The Big Apple

I'll be reporting more on this on my other website in a day or so (doing some re-work on it - one of the projects that is limiting blog entries this weekend) From BBC News bq. A boy has got a lot of apple pie to look forward to after helping to grow an apple almost as big as his head. Six-year-old Jamie Corston watched hungrily all summer as the monster Bramley swelled to a whopping 1.1kg in weight, and 45cm round. bq. His parents, Geoff and Janet, got the apple going by piling cow dung around the tree's base each year, and checked on it to see when it was ready to pick. bq. Now they're hoping to get at least two pies out of the amazing apple. There is no mention of the taste but some larger Apples have quite a good flavor profile (Honeycrisp comes immediately to mind). Interesting development -- the economics of orchardry, do you spend a little bit of time and get a lot of fruit or do you 'micro-manage' each tree and get some whoppers. The practical balance has got to be somewhere in between but with 140 trees on the farm, we have an excellent lab to test with...