Baker & Commons, Berkeley CA.
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We were going to hold off on quince this year. But I think we will get started with Smyrna , Krimskaya and Aromatnaya. Plus a couple of BA-29C to stool.
Quince makes very nice chutney. Chutney stores quite well frozen, or can it and it’s good for ages.
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Whose eating quince?
I just ate two baked quince from the fridge before looking at this thread.
I have what is described as a Russian Quince in the Jung Catalog. A naturally dwarfing tree, self-fertile, productive and relatively pest resistant compare to my apples that end up puckered and riddled from maggot fly if I don’t spray. I have gotten away with not spraying the quince tree, but putting one spray a year (Assail, active ingredient acetamiprid neonicitinoud) results in less fruit loss in storage.
The tree is in southern Door County in Northeast Wisconsin. Even when ripe, these things are billiard balls and the only way I can eat them is to bake them into a custardy consistency, although a guy from work’s wife and stepdaughter from Guatemala eat those things raw.
Last year they were sparse, but they were large and lost their fuzz by 2nd week in October when I bring everything in to avoid getting zapped by a freeze. Early in their storage life they baked into a delicious sweet-tart fragrance. This year they must have pollinated late, being small and fuzzy when I picked them and they are not nearly as good. I think it was in 2013 or 2014 when we had hot, dry conditions and baked, they were sweet-tart with a fragrance of ripe pineapple and mango, they were ambrosia, the mythological food of the Greek gods, but that has not recurred.
Ask me whatever else you want to know about my experience growing and eating them. All I can say is regardless of the quality of the quince crop, that I eat one, I want to eat another.
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