Crawley Beauty Apple Trees

Crawley Beauty Apple Trees

The Crawley Beauty apple tree produces a mid to late season cooking apple that is suitable for eating fresh when it has ripened off the branch.

Browse our full range of apple trees or see the full variety of fruit trees.

Characteristics of Crawley Beauty Trees:

• Use: Cooking. Bakes to soft puree with a light, fruit flavour. Eaten fresh, it is sharp and quite soft.
• Spur Bearer: suitable for cordons & espaliers, trained on wires.
• Tree's growth habit: Average vigour. Compact form.
• Harvest: Mid October.
• Store & ripen in a cool, dry place: Until February.

General description of Crawley Beauty:

A medium sized cooker that can be eaten fresh once the fruit have ripened off the branch, the Crawley Beauty bakes to soft purée with a mild flavour. The fruit store well and conveniently hang on the tree after they are ripe, so you don't have to worry about going away for a few days during harvest time.
They can be eaten fresh in the new year, if you like a sharp tasting apple. The texture is coarse and not very juicy.
Crawley Beauty's great strength is its reliability. It is not fussy about where it grows, it is disease resistant, doesn't attract many pests and it crops heavily.

Rootstocks:
All of our Crawley Beauty trees are grown on MM106 rootstocks.

Pollination Partners for Crawley Beauty:.
Your trees are self sterile and their flowers must be pollinated to make fruit.
Crawley Beauty is in pollination Group H, which is the latest flowering group.
This means that they will cross-pollinate with other apple trees in pollination Groups G and H.
Because this tree flowers late, it is good for frosty areas.

See our Guide to Apple Tree Pollination for a full list of partners & more tips about pollination.

Crawley Beauty Disease notes:
Disease resistance: Scab, Canker

History & Parentage:
This tree was first recorded in a garden in Sussex. It is suspected it might be the same as the French variety, Nouvelle France. It was first grown commercially by J. Cheal & Sons in 1906. In 1912, it won the award of garden merit from the RHS.

How Apple Trees are Measured & Delivered:
Our fruit trees are delivered in up to 3 shapes and you can also buy selected apple trees as ready made cordons.
Maiden: This unbranched tree is the smallest starting size. You can train maidens into espaliers and cordons.
Cordon: Crawley Beauty trees are spur-bearers, so they can be made into cordons and espaliers.
Bush: This is a style of freestanding tree with a short trunk of about 60cm. It will grow to about 3 metres tall.
Half-Standard: This is a freestanding style that will grow into a full sized, "normal" apple tree, about 4 metres tall.

Notes on planting Crawley Beauty trees:
All fruit trees like a rich soil with decent drainage, protection from the wind and plenty of sun. Apple trees like clay soil, as long as it is not prone to bad waterlogging.
This tree is potentially suitable for organic growing in the more humid West and South of Britain, where scab and canker are more common. It is recommended for the North & Scotland because of its late opening flowers.

Prepare your site before planting:
Improving the soil in advance of planting your apple trees will help them establish quickly and be productive for years to come. After you have destroyed all the weeds and grass, you can dig the soil over. Remove any stones and rubbish and mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades.
You can do this on planting day, but when you do it weeks or months in advance, you will give the soil time to settle again.

Spacing Crawley Beauty apple trees:
Freestanding bushes: 12-18 feet (4-6 metres) between trees and rows.
Freestanding half-standards: 18-30 feet (6-10 metres) between trees and rows.
In general, allow 1 more metre between rows than there is between each tree in the row.
Wire-trained cordons can be planted in rows 60-100cms apart.
Espaliers need to be spaced at 10-18 feet (3-6 metres) apart.

Watch our video on how to plant a fruit tree for full instructions on planting a bush or half-standard sized tree.
If you are growing a maiden sized apple tree into a freestanding tree, a bamboo cane is enough support.
If you are growing a cordon or espalier, you will need to install training wires to support them.
Remember to water establishing apple trees during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Apple Tree Planting Accessories:
For bush and half standard apple trees, our tree planting pack includes a wooden stake & rubber tie to support the tree and a biodegradable mulch mat with pegs, which protects the soil at the base of your tree from drying out and stops weeds from sprouting.
We recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all new trees, especially if your soil is poorly fertile.