Rosette apples

 We struggle a bit to get our apple trees to thrive. They get too overgrown with grass and bracken for much of the year. Year on year we are getting better at keeping them clear and they are slowly starting to have more fruit (which the bastard birds eat!)

This on e is a rosette. Early fruiting.

Protecting the trees

 The sheep are terrible bastards for chomping on trees, even big ones, so these tiny trees we planted in Autumn need good protection so they can manage to get to fruiting size. There is a barrier a bit away from the tree so the they can’t eat the leaves, and then I decided they needed something round their spindly little trunks too so if they make it through the first line of defence at least they can’t bite clean though the trunk!

Fingers crossed they survive to fruiting age. We are also trying some hemp mulch around the bottom to suppress weeds and give them a chance to grow - it’s a hard life being a tiny tree around here, they need all the help they can get!

This is the new section Doug has cleared. Soon we will plant more trees here!

Grow tree grow!

Moving some trees

 We planted some columner fruit trees 3 years ago on a steep bank. They have not been happy there amd it has been very hard to keep the grass from round them (can’t mow as it is too steep and strimming is tricky round such tiny fragile things) so we have moved them in the the veg patch. Maybe it is too late for them and they are permanently stunted (or possibly dead in one case), we shall see...

After

The bank I moved them from

Now the sheep have more grass to graze!

So I don’t forget which is which is which...

From the back left when standing in the middle of the potager 

Golden gage, Czar plum, Bramley Apple

Victoria plum, may berry, jubilee plum

Star burst cherry, morello cherry, star burst cherry

Then on the bank by the tea bush

Cox, scrumptious and winter gem apple

Conference pear

The Orchard

 I’m noting here which tree is which so we don’t forget! 

All are from left to right starting from the top

1st row: Old apple, Old fallen over apple, 5 year old Bramley apple

2nd row: New Falstaff, 5 year old Falstaff (which may be just rootstock as it died back), 5 year old Rubinette, Old russet apple, Crab Apple

3rd row: New bramley, 5 year old rosette, new rubinette, new winter gem

4th row: New boscoop, going to add a new rosette here

We need to get some protection round the new trees for when the sheep pass through

New Trees

Possibly our last delivery ever from the UK (hopefully not, but it felt fortunate they made it through all the chaos. Companies are now telling me they can’t now post to the EU from the UK, some temporarily due to lack of clarity and some permanently due to high costs - so good to be seeing the benefits of brexit!)

We got a few new apple trees and a crab apple to go in the orchard below the house, also a mini apricot, plum and cherry to go in the potager garden with other fruit. Hopefully one day under a fruit cage. We have some other mini trees that aren’t doing well on the bank, so we plan on moving some of them to this spot too.

This pear in the orchard is rubbish, so Doug is chopping it down to make room for the crab apple.

These are the mini trees for the potager

They all look like twigs

I dug a hole, we decided it was in the wrong place, so I filled it in. Poppy unfilled it again, how helpful!

Tea bush. Camillia sinesis

 I was SO excited when I read in the paper the other day that the bush tea is made from will grow fine in the UK, meaning that presumably it would here too. I had always assumed it was a hot climate plant, but apparently they are good down to -10°C

We are starting off with just one until we see how it goes, but would like to get a few more in the fulness of time if it pans out. Not all plants thrive under our care 😳

I’ve cleared a space for it, but the weeds are jostling to come rushing back in.

It arrived looking very healthy

Bramley apples!!

They are not ripe yet, but the birds had pecked a few so I decided to harvest them early. The tree doesn’t have very many apples left on it, maybe as many as 10, but it is the most it has ever had (ie more than none!).

I have made some stewed apple and bramble (the brambles just ripe have gone a bit wonky from frazzling heat then 2 days of rain, so they were just as well stewed). Not sure what I will do with it now. Crumble or pie probably...

Peach Jam

Our peaches aren’t great for eating, but they make very good jam. Unfortunately the birds think they are good eating and often get a lot before they are ripe.

Fingers crossed for bramley apples

This tree (and the others as well!) has had a bit of a hard life as it has to fight with bracken. It is only just winning and this is the first year we *may* get fruit from it. It does keep losing them though so we shall have to wait and see. Fingers crossed!

You can see there is still plenty of bracken in here

some fruit on this tree too though - also much happier than previous years

This is the other side of the orchard that has not been strimmed for years (the better half with the apple trees has been done 3 times this year to get it in this better state. You can see it is a lot lot worse - basically impenetrable. Job for the autumn or next year...

Raspberry Jam

Only the 2nd year we have had enough raspberries to make jam so still very exciting (it may never get boring as it is so yummy and goes with peanut butter soooo well).

It takes some effort to protect them from the birds!

But worth it for all this yummyness

We have also had some strawberries but not so many

More gardening, eating and drinking

Is the garden getting boring yet?? As I said before, we would rather be skiing and living our old normal life, but there is a lot of satisfaction with getting the garden sorted, trees cleaned up and things we often don't find time for.

I planted these columnar trees two years ago. Despite my best efforts they have been a bit weed swamped and not maybe kept watered enough. This is the year they are going to be cared for well enough to fruit the following year! In this photo I have strimmed the bank, but not obviously right up to each tree

Break for lunch.

Bacon and egg sandwich!

This is after I have trimmed all the grass from round each of the 11 trees and mulched with material, with horse poo on top and staked each tree.

Sloe gin and tonic reward!

Peach pie

It's that time of year again. PEACHES. Some of them are tasty raw, but on the whole they are best in a pie.

Peach pie

The peach tree had loads of peaches this year. So many one of the branches snapped!
Some of the peaches are nice for eating, but for some reason they are mostly better cooked. We have had a few peach pies. Yum!
Not the most artistic pie, but tasty.

Fruit!

We have done really well for fruit this year. Better than ever before!
This is the entire black current harvest. Which is about 100 times more than previous years. It is in the freezer now.

We had infinity more blueberries than previous years, but something ate a lot o them so not as many as we should have had. I don't think it was birds as I netted them reasonably well. Mice??

Mirabelles and cows

Just an excuse for a cute picture really.
There is a Mirabelle plum tree in the middle of the field that Bear and Venus are in at the moment. They are just ripening and I made some nice jam. We have another tree that has more yellow fruit than this one.

Pulling the apple tree upright

Our favourite apple tree fell over in the Autumn under the weight of the apples.
Doug chopped the branches off a little while ago. We tried to push it upright by hand, but it was too wedged in place. So we got the mini digger and pulled it up with that.

This is after we had got it a tiny tiny bit more upright by hand. But not really good enough!

Only time will tell whether it will stay upright and whether it will survive the loss of branches and the twisting on it's roots.

Apple trees

We are a little late on the pruning and getting the garden under control, but doing as much as we can amongst going to Paris, skiing and moving animals about.

Doug cut the branches off the tree that fell down so that we can try to resurrect it. May or may not work, but worth a try. Clearly we need to push it upright now.

I have pruned the apple trees (not the ones I planted in the autumn, the slightly older ones). They have been in 4 years (or maybe even 5), but we failed to prune them for a few years so I had to be a bit drastic last year and this one. Hopefully will all come good and we will get some Bramleys soon! It also has a hard life as it was blown over and gets swamped in bracken each year as well.

Trees planted

I mentioned here that Doug chopped down a giant holly tree. This was part of a push to clear the bank below the potager so we could plant the 11 columnar (with a little pruning, they grow in straight columns with just tiny branches so they are a compact way of having fruit trees and therefore easy to pick) fruit trees that we had ordered.

After chopping the holly, before clearing the bank

Bank cleared

Some landscaping done and trees planted.

They are rubbish looking little sticks at the moment, hopefully they will spring into life in the Spring...

We have now planted grass seed on the bank and around the trees. The hope is that the little wooden beds are going to make it possible to strim without taking out the trees and we will be able to stop the brambles and nettles returning and swamping the little trees. It was a lot of work to clear this area and it is depressing how quickly brambles and nettles return - regardless it seems of how thoroughly you remove them.

So I can remember later, they are (from the left along the bottom row then back from the right along the top row)
Sunburst cherry
Czar plum
Brambley apple
Morello cherry
Golden greengage
Conference pear
Winter Gem apple
Scrumptious apple
Cox apple
Victoria plum
Williams pear