Crispin Apple Trees

Crispin Apple Trees

The Crispin apple tree produces a sweet flavoured, late season eating apple that juices well and is great for adding to a cider blend. Because it is quite coarse textured it also cooks beautifully, holding its shape. Like many thick-skinned apples, Crispin apples store wonderfully well, lasting comfortably into spring. The green young fruit turns yellow when ripe, ending up looking like a bit like a huge Golden Delicious

Browse our full range of apple trees. 

Characteristics of Crispin Trees:

• Use: Eating. Sweet, crisp, very juicy. It juices well and can be added as a sweet element to a mixed cider brew. When cooked, it has a sweet, light flavour and holds its shape.
• Spur Bearer: suitable for cordons & espaliers, trained on wires.
• Tree's growth habit: Strong Average vigour. Spreading form.
• Harvest: Mid October
• Store & ripen in a cool, dry place: Until March

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

Pollination Partners for Crispin:
Your trees are self-sterile triploids: their flowers must be pollinated to make any fruit and they cannot pollinate other trees. Crispin is in pollination Group C which means it can be pollinated by other apple trees in pollination Groups B, C and D.

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

History & Parentage:
This tree was bred in Japan between the World Wars, from Golden Delicious and Indo. In Japan and the USA, it is known by its original name, Mutsu. It was named Crispin when it was released for sale in Britain in 1968.

Notes on planting Crispin 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 not suitable for organic growing. It is not recommended for the more humid West and South of Britain, where scab and canker are more common.

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 Crispin 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.

After you plant an apple tree, the most important thing to do is water it in dry weather and weed around it. Both of these will be necessary for at least a year after planting. We recommend using a mulch mat as well.

The best tip for helping your tree to establish and quickly become mature and productive is to remove all the fruit that it produces in the first year after planting, as soon as the flowers fade. This will give the tree a chance to develop its roots, which are the foundation of the tree's strength, and sturdy branches that can bear the weight of a heavy crop without snapping.

Biennial habit: This tree naturally has a slight tendency to crop well in some years, then give a poorer harvest the following year. When your trees have established and begun their cropping life, it is important to notice if there is a large crop on the way and thin it out in late June or early July. This is best for the tree and will help it to give a more consistent crop from year to year.

All fruit trees will need formative pruning during their first years. Although this is not complicated, it is important to research and understand the process so that you can apply it to your particular tree and situation.

Harvesting Crispin apples:
Your trees should crop in Mid-October. Crispin apples will store in a cool, frost-free place for about 5 months. To eat them fresh, it is best to let them ripen off the tree for a month.

Hygiene & Diseases:
Dead, damaged or diseased wood can be pruned off as soon as it appears. Disinfect your pruning tools between every cut if there is any sign of disease and burn or dispose of any diseased material, do not compost it.