Wassail!

As is now somewhat traditional, at our January working party we wassailed the orchard.

Aside from drinking cider, a start was made on pruning the apple trees as well.

November, season of mists

Not many apples left now, but the medlars are ripe...

Heading into autumn

It's starting to turn a little autumnal in the orchard. On the upside, that means that fruit is ripening.

Please help yourselves to ripe fruit, but please only take what you need and leave some for others. We were a little disappointed to find on our last working party that all the apples had been stripped from Discovery, one of the earlier fruiting apple trees, along with all the greengages and plums.

Spring blossom

 

The paths were strimmed a few days ago for the first time this year, amid the spring blossom. We're looking forward to visiting the Baslow and Tideswell community orchards this weekend and hoping for more springtime colour!

April working party

Some rather better and more spring-like weather tempted a few more volunteers out for the April working party. Quite a bit of shelter belt pruning was accomplished, and all the trees were inspected for caterpillars. 

Our regular task of flattening molehills was slightly less onerous than last month. Some sterling work was done pulling up suckers and another back breaking task, repairing stone walls, was attempted. Your scribe was reminded that he is a rubbish dry stone waller. 

The pear trees are in full flower and there's plenty of buds showing on the apple trees.

March, and spring is (nearly) here

Today's working party (can you be a working party if there is only one of you?) dodged the showers to flatten plenty of molehills, and enjoy the signs of spring in the orchard.

January, and Wassail!

January in the orchard, and it's time to prepare for spring. Pruning of the apple trees is well advanced (we'll do the stone fruit later), and last Sunday saw a band of grease applied around the trunk of every tree to deter crawling bugs.

And, it being our January working party, the orchard was wassailed in the hope of a fruitful year!

Autumn colours

Our November working party was held amid the autumn colours, which seem to have lasted this year. We harvested the apples from our Api or Lady Apple tree, one of the very last to ripen in the orchard, along with a few medlars.

Visitors from Nepal

We were recently delighted to welcome some visitors from Nepal. Both are farmers who work with a local charity to help remote malnourished people to grow their own crops. The charity is connected to the UK via PHASE Worldwide and people in our NHS to help support the health work in these remote populations. They may now consider growing apples, but altitude may be an issue! We wish them every success in their endeavours.

Cutting back the shelter belt

Only a couple of volunteers made our August work party, but we managed to cut back the shelter belt. These trees were planted as tiny whips around 10 years ago, and now form a dense hedge on the lane side of the orchard.

High summer

And the grass is lush. Always plenty to do at our working parties, but also plenty to enjoy. Later flowering trees seem to have a reasonable amount of fruit, but some early flowering varieties suffered from the late frosts.

3-way Orchard Visit

Sunday 21st May saw our "3 Way Orchard Visit" to Baslow, Tideswell and Bradwell Community Orchards. Of the three, Baslow is probably at the lowest altitude and the most sheltered, reflected here in the blossom on Court Pendu Plat. You'll find links to Baslow Jubilee Community Orchard and the Tideswell Community Orchard in the panel on the right.

Court Pendu Plat is a very old French variety, known since at least the seventeenth century. It's not especially vigorous, as can be seen here and in the picture of our own tree lower down in this post.

Baslow had several Ellison's Orange trees in full blossom.

Tideswell is the highest, most exposed and youngest of the three orchards. Nevertheless, it is in good health and the trees are all growing well.

We ended our visits back in Bradwell. This is our Court Pendu Plat which is about to flower - it is full of buds, even if it's not obvious!

We have two quince in the orchard which have beautiful flowers. This one is Serbian Gold.
 

Blossom in the orchard

A glorious morning in the orchard saw some compost mulch applied round some of the trees, and a little bit of tidying up in the soft fruit bed. And delightful blossom to enjoy as well!

Pruning complete!

Our March working party was postponed by a fortnight following the heavy snow earlier in the month. With the somewhat milder weather, the stone fruit trees are budding fast and it was time to prune these. Having already pruned the apple trees in late winter, that completes our winter and spring pruning!

The turn of the year...

And we're back in the orchard, busy pruning the apple trees; a hardy group turned up today, and we managed to prune a few more trees before the rain got too intense. Here's one we did earlier...

Apple Day success!

A big thank you to everyone who supported our Apple Day event - whether by coming along, helping, making jams and chutney... whatever you did to support us, thank you!

Apple Day - Saturday 15th October!

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

With Apple Day coming up next Saturday, today's working party focused on picking the fruit. It seems generally to be a good year, so come and join us next Saturday as we mark Apple Day!

Tidying up behind the strimmers

A team turned out this morning to help rake up the grass cut yesterday, and to undertake a bit more strimming. No wonder the team are resting on their rakes, the compost bins are now full!

Three men went to mow, went to mow a meadow...

Our annual strimmer hire and onslaught on the grass started today. Three hardy souls turned up for a morning spent strimming which, along with efforts previously, saw the orchard grass cut. The taller grass seen at the top of the picture is the top of a reasonably steep bank closer to the bee hives, which is an area that we do not cut. Now to rake it all up...

Summer in the orchard

High summer in the orchard... and the grass needs cutting! We've also been busy summer pruning some of the more vigorous apple trees to constrain them slightly. This has included pruning out branches that cross over or rub, allowing more light into the trees so that the fruit can ripen.

Happily, there seems to be some fruit coming along nicely.

Joint visit to Baslow and Bradwell orchards

Today saw our joint visit with Baslow Jubilee Community Orchard. Originally planned as a three way visit with Tideswell Community Orchard as well, Tideswell unfortunately had to drop out at the last minute. Seven of us made our way over to Baslow, whose orchard is a little different to our own. It is located more centrally in the village, and the group have planted trees along Over Lane.

The main orchard is arranged around an open space, with the trees grouped by fruiting time along one side and in the other two corners.

Their "Court Pendu Plat" is almost as late a starter as ours - but theirs is at least in bloom, while ours was showing just a couple of "green shoots".

After a most interesting and enjoyable visit, we returned to Bradwell to share our orchard with the Baslow group. In the last week, our quince trees have decided to flower and how very pretty they are too.

Springtime in the orchard

A glorious morning in the orchard for our working party today.

3 way orchard visit - 15th May

On Sunday, 15th May we'll be visiting Baslow Jubilee Community Orchard and Tideswell Community Orchard, before welcoming members of those groups to Bradwell Community Orchard. Members will be aware of this from recent e-mails, so please do get in touch if you'd like to join the visit.

Spring in the orchard

Despite some recent frosty mornings, spring has definitely sprung in the orchard...