Crab apples

how do you tell when there ready for picking ? - ours are a sort of golden orange colour there quite firm and smell of apple - we missed the boat last year and dont want to this year as we want to make some crab apple jelly

Carl

 

The most visible sign is loads of them on the ground under the tree. If these aren't in a suitable area for collecting and washing, pick one from above and cut in half to check whether the pips are brown. All the crab apples round here are ripe.