- Hey, everyone, you're watching Preppy Kitchen,
where I, John Kanell, teach you
how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
Today is a very special day,
because we're planting an apple orchard,
and I wanna show the whole process with you so you can see
everything that happens on our cute little farm.
And by the by, it is so cold today!
These trees have been covered in snow,
but it melted just enough for us to plant them,
and let's get started.
(relaxed guitar music)
So cold! (laughs)
Look at this.
There's no blood in here.
It's like a zombie (laughs) gosh.
If you've ever searched for apples on preppykitchen.com,
you've seen tons of recipes,
and a bunch of them are even YouTube videos.
Hello, apple fritters, apple pie, apple pie cookies,
apple cobbler, the list goes on.
I love apples, and I'm so excited to grow my own now,
so I can just walk out to the front yard,
pick a few, and then go bake.
It's amazing.
This mega tree over here, I think it's like 1,500 pounds.
Transporting them was crazy, and they all arrived last week
on a huge truck. (truck beeping)
It took like an entire day to offload them.
They've been sitting out here while we wait for the weather
to kind of calm down a bit, and now they're going in.
If you're wondering what kind of tree this is,
it's called a 20 ounce.
It's called that because their apples are huge.
They're like big, massive apples,
and they're supposed to be really good for baking,
nice and juicy, crisp with a little bit of tang,
so I'm very excited.
We got four of these big trees,
and they'll be at each of the corners in our grid.
(cheerful guitar music)
And I tried to be a big kid, didn't work.
Not sure if you know, but the house is actually
on top of a hill, so we have some flat land.
It slopes on three of the sides.
We had to choose a place for the orchard,
and we wanted it to be in a grid.
You wanna give apple trees some space.
They don't wanna be like too close together.
It'll help,
especially when they're growing their canopies out.
Their roots have room to breathe, and everything else,
so we had to plan the exact location for all the trees.
These are some of our grids.
We ended up going with a grid that had a central axis,
so there's a pathway going this way,
a pathway going that way, big trees on the outside,
some of the smaller varieties inside.
So if you remember my tour video that I filmed previously,
click up here for that, we saw a big old apple tree
at the front of the property,
and it was covered in tiny apples, but took a bite,
(apple crunches)
didn't go so well.
They're full of tannin, so you get that puckered mouth,
like, taste,
not good for eating.
Not good for baking.
They are great for making apple cider, though.
I've never made apple cider.
If you have any hints on it, let me know in the comments.
I think it's something I wanna do next fall
when all these are blooming.
There are some local cider presses,
so we can harvest those apples and take them over,
and I think it works like we'll get some free cider,
they get free apples, everybody's happy.
(upbeat music)
I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm not an apple expert.
I know enough about apples to bake a delicious pie
or whatever else, but not enough to plant a whole orchard,
so we made friends with Peter Montgomery, an apple expert
who's been teaching us so much, and for this video,
I thought it'd be fun to share his knowledge with you,
so I don't have to make any things up.
Peter, can you tell us a little bit
about the apples we planted?
- All right, so the apples that we planted,
we've chosen four varieties.
They're four different sizes,
because that was what was available at the nurseries.
We have a 20 ounce apple.
We have a Honeycrisp, Cortland, and GoldRush,
and all of them are general purpose apples.
You can use them for baking, for cider,
for just fresh eating.
- Fresh eating.
Luckily, we're on a windy hill,
(Peter and John laugh)
so it's like the perfect condition for apple trees.
It's blowing all that fungus right off, right?
- You're right.
You do have good wind up here, and when it does rain,
plenty of sunshine, open space, it should be ideal
for these trees.
- [John] And that little cider apple tree
is too congested, right?
- It's too congested, but it's a gem.
That is what people want for cider trees.
- How many apple bushels will I get, do you think,
from my little orchard that I plant?
Not the existing trees, but the new one?
- You could probably get 50 to 80 bushels of apples,
depending on the season.
- So there's gonna be like drowning in apples (laughs).
- Oh, you'll be, (laughs) your horses may grow,
because you're gonna feed 'em so many apples.
- Oh, oh my gosh, I haven't even told them about the horses.
That's a secret!
(Peter laughs)
Do you know what that truck is?
It's all of our appliances getting delivered
for the new kitchen.
That's what it is.
- That's fantastic.
(ambitious classical music)
- I don't know if I told you,
but we're opening up a farm stand.
This is like one of the most exciting things
that's happening this year.
It's almost done.
It's gonna be open ASAP, or it might be open already,
depending on when this video gets put up.
There's a little bit of time to edit them,
and the apple orchard is right across
from the new farm stand, so people will come over,
get to me and say hello if that's something they wanna do,
or they can just go buy their fruits
and vegetables and apples.
We'll be selling them, too, because honestly,
like even if I bake, bake, bake, bake,
bake, bake, bake, bake, bake, bake,
I can't eat all those apples.
I couldn't even eat all the apples we have
for the existing trees on the property,
so really it's kind of about growing food,
trying out new varieties,
but also engaging with the community,
and selling things that you grow on your land.
I think it's really cool,
and I'm excited to be part of a farming community now.
(energetic music)
I am so glad we got those trees in before the ground froze.
It is getting frosty, and it is East Coast weather realness.
Anyways, in the spring, those trees are gonna wake up
and come back to life all comfy cozy
in their new surroundings,
and we're gonna have tons and tons of apples.
Give me suggestions for what to do with them
in the comments.
I cannot wait to get to baking, making drinks, I don't know.
Let me know.
Okay, it's getting really cold, so just by the by,
if you missed my "We moved to Connecticut, what happened?"
click over here for that video.
I'm running in right now, but hit that like button
and subscribe, and I'll see you in the next video (laughs).