Old Belgian Fruit Varieties

In my mission to create the ‘ultimate editable’ garden, I obviously have a strong weakness for fruit trees.

And no, not just the regular ones, I planted some old rare Belgian varieties. The fruit often doesn’t look that ‘commercial’ (hence the varieties became rare) but they are often unbeatable in taste. Moreover they are much more disease resistant, by which I can ban chemical pesticides and insecticides in my garden of Eden !

To come to my selection, I first shortlisted varieties with the ‘RGF’ (‘Ressources Génétiques Fruitières‘) label. Varieties with this label came out as excellent resistant to common fruit diseases, after years of observation (the project started in 1975) in the agricultural research center of Gembloux. Second criteria was taste and tenability after which I came to this selection of old Belgian apple varieties:

• Président Roulin
• La Paix
• Joseph Musch
• Keuleman (no RGF label, but a beautiful tree)

Trying not be not too chauvinist, I added some varieties originating from other countries but with similar ‘attitude’:

• Alkmene (German)
• Colapuis (French)

Good websites (in Dutch) on this topic are VELT, Nationale Boomgaardenstichting, Guy De Kinder’s site

An English reference is the website of  the University of Reading, who has taken over responsibility for the curation and maintenance of the National Fruit Collection. The National Fruit Collection is one of the largest fruit collections in the world, it includes over 3,500 named Apple, Pear, Plum, Cherry, Bush fruit, Vine and Cob Nut cultivars.

Tags: fruit