Apple - Newton Wonder - Cooker

Newton Wonder - Cooking Apple

Newton Wonder apples are large green cookers with an attractive red tinge. Their flavour is less sharp than that of a Bramley, which gives them more appeal as a dessert apple and they bake to a similar delicate, fluffy texture. These are winter apples, with a heavy crop from November through to March.

Newton Wonder's History and Parentage

Like so many good English apples, there is a little tale about the tree's discovery. The landlord of the Hardinge Arms in the town of King's Newton spotted a sapling growing through the thatch of his inn during the 1860's and planted it in his garden. It did so well that by 1887, grafted trees were being sold commercially and the RHS gave it a First Class award. This means that the parentage of this tree is uncertain. The consensus is that it this tree is probably a cross between a Dumelow's Seedling and a Blenheim Orange, both of which are cookers with an orange russet colour.

Apple Tree Pollination guide for Newton Wonder

Your tree will be flowering around May and although it is self-fertile, it does need to be pollinated in order to crop heavily. Pollen from other trees tends to produce tastier apples too. As it flowers mid-season, Newton Wonder matches with any of the pollinators or fertile apples on our Apple Tree Pollination list. We have also identified a couple of selected pollinators in the list at the bottom of this page.

A crab apple tree is another way of ensuring strong pollination for a single apple or in an orchard of mixed apple trees and we recommend the Red-berried or Golden Hornet crab trees in particular as universal apple pollinators. It is a quirk of some Newton Wonder trees to flower poorly every other year. This does affect the size of the crop enough for this apple to not be as popular these days with apple growers but shouldn't bother a gardener at home.

Rootstocks for Newton Wonder

We use MM106 Rootstocks because they are suitable for our local soil types, drought resistant, grow to a size that is practical for you to prune and produce plenty of fruit. MM series rootstocks were entirely designed to succeed in Britain's soil conditions and MM106's growth rate is suitable for trees trained into fans and espaliers. A maiden or standard tree will grow to 4 metres,16 feet, with branches spreading out about as wide, depending on your pruning regime. A bush keeps the trunk short and has more vertical branches, up to 3 metres, 12 feet.