Month: April 2021

Bonus apple seedlings

I spent the last week on pilgrimage to the North, staying in the Viking village at Murton Park. It was a wonderful escape from everyday life and was topped off by the discovery of apple seedlings sprouting in the area around the old apple tree behind the site of the recently-burned-down forge. I rescued a good number of them, and have added them to my apple tree stash. One seedling is a second-year survivor, which has been chopped off at some point but is sprouting well. Of the rest, four look pretty good, and three very feeble. The parent tree was badly damaged by the fire but is sprouting on one side.

In the round pot, a seedling from the tree-behind-the-forge that is in its second year. In the square pots, sundry new seedlings scavenged from the Village Brown (originating from the same tree)

On my return home, I found that one of my Braeburn pips has sprouted, which brings me back up to three after one of last year’s seedlings mysteriously died. The seed came from a pack of six apples that I bought in April from Morrisons, and unlike the first batch they are from the UK.

Braeburn pip newly planted with the root sprout in the ground.
The two surviving Braeburns from 2020
Five Gala seedlings now split into individual pots
All the remaining apple trees!

The wintry feel of April

After six months of rain over the winter, followed by a few days of blissful warm sunshine, we’ve returned to icy blasts of north wind and drought conditions. All the trees in the orchard are alive, except for the old (probably Victoria) plum which had to be removed last year because it had silverleaf fungus right down into the roots.

Last year, most of the trees lost their fruit due to May frosts. Will the current frosts be early enough that the trees won’t mind? Only the plum and damsons are really in flower yet.

Everything is pretty shaggy, or as we like to call it, “nature friendly” ahem
Left to right; Louise Bonne of Jersey Pear, Wyken Pippin apple, and Uvedale’s St Germain pear all getting ready to flower
The Hambledon Deux Ans apple tree is still tiny after having been munched by cows in 2018. But it’s now taller than its protective frame, at last, and fixing to flower.
In the frames, the Fairleigh damson foreground, preparing to flower properly for the first time, and the Portugal quince, coming into leaf but not flowering yet.
The old apple tree, which we’ve been pruning each year since the wall of leilandii was taken down and it’s now almost a proper fruit tree! And to the right, the new quince again.
In the protective fence, the native black polar tree is way taller than me now.
In the protective frames, left to right, Shropshire Prune damson, Rivers Early Prolific plum, Nottingham medlar and finally the cherry tree from Morrisons, planted by the previous owners. The damson and plum are starting to flower; the medlar is coming into leaf.