[1st time veg grower]

Can you make crab apple jelly etc out of any kind of crab apples?

I have a massive crab apple tree in the garden that has started dropping its fruit - the fruit themselves are quite small, smaller than a plum. Would like to use them for something, if possible, as at the moment they are just falling off and rotting all over my lawn or getting eaten/played with by my dog.

Many thanks.

[Yorkie]

Absolutely yes 

I'm sure you will find a recipe for it somewhere either on this site (seach facility or the recipes pages via the link near the top banner) - failing that, look for an apple jelly recipe and use that instead.

[1st time veg grower]

Hurrah! Thank you. That's good news - I hate waste...especially when its rotting all over my lawn and drive-way!

[hamstergbert]

Don't forget you are not limited only to crab apple jelly with crab apples!  Crabs will 'carry' other flavours readily while supplying the pectin necessary for a good 'set'.  You can try a mix of crabs and ripe elderberries (ratio around 50:50 works OK usually),  or blackberries, or mountain ash (rowan) berries , or rose hips, or marrow and ginger etc etc etc  

Don't chuck away the slightly damaged ones either, they are still perfectly usable given all the processes that they undergo en route to the jamjars.

Greatest resource going at this time of year, access to a load of crab apples!  (We were collecting loads yesterday with the car parked nicely out of the way and returned to it to find a pair of concerned MOD Plods from Menwith Hill base not too far away who had spotted the car and wanted to check it out.  Previous service, plus of course bags of crabbles sonn made them realise that we were not about to chain ourself to their fence and burst into choruses of "we shall overcome" or some such)

[1st time veg grower]

Looked at some other posts earlier today and have just made some 'hedgerow' jam. Took dog for a walk this aft and collected some blackberries, elderberries, damsons, rosehips, hawes and a few slows. So, have got started by using some of the crab apples from the tree in it too.

Like the idea of ginger and have an elderberry bush in the garden too so thanks for those ideas. Have found a few more recipes for jelly/jam one with lemon or cinnamon and one with rosemary or sage.

V pleased I have it now!

[RosieMay]

I've got a crab apple tree with small apples and I make jelly with them.  I have found that they are better picked yellowy/pink, once they have turned red they have started to go off.