Grenadier Cooking Apple Trees

Malus domestica Grenadier

The Grenadier Apple is one of the first cooking apples to ripen. The fruits are large, irregularly shaped, bright green, and you will get lots of them, but like all early apples, they do not store well.

The taste is tart and slightly acidic. The flesh is white and cooks down to a wonderful creamy, purée that works brilliantly in puddings or for apple sauce with your roast pork.

The tree is not too vigorous and has an upright habit making it good for smaller gardens.

A huge advantage of the Grenadier is that it will fight off almost all apple diseases - canker, scab, and mildew - and thus is suitable for wet and damp conditions where many apples may turn up their toes.
The early blossom is frost resistant so you are almost guaranteed reliable crops every year.

Browse our other apple trees.

Features

• Height: to 4.5 m
• Use: Cooking/juicing
• Pruning: Spur bearer
• Pollination: Partially Self Fertile
• Picking: Aug-Sept
• Apple colour: Green maturing to yellow
• Pollination: Group C
• Storage: 1 week
• RHS Award of Garden Merit

Growing Grenadier

Grenadier will fruit without other trees nearby but crop best with a pollination partner in group B, C or D.

Apple trees are not only about culinary output: use them for a shady picnic spot in the summer or plant so that you can see the blossom from your kitchen window, underplant with spring bulbs and use a smaller clematis threaded through the boughs to make it a favourite feature all year round.

Lift the turf (if any) in a circle of about 100cms (3ft) diameter. Soak the tree roots in water for about an hour before planting.

Dig a square hole that is about 20cms comfortably wider in both directions than your tree's roots but only a little (maybe) 5 cm deeper. Do not plant less than 30cms from any wall.

Hammer in a tree stake off centre in the direction of the prevailing wind if the tree needs support (so the wind blows the tree away from the stake).

Loosen the soil in the bottom of the hole and add or take away until, when the tree roots are on it, the soil mark on the trunk is at the level of the ground outside the hole. Keep the graft (if there is one) at least 5cms higher than the surrounding soil. Tie the tree to the stake and position ready for planting. Wet the roots again, sprinkle Rootgrow on them and return the soil from the hole, firming it down every few centimetres.

Water well, mulch the circle in the grass and water weekly thereafter through the first summer. Use a tree guard if you have "vermin"

Did You Know?

Presumably a discovered seedling of unknown parentage, it was first recorded in 1862 and exhibited in 1863 by the nurseryman Charles Turner of Slough.
The RHS gave it a First Class Certificate in 1883 and then the AGM in 1993.

Promoted by the nurseryman George Bunyard of Maidstone, it became ever more popular until it was the most widely grown early cooking apple in the UK.