Quince trees (Cydonia oblonga) (not to be confused with Chaenomeles the Japanese Flowering Quince) originate in Iran but are hardy, and can be grown as far north as Scotland. They are beautiful, slightly unruly looking small trees with a long period of interest, grey felted young foliage breaking early in the year, followed by beautiful white tinged with pink blossom, then fabulous highly aromatic golden fruit that hang for ages. The winter outline is charismatic. They can be grown as an espalier, a fan, a free standing tree or a multi stem. One variety, Isfahan can be eaten from the tree in UK, and further south in Europe if left to ripen most quince fruit varieties can be edible straight from the tree. Bunny talks about how to prune, prevent Quince Leaf Blight, the best varieties and what to cook with, them amongst other aspects.
#quince #smalltree
Video – Unity Guinness
26 Comments
My mother-in-law made Quince honey. I have no idea how she made it bit it was delicious. Thanks for all the information again!
Love this fruit. My Magyar, 🇭🇺 , granny makes a compote with it. Or cold soup in the summer!
I think this may be the perfect tree to plant in my yard to make a break between my lot and the neighbor's. If I plant them in a line, would you recommend planting them every 15 feet or so?
Quince meat, mince pies made with grated quince added to the mincemeat
Hi Bunny. Other ways to use the fruit: Korean quince tea (you can add cinnamon, ginger…)- you can make it now and store for the winter. My mother makes a very good quince and chicken stew and I eat the fruit also raw, but I cut the quince in slices, so it’s easier.
I first discovered actual quince fruit at our international market a number of years ago, though there is a Quince St. here, so I had heard of them. I've also seen them in old paintings, and some of my historic cookbooks. They have a very interesting flavor. At some point I'd like to do espaliered fruit trees, but that's down the list a ways. Interesting to see how the fruit is used around the world; membrilla is common as a treat in Mexico.
Hello Bunny, yes it is a very nice tree. We have one in the orchard. My mother used to put a fruit in her wardrobe because of the fragance. This year I will try to make juice out of quince. Thank you for the inspiration. Greetings from Germany
It was the first tree I planted in our Northumberland garden. We love them roasted along side a mild soft cheese, but best of all in Christmas pudding!
Bunny, I love your videos. Your attitude to gardening is so refreshing, and it brings me great joy every time I get to see a new video of your wonderful garden. Greetings from Australia!
Interesting about the summer pruning to keep them more open. Are your trees shown here on a particular rootstock?
Just ordered a pair of 'Serbian Gold' from Pomona Fruits. Being in the Welsh borders at 230m above sea level, the weather can be a challenge but fingers crossed.
Marmelada anyone! It’s delicious , it’s quince paste the word comes from Marmelos (quince to you) . English marmalade (witch is orange jam)
Thank you for your informative video.
Great to hear your ideas for using them with red cabbage and also some of the other comments have been helpful, as well.
I'm watching it in Matamata, New Zealand, where I have a tree in front of my house.
it is currently in full blossom and is looking beautiful.
I’ve just started a quince mead, based off the combination of recipes for quince wine and a single German video for quince mead.
Wash the fuzz off the quince, cut out any spots that look iffy, remove the cores but leave the skin on. Either grate the fruit or thinly slice them. Pop the result in a pan, barely covered with either water or the juice of your choice (recommenced: either apple juice or pear juice that is free of sulphites or sorbates, citric acid or ascorbic acid is fine). Bring to a slow boil, allow to boil for 15 minutes, no more. Cover and take off the heat, allow to cool. Add pectic enzyme once cooled to room temperature (follow manufacturer’s instructions according to the fruit’s weight) if you want a clear end result. If you don’t mind hazy, leave it out. Pectic enzyme does help with flavour extraction though. Remove the fruit from the liquid into a colander to recover all the precious liquid, bit don’t press it to avoid too much pectic extraction. See how much you’ve got. Two and a half kilograms yielded me just under three litres of juice. Add one kilogram of honey, and enough juice to get to around 4 1/2 litres of liquid in total. This should get you to a specific gravity of around 1.110 (if you have a hydrometer). Add the juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon, and pop 250 grams of raisins and the zest of 1/2 to 1 lemon in a fine mesh brewing bag. Transfer the liquid and the brewing bag to a fermenter (I’d recommend one that can at least hold five litres), add wine yeast (baker’s yeast also works but I prefer wine yeast or ale yeast) and allow to ferment under airlock away from sunlight. Leave the brewing bag with the raisins at least for 2 weeks and give the fermenter a swirl once a day for at least the first week, wetting the bag and raisins to avoid mould formation. Depending on the yeast you used it will ferment out to a completely dry mead (no residual sugar) or something sweeter. It all depends on the alcohol tolerance of your yeast. Now, you get to decide: back sweeten, or leave as is? If you want the result sweeter, the final specific gravity went down to 1.000 or lower and/or you think your yeast hasn’t reached alcohol tolerance, either stabilise to prevent re-fermentation or simply add a non-fermentable sweetener like erythritol or stevia.
When your mead starts to clear and isn’t fermenting anymore, siphon it off the sediment. You might have to repeat that several times. Try to avoid splashing or pouring, it’ll oxidise your mead which can negatively affect the flavour or even cause it to turn into vinegar. Try to minimise head space as well. There are various ways you can do this: by topping off with juice, by siphoning into a smaller container, by inserting something into your container that takes up space (like glass fermentation weights). Or, if there still is carbon dioxide suspended in your brew after siphoning, place an airlock and give your mead a few swirls to push out the air, leaving a protective ‘blanket’ of carbon dioxide on top that’ll seal your mead off from any oxygen.
Once your brew is completely clear and (optional) sweetened to taste, siphon one last time and gently stir (no splashing) to get rid of any last remaining carbon dioxide. Siphon into bottles. Swingtops or corked bottles have my preference. Label and allow to age. Recommended is at least six months after bottling, preferably one or two years.
Some people like to add tannin although quince already have plenty of that. Either steep 2 teabags in the hot quince liquid for 5-10 minutes, or add wine tannin. Alternatively, and for extra dimension to your mead, you can add a handful of medium toast oak chips to the mead once fermentation has done and the mead is clearing. Careful though: you can over-extract and then you’d feel you’re sucking on a piece of wood when drinking your mead. Test at least after a week and remove as soon as you think the level is ok. Adding oak does help in smoothing the raw edges off a lot of meads and fruit wines. So does the addition of a split vanilla pod after fermentation (leave in for as long as you can).
Additional tips and recommendations:
Make sure all equipment is properly sanitised.
If during fermentation you get a gym sock smell, that’s nothing to worry about. Fermentation can smell really strange. Worrisome are a rotten smell or a vinegar smell. But it’s quite hard to mess up a fruit wine or a mead.
If you have access to yeast nutrient, use it: the happier and healthier your yeast, the better the end result. A home made budget yeast nutrient is boiled baker’s yeast. Dissolve a teaspoon of baker’s yeast in a small amount of water, bring to a boil, allow to boil for 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye on it, it shouldn’t boil dry. Allow to cool and add to your fermentation vessel. Repeat after a few days (3-5). Yeast feasts on it’s own and dead yeast contains a lot of the nutrients live yeast cells need to thrive.
I'm in North Carolina and I've never seen a Quince tree. I love the way yours look and the way you've pruned them. I wish I could smell them, they sound wonderful!
They are delicious
I am completely distracted by the beautiful flowers in the back drop. Are they dahlias? And if so what variety?!
Bunny, would you consider a video on how to make your fantastic picket fences with a slight curve to each board or perhaps how to plan and create a serpentine hedge ?
You may think that is easy but for us it is not so straightforward.
How do create a half standard ?
Just cut right off at 3 or 4 feet ?
Quince jelly is so beautiful as well as heavenly tasting.
beautiful 😍 🤩 👌 😘
I've grown many from seed, love them. Used to sow almost every seed from ones I scrumped. I've moved to France and had to leave them all behind so currently searching new more mature ones to buy now.
Another really interesting video — thank you! I planted a bare root quince in my Perth, Western Australia, garden four years ago and have been pretty brutal each year when I prune. This is the first year I expect to be less stringent with cutting it back and will, as you do, trim in Summer. They are so elegant and interesting to view. I do wish I had known about the Serbian Gold variety, too. Oh well, still beautiful.
Thanks Bunny! Great idea as i need to plant up an area of garden that is sadly going to have a couple of houses built behind it. I should have plenty of room for a quince but roughly how long before it will bear fruit and will it cope with cold winds? Thanks!
Lovely! I am going to search for a quince tree for my garden.
Thanks Bunny. I live on the edge of the Staffordshire Moorlands and have a Quince tree which has done really well this year . I haven’t started picking yet your video came just in time as I will now leave them longer. I intend to make quince jelly. (The recipe is in a National Trust book of preserves by Sara Paston Williams) your shows are excellent- keep up the good work!
Janet.