5 Top Tips for Planting Apple Trees

We are coming into the main planting season now.  Here are some things to be thinking about.

1 Soil condition is vital. If your soil is not friable and you are smearing the sides of the hole the tiny root hairs cannot break through the solid barrier.  Leave it to another day.

2 Soak the tree overnight and keep the roots covered before you plant. Do not let it dry out in the wind.

3 Put in the stake; dig the hole; plant the tree as you go.

4 Planting depth is critical, make sure you are not planting too deeply.

5 Guard the tree immediately.  Rabbits can be very quick off the mark.

Pruning workshops

Our pruning workshop season has got off to a great start.

Saturday 21 January found us in Marlborough with an audience of 70. Everyone was very knowledgeable and extremely enthusiastic and the questions came thick and fast.

We were privileged to be invited into the orchards at Marlborough College to demonstrate pruning techniques on old trees and also into the grounds of Waitrose where we were able to show how to prune an espaliered apple tree.

Many thanks go to Philippa Davenport and her team for organising a very successful and enjoyable day. 

Wiltshire seems to be having great success with both its local food projects and its community orchards, which is good to know.  

Our workshops here in Somerset at West Bradley are filling up fast but we can still squeeze a few more in, so do get in touch if you are interested.  Dates are 9 & 23 Feb and 3 March.

Springwatch Christmas Special Part 2

We had a great day filming with Springwatch and were blessed with wonderful weather.  You can see the results at 7pm on BBC2 on Boxing Day, and if you miss that it will be repeated at 3.15 pm BBC2 on New Year’s Eve.

The feature is about mistletoe and the damage it does to apple trees despite its importance as a wildlife habitat.

There was no shortage of mistletoe in the traditional orchard at West Bradley, unfortunately, as is the case in so many of our Somerset orchards.  Neil was eager to get at some of it with his pole saw and Kate was happy to get her hands sticky with the berries.

The crew, from Bristol, were charming, and included Scott Tibbles, son of the great wildlife cameraman Maurice Tibbles, and a great wildlife cameraman in his own right.

It will be a short piece in a review of the year, but we will all be glued to our screens!

BBC Springwatch Christmas Special

Kate Humble

We are delighted to reveal that a small part of the Springwatch Christmas Special will be filmed at West Bradley Orchards.  Kate Humble and her crew will be spending a day with us towards the end of November to film a piece on mistletoe.  

Yes.  Mistletoe!  Seasonal it may be, and an important habitat for several species including mistlethrushes and blackcaps, but we have mixed feelings about it.

Although we are pleased to say there is not a trace of mistletoe in our commercial plantings it does cause us problems in the traditional orchard.  If you don’t keep a serious eye on it it can get away from you and rampage through the trees, eventually killing them.

The only solution is to remove the entire branch, right back to the trunk. Cutting out just the plant only makes the problem worse.

Happily for the BBC there is no shortage of mistletoe at West Bradley and we hope they will be able to capture some of the mistlethrushes in flight.  Not many birds are attracted to the white berries so they are a reliable food source throughout the winter for those birds that do know about them.

Other creatures for whom mistletoe is an important habitat include the rare and endangered Mistletoe Marble Moth.

We hope we will be able to get across our message about the importance of managing traditional orchards properly for both diversity and productivity.

The programme will be broadcast in the Christmas schedules.

Orchard Groundforce celebrates 100th orchard!

Neil Macdonald & Andrew Longman

This week we added the orchard at Snagg Farm, Ditcheat, farmed by Andrew and Brian Longman, to the list of traditional orchards in our care.  When we checked we realised that this brings the current total to 100!

Neil Macdonald, director of Orchard Groundforce, said 

“We are proud to look after more than 13% of the traditional orchards in Somerset.  

In some cases this means harvesting the apples but we also provide a full service, pruning and managing the trees throughout the year.  Andrew’s orchard is just the sort we like, with good access and quality fruit” 

Snagg Farm has been in the Longman family for over 100 years.  The orchard consists of 4 acres of traditional cider apple trees with about 140 trees, producing around 30 tons of fruit. 

Andrew Longman points out the very tree under which his grandfather was standing when, as a young child, he heard the siren sound out from Evercreech, just a few miles down the road, to signal the end of the First World War.  The date was 11 November 1918.

“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the orchard" he says. "I think everyone is a bit more wise now to their responsibility to look after what’s around them and I’d like to leave more when I go than when I got here.” 

Pick-Your-Own weekends at West Bradley Orchards

West Bradley Orchards, the home of Orchard Groundforce and Orchard Pig, will be open for PYO apples and pears on the first four weekends of September, Friday - Sunday, 10.00 - 5.00.

We have lots of unusual and rare varieties including Charles Ross, Kidd’s Orange, Ashmead’s Kernel and Orleans Reinette as well as the usual Bramley and Cox.

Join us on Sat 10 and Sun 11 September only for our famous Apple Scrumping Days!  You can make your own apple juice from the apples you pick - a blend of your choice or a single variety.

We provide tuition, equipment and bottles; you just have to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.  You can even make your own labels. Take home your own personal apple juice and amaze your friends!

NACM/Bulmer’s Open Orcharding Day 12 July

The immaculate surroundings of Bulmer’s Hockhams Farm at Martley, Worcestershire were the location for this year’s Open Orchard Day, sponsored by the NACM.

Over 200 growers were invited to the 540 acre site, as well as suppliers of equipment and machinery to the industry. 

Chris Fairs, Growers’ Advisory Manager, led a walking tour around the orchards during which guest speakers made short presentations at designated stops.  

Topics included a summary of new varieties planted at Hockhams, removing fruit from young tree leaders to maintain shape, summer pruning techniques and the use of gypsum in orchards. 

The machinery on show introduced growers to equipment designed to improve growing and harvesting techniques and everyone was treated to a picnic lunch accompanied by cider.

Neil Macdonald from Orchard Groundforce said “This is an essential event for growers.  It’s a great opportunity to network and to find out the latest thinking in the industry.  We came away with a lot of food for thought.”

One of the topics we found most interesting was that on summer pruning.  Chris Fairs gave a presentation on summer pruning in Fiona and Gilly trees, two of the new varieties planted at Hockhams Farm.

With 450 acres planted at the farm, producing 10% of the total Bulmer’s crop, some of the trees just do not get pruned in the winter, plus the fact that they grow so fast they sometimes need to be pruned twice.

Hereford soils are richer than ours here in Somerset, nevertheless this year we have seen some fantastic extension growth on our young trees.

On the whole we still feel that we are talking about winter pruning and summer shaping.  What you prune in summer is not going to regrow. What you prune in the winter is structural and is going to encourage new growth in the spring. But if you need to cut off the end of a branch - not recommended in the winter - you can do that in the summer because the sap has stopped rising.

And if you have only one or two trees in your garden, cider or dessert, and you have a branch that consistently gets in your way when you are mowing the lawn then June is a good time to get rid of it.