A tree laden with a full crop of developing fruit is a wonderful sight, but there can be too much of a good thing. Our pear cordons are putting on a great show this year. I had thinned some out, but still they are groaning under the weight of the crop. Except one. It tried… Continue reading Overburdened
Tag: apples
First planting of our newly grafted apple trees
It is now some four months since we made five grafts from our mystery apple tree. Although we did not expect them all to develop – especially as I was wasting time taking photographs for the blog instead of making the grafts with the normal haste – all five have survived and are growing away… Continue reading First planting of our newly grafted apple trees
Busy bees
Our bees have been busy working on the spring blossom, first the pears, which flower early in the warmest part of the garden, and then the cherries, and soon the apple blossom. Temperatures last week were high enough to allow a brief inspection of the hives. Of the four that went through the winter, three… Continue reading Busy bees
Encouraging signs from the grafts
We recently grafted some wood from our mystery apple tree onto MM106 rootstocks. Although too early to be sure about the quality of the grafts, there are some encouraging indications, with all five showing signs of life and some with good new shoots developing. The scions clearly had a number of fruit buds developed, which… Continue reading Encouraging signs from the grafts
Grafting the mystery apple tree
I have written before about our mystery apple tree and our attempts to identify it. Every now and then I look at the tree and wonder whether it might be worth rejuvenating it with some serious pruning. However, long before we moved into the house, the tree had evidently been hacked back to the main… Continue reading Grafting the mystery apple tree
Winter pruning of the cordon apples and pears
Our cordon apples and pears are pruned largely during late summer. However, there is usually some work to do in winter, cutting back secondary growth and thinning spur systems. The latter is not easy to do until after leaf fall, when the structure is more readily observed. With spring around the corner, it was definitely… Continue reading Winter pruning of the cordon apples and pears
Finnish Christmas recipes – rosolli
Rosolli is the classic salad accompaniment to the Finnish Christmas meal, going particularly well with the cured herrings. Some add herring to the rosolli, when it is then known as sillisalaatti – herring salad. This variant is particularly common in Sweden. We, though, prefer to serve the salad without adding herring, and serve several different… Continue reading Finnish Christmas recipes – rosolli
St Edmund’s Pippin
Amongst our collection of traditional apple varieties, St Edmund’s Pippin has done particularly well this year. It is an early to mid season russet that keeps for just a couple of weeks. During that period, it is a remarkably fine dessert apple. It takes its name from Bury St Edmunds, where it was raised… Continue reading St Edmund’s Pippin
Tidying up the fruit
Over the last couple of weeks we have been tidying up some of the fruit in the kitchen garden. Whilst our orchard trees will be grown as bushes or half standards, along with full sized specimens of chestnut, walnut, and mulberry, all of the fruit in the kitchen garden is trained in some sort of… Continue reading Tidying up the fruit
Planting out the orchard
It was many weeks ago when the last of our orchard trees arrived. As the planting site was not ready and the weather was poor, we healed them in, in one of the vegetable beds. Before we ordered the trees we had found somebody to give us a hand preparing the planting sites, as this… Continue reading Planting out the orchard