quite nicely and the fruit would probably have been usable had I picked it in good time, but sadly most of the crop was lost to rot. Again, maybe we’ll have better luck next year.

Physalis (Cape Gooseberry)

More of an honourable mention than a crop report. We tried growing Physalis in the vinery glasshouse at work, but the pots we put them in were a tad too small, we couldn’t get enough fertiliser and moisture into them, and as a result, the berries that we were able to harvest were a bit on the small side. Maybe next year we’ll promote them to one of the beds. We’ll see.

So, there we go, that’s part two of my Harvest Highlights for 2025, a superb year all round for fruit growing in our part of the world. As I mentioned at the top of this post, do also have a read of part one: Fruit Harvest Highlights – Summer 2025 Edition if you’re interested in stone fruit, soft fruit, summer apples, and one or two slightly more exotic fruity treats.

Please do leave a comment below with stories of your fruit harvesting successes this year. How has is been? Good? Great? Amazing? Let me know.