Apple harvest begins ..

27 September 2024

The apple trees are now hanging heavily with fruit.

We reclaimed the orchard in 2011 as, over a long seven months we removed  decades of choking undergrowth that had completely hidden the trees.

The orchard had

been planted in the years following WWII by the Polish airforce personnel who moved onto the site after the war. Lane’s Prince Albert, Cox’s Orange Pippins, Bramley’s. Our six apple trees were part of a bigger fruit tree orchard that included the remains of cherry trees - and we’re keen to preserve what is left. Orchards are being rapidly lost. They provide unique habitats for invertebrates and the birds and mammals that predate on them.

After our clearance, the trees slowly recovered from their incarceration. We helped them by following the tenets of old orchard practice and pruning by removing one branch a year to remove cross-crossing and diseased branches.

We also transplanted our apple codons from the allotment to provide a boundary ‘hedge’. Mostly desert apples.

One of our largest original orchard trees died a few years back. We’ve left it as standing deadwood to benefit invertebrates…. and, in my dreams, stag beetles and passing lesser spotted woodpeckers.

The trees will never achieve the goblet shape of classic apple trees but, in good years, they’re fruiting productively.

2022 was a bumper year, providing stored apples into May of the following year. 2023 was a void year due to late frosts but in 2024 the exceptionally wet spring and lack of frosts have resulted in plentiful crops.

I’ve begun the harvest and will store the apples in paper-lined reclaimed bread trays.

Windfalls will lie beneath the trees for invertebrates including ants, butterflies, wasps and hornets .. and to benefit over-wintering thrushes.

All an absolute privilege.