A Foggy Fenland Orchard

The last couple of days have been cold and  foggy and the orchards have been swathed in fog, lovely and atmospheric. The leaves are still clinging to the old Bramleys making for an autumnal scene but the Worcesters are completely bare now.

Such different views to that of the Idared apples at the beginning of the month

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!

Hail can be a fruit growers nightmare

Well it's been a day of changeable weather, one minute sunshine the next rain, not to mention the brief hail storm.

Hail can be a fruit growers nightmare. Hail can dent a growing apple and even cut the skin, although the cut can heal it heals with russet and can later split there.

No worries today though.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Plum buds

The much talked about late Spring is delaying everything in the orchard this year. In other years we have seen plum blossom as early as April, not this year. But the forecast for warmer weather this weekend should give everything a much needed spurt of growth, let's just hope that there won't be anymore late frosts.