Entrys about topic 'orchard'
Many thanks to the hardy locals who joined us to plant some new
trees yesterday - 24 x cherry plums (Prunus cerasifera) at
the rear of the Paddies, and 6 silver
birches (Betula pendula) at the foot of the Meadow, to counteract the exposure
caused by Brantwood's recent felling of their
mature woodland on our boundary.
Luckily, the rain only started once we were all safely back indoors
consuming our festive lunch.
Topics: 'forestry' 'land management' 'orchard' 'trees' 'volunteers' 'work party'
Imagine the blossom
Alistair did a nice new site map for the NGS day, featuring a sketch of the "Future Orchard" at the top of our Wildflower Meadow. This is currently just a mown stock-fenced paddock with 24 blobs of mulch set at regular intervals where this coming winter we will plant some very young fruit 'maidens' (as young grafted apple plants are known).
As with all good childcare we'll then ignore them for the best part of a decade - before (we hope) realising they have turned out rather well and enjoying the fruits of our labours.
For now - like all fanatical gardeners I am already working on next year - I am sourcing the 24 trees, 6 of the most altitude, wind and rain-proof varieties from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
So far I have:
'Scotch Bridget' - a locally grafted specimen, she does well in Cumbria I am told
'Gravenstein', 'Brownlees Russet', 'Duke of Devonshire' (Bred at nearby Holker), 'Mere de Menage', 'Monarch', 'Keswick Codlin' and 'Hawthornden' - from the lovely R V Roger Northern fruit specialists
From Irish Seed Savers I'll be ordering 'Yellow Pitcher', 'April Queen', 'Cavan Sugar Cane', 'Kemp' and 'Keegan's Crab' which apparently isn't a crab.
Finally, Wales will be represented by 'Cissy', 'Bardsey', 'St Cecilia', 'Pig Aderyn', 'Croen Mochyn' and a 'Snowdon Queen' pear - yes a pear, found at 1000' on the slopes of Snowdon!
As the nice man at supplier Gwynfor Growers says "that should love Coniston!'
Topics: 'Fruit' 'orchard' 'winter'
3 Comments:
Don't abandon your maidens for 10 years. Train them and prune them to the shape and form you want. This is art and if well done will make them more productive later in life. Also keep them well fed and weeded with mulch and make sure the soil is not acidic.
I enjoyed visiting on NGS day. Thank you. Tremendous achievement. Beautiful house and garden and delicious cake. BUT you need clover in the grassed terraces to build fertility.
I'm only joking about the neglect! Thankyou for the advice on the clover too - I wonder if we can overwinter it by sowing now?
You can probably get away with sowing white clover into the first week of September but the earlier the better. You have to choose between the traditional small leaved Kentish wild white and the modern varieties. We are currently using a variety called Crusader which is so vigorous that it can smother out grass and its effects can be seen in crops 3 years after it is ploughed in. I have only ever sown red clovers in the spring. They only live for a couple of years or so but are very vigorous.
Thanks to the heroic endevours of our new land intern Ed Bailey we have finally got around to preparing the unlikely looking bit of land at the top of our SW-facing meadow, which will become a small orchard next year...Inspired by planting a wall of fruit at Abbey Gardens in London a few weeks ago, and by thinking 'If we'd planted an orchard when we first moved in here we'd be eating apples by now!'
The site will be a challenging one -200m above sea level, and rather exposed if sunny, so I'll also plant a surrounding hedge inside the dear-dissuading stock fencing - probably hawthorn as it's so twiggy and in leaf so early too. Much as I fancy shaped espaliers and fans they'd be decidely out of place up here and - more seriously - I know that with the emphasis on labour-saving we are best to choose the standard tree shape, below which -in the future - animals can graze and people can picnic.
Being organic, our ground prep (the meadow was cropped a few months ago by some hungry Exmoor ponies and is usually maintained for wildflower interest) consists of rotivating (now) the hedge-line and a 1m square for each tree (they should eventually reach circa 3m in height each) about 3.5m apart. We'll then spread a thick layer of well-rotted cow manure on this newly exposed soil, then cover with a light-excluding mulch of carpet or plastic, and let nature do the rest for the next 8 or 9 months. Then next winter I'll have a fork about under the mulch and we should see a decent if thin top soil level to plant into in Feb / March time.
I now have the delectable task of trawling through books and websites to choose the toughest apples I can find - I've decided to create the United Appledom of Grizedale by choosing 6 varieties each from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland - and by all accounts for the rare ones you need to get your orders for next winter in now. I'll be looking for early ripening varieties, and ones from the wetter parts of those countries. Any variety recommendations welcome!
Topics: 'apples' 'Fruit' 'orchard'
2 Comments:
Egremont Russet would be nice. (If you can..?)
I'd like to, but apparently Lord Egremont, whose gardener bred it, only grew it somewhere down South and ironically it does badly up here :-(
Looking east from the farmhouse, new 'orchard' on left
Contributors:
- Adam Sutherland[28]
- Alistair Hudson[1]
- Dorian Moore[1]
- Karen Guthrie[89]
- Lisa Stewart[42]
- Maria Benjamin[6]
Topics:
- animals[2]
- apples[2]
- bad weather[2]
- Bracken[3]
- Brantwood[2]
- building[15]
- carving[2]
- demolitions[2]
- drainage[2]
- drilling[2]
- farming[2]
- Fruit[2]
- garden[12]
- gardener[2]
- gardening[2]
- grand designs[2]
- ground source heat[6]
- hedgerow[2]
- honesty shop[2]
- Japan[2]
- Japanese food[2]
- Kitchen Garden[5]
- Lawson Park[26]
- Lawson Park building[4]
- lighting[2]
- National Garden Scheme[3]
- orchard[4]
- pigs[3]
- progress[2]
- raised beds[2]
- roof[3]
- seeds[2]
- sewage treatment[2]
- slate[2]
- spring[2]
- trees[2]
- vegetables[3]
- view[2]
- wildflower meadow[4]
Months:
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2012
- January[1]
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2011
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2010
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2009
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2008
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2007
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2006
2 Comments:
Karen,
Can I add flesh to your rather basic comment? “Brantwood's recent felling of their mature woodland on our boundary”, is being undertaken in order to perpetuate the long-term viability of this ancient, semi-natural wood. Begun in 1998, the work has involved re-cutting of the vastly over-mature ‘stored’ oak coppice-stools that were felling themselves with the weight of their multi-stemmed growth. This work is part of a whole estate Woodland Improvement Grant Scheme, but, at your request we have, currently, retained an edge of mature oaks on our shared boundary, subject to their continuing health and the risk to the deer fence beneath them.
The re-growing coppice in this wood is now ready to begin harvesting again and may, in fact, provide materials for your forthcoming workshop with Charlie Whinney.
Sally Beamish, Estate Manager, The Brantwood Trust, January 3, 2012 12:09
Thanks for this interesting information Sally! Lots of the volunteers asked me why it was being done and I couldn't give them much information so this is a real help.
Karen Guthrie, January 4, 2012 14:21