Orchard Maintenance - Grass Cutting and Weed Spraying

Orchard maintenance continues with essential grass cutting and weed control. Brambles, elder etc are sprayed with a selective herbicide.

Apple wood scoops and goblet from Blended Monkey Crafts

Simon of Blended Monkey Crafts emailed us this photograph of a few things he has recently made from apple wood.

Record the Day - Spring Bank Holiday - May 27th 2013 - The Neglected Orchard

In the neglected orchard some of the trees are dead

whilst others are in blossom

weeds are now above knee height 

and branches are almost touching along the aisles.

Other Record the Day posts:

April 18th

April 28th

On Log Fires and Bank Holiday Weekends

So another Bank Holiday Weekend and another cold, polar, maritime air mass bringing rain and  below average temps yet again!

Time to make use of the "log pile", apple wood makes excellent burning:

 Beechwood fires burn bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year
Store your beech for Christmastide
With new holly laid beside
Chestnut's only good they say
If for years 'tis stayed away
Birch and firwood burn too fast
Blaze too bright and do not last
Flames from larch will shoot up high
Dangerously the sparks will fly
But ashwood green and ashwood brown
Are fit for a Queen with a golden crown.
Oaken logs, if dry and old
Keep away the winter's cold
Poplar gives a bitter smoke
Fills your eyes and makes you choke
Elmwood burns like churchyard mould
Even the very flames burn cold
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread
So it is in Ireland said
Applewood will scent the room
Pearwood smells like a flower in bloom
But ashwood wet and ashwood dry
A king may warm his slippers by!

On Pruning Plums - David Atkins The Cuckoo in June

"Like cherry trees plum trees are very vulnerable to bacterial canker, which gets into any wound. One should not prune until May; then, when the sap is running strongly, cuts heal quickly. Even so one has to paint each cut immediately it is made."
                                     
The Cuckoo in June Tales of a Sussex Orchard by David Atkins

Photograph of plum blossom taken May day

Sometimes in apple country you may see - Vita Sackville West

 

Sometimes in apple country you may see

A ghostly orchard standing all in white,

Aisles of white trees, white branches, in the green,

On some still day when the year hangs between 

Winter and spring, and heaven is full of light.

                                                                                                                "The Land" Vita Sackville West

Charlie the Orchard Cat

Lots of farmers keep feral cats on their farms to help reduce vermin and fruit farmers are no exception however Charlie here is himself a bit of an exceptional cat.

He started life as a feral cat hunting in the orchard and he did very well for himself, supplementing his diet by pinching the farmer's wife's pet cat's dinner!

Unfortunately for Charlie he was reluctant to keep his hunting to just one orchard and would cross the road to another. I think you can imagine what happened next, Charlie was involved in a road traffic accident.

Luckily for Charlie the other farmer's wife (not the one whose cat's dinner he thieved but the lady across the road) found him and took Charlie to the vet. Charlie lost part of his tail, and his manhood but we won't talk about that, and discovered life with a family. A family with dogs.

Charlie can now often be seen, when he isn't out hunting which is still a favourite occupation, accompanying the dogs on their daily walks around the orchard.

Spartan Apple Blossom - Blossom Walk

The Orchard Year continues the virtual blossom tour with a look at the Spartan apple blossom.

So here we are in an English orchard looking at a Canadian apple!

The Spartan apple was developed in a formal scientific breeding programme at the Canadian Apple Research Station in Summerland, British Columbia, in the 1920s.

It is grown successfully throughout the UK and is a popular garden variety. Spartan is a sweet  red apple with very white flesh.

Other apples featured in The Orchard Year 's Blossom Walk are:


Grenadier Apple

Emneth Early

Bramley Apple

Worcester Pearmain

Idared Apple Blossom

Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom

Grenadier Apple Blossom - Blossom Walk

Today The Orchard Year continues the virtual blossom tour with a look at the Grenadier apple.

The Grenadier is an early cooking apple which is ready for picking around mid August.

It was discovered in the mid 19th century and was once widely grown but is now rarely produced commercially.

The Grenadier is however an easy apple to grow being resistant to many apple diseases and makes a good apple tree for the garden.

Grenadier apples have a wonderful apple flavour and cook really well, they make a good base for preserves of all sorts such as jams and chutneys which is a good thing as they are not particularly good keepers.

Not the most attractive of apples the Grenadier apple can have a ribbed effect. The trees in this orchard are used as pollinators for the Bramleys.

 Other apples featured in The Orchard Year 's Blossom Walk are:

Emneth Early

Bramley Apple

Worcester Pearmain

Idared Apple Blossom

Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom

Emneth Early Apple Blossom - Blossom Walk

Today The Orchard Year continues the virtual blossom tour with a look at a less well known variety of apple the Emneth Early.

Although there are still some pink buds on the tree the Emneth Early is living up to its' name and some of the future apples are now visible, they should be ready for picking by mid August.

 The Emneth Early is a medium sized, yellow / green skinned cooking apple with an excellent flavour it was once grown commercially in North Cambridgeshire, but less so now.

Developed in 1899 by one William Lynn and named for the village of its' "birth", Emneth, the Emneth Early is also known as Early Victoria.

This particular tree is the only surviving Emneth Early in an 8 acre orchard, its' survival entirely due to the octogenarian Mother of the fruit growers preference for Emneth Early apples in her apple pies!

 Other apples featured in The Orchard Year 's Blossom Walk are:

Bramley Apple

Worcester Pearmain

Idared Apple Blossom

Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom 

 and there are more to come.

How bees communicate the location of food sources - The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee

 Bees are of course incredibly important for pollination of the fruit trees, this video of the waggle dance of the honeybee answers the question of how can honeybees communicate the locations of new food source?

 Austrian biologist, Karl Von Frisch, devised an experiment to find out how honeybees communicate the locations of new food source By pairing the direction of the sun with the flow of gravity, honeybees are able to explain the distant locations of food by dancing. "The Waggle Dance of the Honeybee" details the design of Von Frisch's famous experiment and explains the precise grammar of the honeybees dance language with high quality visualizations.

This video is a design documentary, developed by scientists at Georgia Tech's College of Computing in order to better understand and share with others, the complex behaviors that can arise in social insects. Their goal at the Multi-Agent Robotics and Systems (MARS) Laboratory is to harness new computer vision techniques to accelerate biologists' research in animal behavior. This behavioral research is then used, in turn, to design better systems of autonomous robots.

For additional detail on the MARS lab at Georgia Tech, please visit http://www.bio-tracking.org/.

Bramley Apple - Blossom Walk

The Orchard Year continues the virtual blossom tour with a walk down the row of Bramley apple trees

During the 1940's there were over 6 million Bramley trees producing fruit in the UK, sadly those days have now gone but the Bramley apple is still prized as a cooking apple and for juice.

The Bramley has an interesting history, it was actually grown from an apple seed planted in 1809 by Mary Ann Brailwood, in the garden of her parents house in Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Some 40 odd years later Matthew Bramley bought the house in Southwell and in 1856 gave permission to Henry Merryweather to take cutting from the apple tree in his garden on condition that the apples be named after him.

 The first recorded sale of the Bramley apple is found in Henry Merryweather's accounts, on 31st October 1862 3 apples were sold to a Mr George Cooper of Upton Hall.

 Bramley apples are tart tasting they have a high level of acidity and cook to the lightest and fluffiest of purees, perfect for apple sauce, pies and cakes.

The original Bramley aaple tree is still surviving and producing fruit.


Follow The Orchard Year 's virtual Blossom Walk, as well as the Bramley apple featured in this post we've already looked at the following apple trees in blossom


Worcester Pearmain

Idared Apple Blossom

Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom 

 and there are more to come.

Help save the Somerset Badger and win a Matt Sewell watercolour painting

Artist Matt Sewell has donated this orginal watercolour painting to support the Somerset Badger Group who are trying to raise funds to vaccinate badgers against TB rather than them having to be culled. Read what Matt has to say here and visit the Somerset Badger Group 's Just Giving page here to donate and get a chance to win this super painting.

Worcester Pearmain Apple ~ Blossom Walk

Walk through an English orchard full of blossom with The Orchard Year 's virtual blossom tour.

An early season apple Worcester Pearmain originates, as you might guess by the name, from Worcester in England where it was developed in the 1870s.

Worcester Painmain is a popular apple with its' distinctive strawberry flavour which deepens the longer the apple is left on the tree before picking.

Worcester Pearmain has been used as the basis for a  number of breeding programmes resulting in many  varieties of apple including Discovery.

 Follow The Orchard Year 's virtual Blossom Walk, as well as the Worcester Pearmain featured in this post we've already looked at the following apple trees in blossom


Idared Apple Blossom

Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom 

 and there are more to come.

Idared Apple - Blossom Walk

 Join The Orchard Year 's virtual blossom tour with a Blossom Walk through an English orchard:

Idared 's aren't an English apple, they were developed at the University of Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station (hence their name Ida...) in 1942 and are grown in this particular orchard for their exceptional keeping abilities. Harvested in September / October they can actually be kept, in the correct conditions until up to June the following year.

Taste wise the Idared apple can be a little tart  it is a dual purpose apple, good for eating or cooking.

The trees are now in full blossom. As you can see from the above photograph the petals are beginning to brown, many of them will be blown off with the high winds we are experiencing this evening.

Follow  The Orchard Year 's virtual Blossom Walk, we've already looked at the following apple trees in blossom
Discovery Apple Blossom

 Gala Apple Blossom 

 and there are more to come.

Gala Apple Blossom ~ Blossom Walk

The second day of The Orchard Year 's virtual blossom trail continues with a walk through the avenues of gala apple trees:

Gala is an incredibly popular apple, recently out ranking the Cox apple in the popularity stakes, yet it was only really introduced commercially to Great Britain in the 1980's.

One reason for it's popularity is the simple fact that the Gala apple is one of the most widely grown apples in the world making it a supermarket favourite. The supermarkets can stock Gala all year round as not only is it grown in both the northern and southern hemispheres it is also an exceptionally good keeper.

The Gala apple is a cross between a Golden Delicious and Kidd's Orange Red, Kidd's Orange Red is an offspring of Cox's Orange Pippin. It was developed by J.H. Kidd in New Zealand in the 1930's.

Gala is a sweet "easy-eating" variety.

Join The Orchard Year 's virtual Blossom Walk:
Discovery Apple Blossom