Summer 2018 Volume 18 - Orchard Link
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Summer 2018 Volume 18.2 Part of the auction details for Higher Court Farm (Littlehempston) showing Lot 7, which included a centuriesold orchard of interest to the local community (image: by permission of Rendells)
Transcript of Summer 2018 Volume 18 - Orchard Link
Summer 2018 Volume 18.2
Part of the auction details for Higher Court Farm (Littlehempston) showing Lot 7, which included a centuries-‐old orchard of interest to the local community (image: by
permission of Rendells)
Higher Court Farm, Littlehempston
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Plan not to Scale
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ORCHARD LINK Orchard Link is a south Devon organisation set up in 1998 by apple and cider enthusiasts concerned about the disappearance of traditional orchards in the area. Its purpose is to promote the restoration and extension of orchards by offering technical advice and support to both existing owners and individuals or groups planting trees for the first time.
The committee meets at 7.30 on the first Thursday of January, March, May, July, September and (for the AGM) November, currently at the Church House Inn, Harberton. Members are always welcome.
Contact details
Email: [email protected] Website: www.orchardlink.org.uk
Officers
Chairman and technical advisor: Charles Staniland ([email protected])
Membership secretary:
Tim Walker ([email protected])
Equipment manager: John Gower ([email protected])
Newsletter editors: Gill Gairdner ([email protected]) Sue Hallam ([email protected])
Treasurer: Community orchards: Publicity/Media:
Robin Toogood ([email protected]) Sara Hurley ([email protected]) Tess Wilmot ([email protected]) Sue Hallam ([email protected]
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Editorial Even around here, orchards are not only about apples, so there’s a bit of a stone fruit theme in the newsletter this time round. Kevin Croucher gives a general view of plums, acknowledging that they can be tricky (p 5); Charles Staniland describes side-‐stepping the whole problem of inappropriate climate and growing apricots under plastic (p 10). And we include a relatively detailed account of the stone fruit pruning course held in April (p 8).
We also report on a community’s successful purchase of land with an old orchard in the middle of their village that would otherwise have been lost to developers because it shows what can be done – even at very short notice – when sites like this are threatened (cover and p 14).
We are pleased then to profile the new owners of Yardes Cider, Simon and Annabel Akeroyd, and get an idea of their plans (p 12): a Devon welcome to them both!
Last but not least, as we are still in our twentieth anniversary year, we asked one of the founder members of Orchard Link, Trudy Turrell, to remember the heady, zeitgeist beginnings of the organisation (p 8).
NB If any members would prefer to receive their newsletters in pdf form, please let us know.
Copy deadline for the next issue: mid-‐September.
Gill Gairdner and Sue Hallam
Chairman’s bit It’s hot and dry! Our orchards are now showing signs of strain – growth slowing, fruits not swelling rapidly, and the leaf-‐eating insects a-‐munching … . So reduce the burden by thinning shoots and fruits. Still have to remind plum-‐tree owners that big crops of plums equals big branch breakages, so thin your plum crop now! (If you have a crop, that is.) Actively monitor any your newly planted or young trees for whom the defoliation of leaves by caterpillars can be very significant. We have seen scary-‐looking tussock moth caterpillars at work, and they can shred 4–5 young branches in a week … .
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Maybe no scabby apples this year with such low rainfall. However, another prolonged dry weather issue is the potential damage done by livestock. This will be the time that tree guards are tested to the limit as hot and hungry animals rub and push and, if lucky, debark or rip off branches.
Orchards are such an important oasis of flora and fauna. Many species of moth and butterfly overwinter as caterpillars or pupae in the thick base of grasses, nettles and brambles and need some rough undisturbed areas to take refuge in. Continually mown or grazed orchard understorey is of limited use for many insects – even seasonal cutting of orchards can be quite disruptive for some species. In locations that are not over-‐managed there are usually wilder corners and margins that if left undisturbed can provide a good refuge. Try and leave some grassland uncut through winter or perhaps sow a dedicated area with tall rough grasses. Even the RHS now promotes ‘uncut’ areas.
Orchard Link will be at Kingsbridge Show (1 September) – come and say hello!
Charles Staniland (Chairman)
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Plum confused
People get a bit tied up by what is a plum, a gage, a mirabelle and a damson. The last two are botanically a bit different to the first two, but close enough that they will cross-‐pollinate and hybridise. The biggest difference is their site requirements. Mirabelles flower early so need a sheltered, sunny site. Gages prefer a continental climate of warm springs, hot summers and cold winters, so in the south west, particularly in mild coastal areas, may only crop if grown on a hot wall. Damsons are very hardy, so if you live on a cold windy site they may be your only option. Plums again like a winter chill and many don’t do wonderfully well in mild coastal areas. Across this general advice there is variation according to individual varieties, both in ability to crop well and in disease resistance. Beware some of the American varieties that were bred from Prunus salicifolia. Some found their way in to south Devon in the past, but they were bred for California. Very different weather.
Bacterial canker can be a major problem in our mild wet climate, particularly on heavy soils, though some varieties have inbuilt genetic resistance to a greater or lesser extent. What you can generally be assured of as a nurseryman is that most customers who want a plum tree, want a Victoria, but this is the variety least suited to the South West and most likely to be dead five or six years after planting. It needs perfect conditions. What you must realise is that ‘down yer’, some years you will get plums on your trees and some years you won’t, because our weather is fickle and changing. People move to the South West because they think that gardening is easy by comparison with ‘up country’. It isn’t. It’s different, but often quite a bit more challenging.
Kevin Croucher (Thornhayes Nursery)
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From seed to harvest Twenty years seems a long time ago, but the seed for conserving and growing orchards in our area was planted in 1989, when I worked for the South Devon Coast and Countryside Service.
Common Ground, the national charity that raised awareness of so much of our countryside and heritage, was campaigning about the loss of traditional orchards and old local fruit varieties. It was an issue that resonated with us, and so we started writing about orchards in the local press and set up a small Apple Day at Dartington to see if anyone was interested. Our phone lines were jammed. Apples appeared at the office, farmers and landowners called in and I was invited to numerous farms and smallholdings to visit old orchards, offer advice on restoration and see some of the amazing varieties of local apples; some unique to a parish or even a farm. In so many cases it was the older generation who remembered the names, told the stories of cider making and still kept a ‘cider parlour’ in an outhouse, where neighbouring farmers would gather to chat and drink.
What started as a small initiative became a real movement involving many people – from octogenarians sharing knowledge, skills and graftwood to new landowners learning to plant trees and make cider, from communities and schools planting new orchards to amazing ‘apple days’ that involved whole villages – the last at Landscove attracted over 3,000 people. Along the way we managed to save a huge but threatened cider press (now at Cockington Country Park), were invited to put on an exhibition on orchards in Devon at Kew and set up the Stoke Gabriel wassail – still a thriving event. Thanks to experts such as Long Ashton’s Alan Barnes we managed to collect and graft many of the old varieties to give to landowners, while his colleague George Gilbert identified many old and lost varieties.
Years on, when there were many new or restored orchards, we realised that while orchards were being cared for again, a lot of apples were left to waste, in contrast to the past when apples were pressed on the farm and cider drunk by all, even forming part of farmworkers’ pay. And despite the great enthusiasm for planting orchards, there was a definite skills gap when it came to pruning and managing them. A small group of us, including horticulturalist Ben Pike, came up with the idea of a mobile cider mill and
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press and bringing together the skills and knowledge of local orchard experts to train and support all those who were planting or restoring traditional orchards in the area. Thanks to a European grant to get the project started, we purchased the first mill and two presses; the small portable Vigo press plus the gorgeous handcrafted oak press made especially for us in Shropshire.
The rest, as they say, is history, but the success of Orchard Link beyond 1998 has been down to you, its members. Thanks must go to all the volunteers who have organised the hire of equipment, written the newsletter, administered the organisation, organised training days, stalls and socials. Orchard Link is now a thriving, self-‐supporting organisation supporting all those with orchards in South Devon. Long may it continue. I’ll certainly raise a glass of cider to that!
Trudy Turrell
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Stone fruit pruning course, 21 April Some participants’ accounts 1 Pruning plums, as anyone on the case will tell you, should happen in the growing season, not in the trees’ dormant season. At the end of April the trees have broken dormancy but are covered in blossom. Is it foolish or hard-‐hearted to prune away all nature’s insect-‐attracting abundance? We were very pleased to assemble at Shillingford Organics just south of Exeter. The fruit crop here is fed into their market stalls and veg box scheme, with the rows of fruit trees intercropped with vegetables and salads and clover/ryegrass used as fertility-‐building green manures.
The morning was warm and dry, which shrivels the risk of bacterial canker, and the trees are growing, which reduces the risk of silver leaf infection. So we set to using saws and secateurs with clear guidance to maintain or develop each tree’s overall frame. Impossible to do when in full leaf as it is difficult to see and select key branches. For light relief and easy satisfaction we thinned out and shortened older fruiting, tired and weedy wood. Looking at the growing piles of blossom wood on the ground caused a halt and a restart on the next tree. These trees were fairly neglected Victoria plums but with sufficient clean and healthy shoots around their trunks to know that they were growing well for the future. A benefit of pruning away and removing blossom is that there will be less risk of the anticipated heavy crop snapping the branches, with significant loss of potential. Also, the tree will be able to lay down good flower buds for next year without all the energy going into this year’s crop.
Having gained some confidence, after lunch we were faced with rather vigorous Mirabelle plums and tangled Merryweather damson trees. Their blossom was earlier and had caught colder, wetter weather, resulting in very poor fruit set. We thinned and removed some excess growth on each of these as part of a probable 3–4-‐year renovation plan. We could see the benefit of encouraging younger wood to deliver future crops and understand how our pruning contributed to this. So we had a very enjoyable session. Thank you Orchard Link, instructor Charles and host Shillingford Organics. We now better appreciate how to build the cropping frame, how to balance the crop and growth, and when to prune plums!
Simon Marlow
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2 The trees were in blossom, which is the best time for managing the balance of fruiting wood versus new growth from last season. While lots of blossom is reassuring you have to consider over-‐cropping and also plan for branch replacement. Charles demonstrated various techniques to achieve the required balance and participants had a good opportunity to try for themselves, it's the sort of skill you won't acquire from a textbook. After attending the course I felt much more confident about tackling the trees in my own garden.
Tony Oldroyd
3 Here are a few reflections on what I took away from Saturday. (I thoroughly enjoyed it, by the way, and it was good to work on more mature trees in order to see what we’ll be dealing with in years to come.)
⎯ The importance of maintaining an open framework, of not trying to ‘fix’ the tree in one go and provoking it into a lot of vegetative growth at the expense of fruit production.
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⎯ The importance of the long term in maintaining a balance between vegetative growth and fruit production.
⎯ Surprised by the propensity of plum trees to shoot from the rootstock and from suckers, I made a mental note to keep an eye on this in order to prevent all the tree’s vigour going into sucker growth.
Having had no real experience so far in pruning cherries, it would have been good to have the opportunity to try my hand at that. The subject for another training day, perhaps.
Chris Edwards (Week Community Orchard)
Apricots? Really?
Apricots in the orchard? Stone fruit are more of a challenge to grow than apples. The trees are early flowering, which means they are at risk from cold and wet at blossom time. Successful pollination is probably the key as many trees produce profuse blossom but are then hammered by cold wind or damp, and some years pollinating insects seem slow off the mark. For these reasons, and having an empty polytunnel, we decided to plant an apricot under plastic. This tree is now eight years old and continues to produce over 200 fruits.
Apple, Plum, Pear and Damson Trees
Field-‐grown standard trees Delivered throughout the West Country
Top Fruit Trees Tel: 01963 441101
www.ciderappletrees.co.uk
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You might have felt that apricots were the preserve of the heated wall-‐owning aristocracy, but, provided you can offer a degree of protection, the development of reliable new varieties makes them a lot more generally viable. Many planting up new orchards have optimistically included a bush apricot, and maybe there will sometimes be a small crop, but stick them in a greenhouse or polytunnel and wow! – the crops you can get!
Most of the apricots we buy in this country are the familiar orange variety and come from Spain, France, South Africa or California. They achieve their deep colour before they are fully ripe so the ‘shining fruit in a sweet brightness of golden velvet’ is often a horrible disappointment, lacking juiciness and tasting of woolly
nothing because they have been picked and transported before their time.
In other words, to get the beauty of a fresh apricot you have to grow your own, and there have been many attempts to do just that in this country – starting with Henry VIII in 1542, whose gardener brought back trees from Italy. Later, in the eighteenth century, Lord Anson at Moor Park in Hertfordshire bred the fuzzless Moorpark apricot (the Moor Park gardens also produced the first commercial strawberries). But there has been almost no commercial success.
The trees are fairly vigorous, needing something like 10–12-‐foot spreading space, but can be kept to 6–7 feet in height. Reasonably deep and fertile soils are needed. Leading fruit nurseries have a good range of varieties – if the name ends in ‘cot’ it’s probably worth growing. Most trees are supplied on Torinel or St Julien A rootstocks.
The biggest input for tunnel-‐grown fruit is water. The trees suck up large quantities throughout the summer. So flooding the trees in winter before growth starts is important. Some sites and soil types (but not mine) may allow seepage from outside the tunnel to replenish the soil moisture. Mildew
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can affect fruit bud development. But once you have success, make sure you thin the maturing fruits as the fruit ‘set’ can be over-‐heavy, affecting fruit size and reducing next year’s crop.
There is copious information on the internet about apricots. This short piece is mainly to suggest you give it a go!
Charles Staniland
Yarde Cider Yarde Cider, which has been producing award-‐winning drinks in the village of Stoke Gabriel, just outside Totnes, for the last 15 years, was recently taken over by husband-‐and-‐wife team Simon and Annabel Akeroyd.
Yarde Cider doesn’t own any orchards. It simply collects apples from orchards in the immediate and surrounding area and mills and presses them. Equipment is fairly basic: a Voran hydraulic twin bed press, a semi-‐automatic labelling machine, an old forklift truck, pumps and filters and lots of IBC tanks. It produces a range of drinks, not only traditional Devon cider and a Normandy-‐style (keeved), lightly sparkling cider but also apple brandy, elderflower cordial/pressé and, of course, apple juice. No sulphites are added to any of the ciders and fermentation relies purely on the wild yeasts and natural sugars from the apples. Simon and Annabel also grow a lot of the plants that add flavor to their drinks – rhubarb, gooseberries, purple elderflower, Japanese wineberries, blackcurrants and (under glass) ginger – and small batches allow them to experiment. The drinks are sold online and locally to cafés and pubs around Torbay, Totnes and Dartmouth.
Simon’s passion for orchards began when he spent school holidays at his father’s farmhouse in the Calvados region of Normandy, nestled among the lush, rolling hills and cider orchards of France. The farm had a cider orchard and they produced cidre bouche, calvados and Pommeau de Normandie.
Simon worked for a few years at Denbies, one of the largest vineyards and wineries in northern Europe, while studying viticulture (vine growing) and oenology (winemaking) in Sussex. He then managed the fruit department at the world-‐famous RHS garden Wisley, looking after one of the largest apple collections in the country with over 1,000 different varieties. It was here that Simon met his wife Annabel, who was also working as a fruit specialist, with
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particular responsibility for propagation, grafting and budding in the fruit nursery and maintaining the fruit collections.
Simon spends much of his free time giving talks and demos on apple growing and cultivation. He has also written a number of gardening books and contributed to national magazines on horticulture and fruit growing.
Simon and Annabel are thrilled to have returned to their original passions – making cider and supporting the conservation of apple orchards. As part of developing the business they are keen to find new suppliers of Devon apples this season – in particular, they are hoping to track down some of the more unusual apple varieties with a view to creating single-‐variety ciders. So do contact them if you think you may have some apples available. They are also keen to locate orchards in need of restoration, being ready to take on this work in exchange for making use of the crop. A further plan is to buy rootstocks later in the year and start to graft/bud Devon fruit varieties to sell.
For more info, www.yardecider.co.uk. Or follow on Twitter @sagardenwriter and @yardecider. Contact Simon on 07591 220391/[email protected].
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Littlehempston saves its orchard! When a local farmer died in Littlehempston, near Totnes, his farm was divided up into a number of lots, one of which comprised both a centuries’ old apple orchard and a flood meadow in the very centre of the village (see front cover). The auction was to take place in March this year.
Littlehempston is an extremely pretty and desirable spot and there was a very real possibility that property developers would buy literally everything. The village community has already shown its proactive mettle by adapting the parish church for more general community purposes and buying and re-‐opening the village pub and immediately on learning of the auction it came together and launched a fund-‐raising campaign. They only had 24 days to raise an indefinite sum, but a collective spirit and a keen appreciation of the value of securing an outdoor community space and combining this with nature conservation and biodiversity enhancement prompted 42 individuals – including some ex-‐residents – to contribute amounts from £5 to many thousands.
Triumphantly, this enabled the village to successfully bid £58,000 for the four-‐acre plot (Lot 7) they were interested in. A couple of villagers independently managed to purchase another of the plots (Lot 4), which they plan to make available for community use. And developers did indeed buy most of the remaining lots … .
Jon Morris, chairman of the parish council, said, ‘We are not against development assuming it is done sensitively’, but ‘now have the chance to create some wonderful natural space that will be available for all and enhance community life.’
The village still needs to raise money to manage and restore the area. If you are interested in donating to the fund, cheques can be made payable to ‘Village Community Space’. Please write ‘Land Littlehempston’ on the back of the cheque together with your contact details and send to: Land Littlehempston, 2 Church Cottages, Littlehempston, Totnes, TQ9 6LY.
BACS details are – Account: Village Community Space, Sort Code: 30-‐98-‐69, Account No: 02271067.
Gill Gairdner
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More deer … Following his article on fencing against deer in a previous newsletter, Graeme Prowse has let us know that he is happy to advise members on deer and orchards, only charging if there are costs involved.
Contact him at [email protected].
Courses and events ORCHARD LINK Saturday 11 August, 9.45–3.30, Bud Grafting Course, with Tom Nancarrow of Pip & Stone, Dartington area. £25.
Chip budding is one of the easier forms of grafting and under a very experienced eye you will have plenty of practice before you work on the three MM106 apple rootstocks provided to each participant, using material from the orchard or from your own trees.
For information about this event and/or to book, use the booking form online or email [email protected].
1 September, Kingsbridge Show, from 9.00. Come and say hello to us at the Orchard Link stand.
ORCHARDS LIVE Saturday 21 July, 10.30–1.00, Budding Course, with Tattwa Gyani, near Bishops Nympton. £7/£6.
Saturday 11 August, 10.30–1.00, Summer Pruning Course, with Jane Pay, Chittlehamholt, South Molton. £7/£6.
Saturday and Sunday, 6 and 7 October, 10.00–4.00, RHS Apple Day, including apple ID.
For information about any of these events or to book, please contact Jane Schofield on 01884 861181 or [email protected]. (Editors: All these events can be found on the organisations’ websites. The Tavy & Tamar Apple Group also runs courses/visits. Orchard Link and Orchards Live share each other’s membership discounts.)
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A view of the apricot fruiting well in Charles Staniland’s tunnel (see article on page 10) (photo: Charles and Mary Staniland)
The views expressed in this Newsletter are the views of the individual authors and their contributions are
their copyright.
Printed by Veaseys Printers, Totnes
