What types of apples could Pat be digging up in Wonderland’s ‘The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill’

Question

When Alice’s giant arm reaches for the White Rabbit, and he goes flying into the cucumber frames, he calls upon Pat the gardener for help:

“Pat! Pat! Where are you?” And then a voice she [Alice] had never heard before. “Sure then I’m here! Digging for apples, yer honour!”

So what could Pat’s apples be in terms of actual plants that Carroll may have had in mind? (It must be remembered that Carroll wrote in his Diaries that he had studied Natural Botany - Diaries, Vol. 2, p. 89; that he owned dozens of books on botany and plant lore, in Lovett, Lewis Carroll Among his Books, pp. 35, 97, 137, 172, etc; and that he loved to attend flower shows throughout most of his life, for this also see The Diaries of Lewis Carroll)

Answer 1

In Carroll's original manuscript, Pat (short for Patrick, presumably) is quite clearly intended as a comically Irish character. Note the repeated use of "shure" (rather than sure) as a prefix to almost every statement he makes, rhotic pronunciation of "arrum" (for arm), repetition of "yer honour", use of "at all at all", etc.

That being the case, the obvious thing for him to be digging out are potatoes, colloquially known as "Irish apples"

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The Annotated Alice (The Definitive Edition) makes a similar point.

Is this another French joke? As reader Michael Bergmann points out in a letter, "apple" is pomme in French, and "potato" is pomme de terre, or "apple of the earth." No, it is an Irish joke. Pat is an Irish name and he speaks in an Irish brogue. As Everett Bleiler informs me, Irish apples was a nineteenth-century slang term for Irish potatoes.

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Answer 2

"Earth apple" (also "earth-apple") is a common euphemistic name for Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, and cucumbers. The harvest of the former two is procured through digging.