Many thanks to those of you that have been removing the tent caterpillars. They had spread to almost all of the apple trees so the orchard has taken quite a battering from them. Bridget didn’t notice any on the pears or stone fruit trees. Over the past couple of weeks she has removed 4 trugs full of caterpillar-infected leaves and we know others have been doing the same. Bridget only found one tree with ‘tents’ so fingers crossed that we’re on top of them now.
Many thanks, too, to those of you that have volunteered to look after specific trees in the orchard. We have 47 trees in total and there are still a number of trees that have not been ‘adopted’. If you would like to volunteer to keep an eye on one or two trees while we are unable to hold work parties, please let Bridget know.
As would be expected given all the problems we’ve had this year, only a few of the apple trees have any fruit – and then just a handful on each tree. Some of the pear trees have measly looking fruitlets but let’s see how they develop.
Turning to the soft fruit, there are gooseberries on the bushes, some of which are ready for picking now so please help yourselves. The blackcurrants, red currants and white currants are all doing well and should be ready in a couple of weeks or so. The rhubarb is probably done for this year. It suffered in the drought so will be recovering well now we have the rain, building up reserves for next year’s crop.
We will not have anything from the stone fruits this year unfortunately. The disease, frost and drought were too much for anything to develop.
When Ellie joined Bridget in the orchard the other week, she suggested some tasks that we may want to consider once we’re back to regular work parties. Hopefully we’ll soon be back to those work parties, having a break around the seating area and catching up with all the local news!
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