http://www.youtube.com/v/7UC5Dr3tWDc http://www.youtube.com/v/7UC5Dr3tWDc
Here (click on the above link, I hope it works!) is a short video tutorial about saddle grafting, a very easy technique to acquire with a little practice which can enable you to raise your own apple trees or graft over established trees to a differnet variety.
Smile, it's springtime!
There are a good few snowdrops plus some primroses out, mainly in woodland edge and hedgerow shelter. Some of the sloe buds are just swelling and will be blossoming probably in very early March.. Seeing these very early flowers is one of the benefits of working outdoors in the orchard.
We are making some progress digging out the Bramleys to make space for pears, I have put something up on youtube about it. Having recently discovere youtube and had some positive comments and a fair number of viewers, I thought I would presume to put up an orchard diary with short films from the orchard to chart the seasons. I'll put up a short film of buzzards next, then hopefully when we plant the pears. Looking forward to blossom time, only 10 weeks or so to go, God willing.
http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html
Just done a little tidying up of the main site, corrected a few typos, added some text and put up a link to the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, a major omission corrected. We have booked more farmers markets for 2008 than last year, details will go up soon. I have nearly finished pruning the trees, there is a tremendous amount of fruit bud and the trees grew well in 2007, so we should have the biggest crop ever. The weight and quality were down last year due to the awful weather, but given an average year for 2008, we could easily get 12 tons. Even last year, in addition to the fruit spoiled by waterlogging and fungal disease, we lost about 2 tons of fruit, mainly Lord Lambourne, Kidd's Orange Red and Winter King, that could have been sold, because we just couldn't find time to get to enough markets. This was mainly to do with the fact that we are part time farmers with other responsibilities which we can't always control. We are planning harder for the coming year, learning the lessons where we can.
Julia and I will divide our forces and I'll take the family esate car while she takes the van when there are 2 markets on the same day, e.g. Alton and Southsea or whatever. I'm also hoping to start taking our apples to the Saturday market at Sunnyfields, not been yet. We'll go to Winchester markets together as it's so hectic there.
We are arranging a couple of Saturday work parties in February for friends of the orchard to clear the prunings. We are also, sadly but necessarily, going to remove 24 large but unprofitable Bramleys. They have grown out of control and fruit poorly, they are just too vigorous to manage. The soil in our orchard is very patchy, but these extremely vigorous trees by chance just seem to be in a very good bit, and all they do is grow , grow and not fruit much. Its a shame to cut down a growing tree but as my brother in law Bob, who works with a firm of receivers says, 'if you lost £8 down a drain would throwing £5 down after it make things better?'
We keep getting asked for pears, and it just so happens that a few espalier pears we grow for ourselves a few yards away are now doing pretty well. The excellent soil these Bramleys are unproductively using should grow pears excellently. We will probably go for 36 dwarf bush pears in all, half Conference for reliability, plus a few Beth, Concorde and Comice. We have a few rare varieties for ourselves, these ones will be purely for sale so we won't get involved in the rare old variety thing with pears as we have with apples, there is a limit!
You have less time to choose, buy and plant new fruit trees before the spring than you had when I mentioned it last, and a trip to a few nursery web sites today (see links inside the main site) are sold out of some varieties already, so do hurry or you'll have to wait another year.
http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html
It is time to be thinking about planting new trees or maybe even grafting over old trees to different varieties. Its not difficult. If you have an established apple tree in your garden but are unhappy with the variety, you can graft it over using simple techniques and no equipment other than saw and sharp knife , plus a bit of polythene tape (you can cut some from a freezer bag) and some scion wood from the new variety you want to graft in. I will put some videos on YouTube soon about how to do it, its too early to graft yet but not too soon to plan. You need to obtain the scion wood soon while still dormant, pencil sized and shaped 2007 growth, and keep it cool and moist until you graft in early spring.
The above picture was takaen in southern France and chows a very uniform orchard where the trees have been rafted over to a different variety.
As I mentioned, I have just put up 4 video turorials on pruning apple trees, which you can find by going to http://www.youtube.com and putting Fruitwise into the search box. I hope to put up more through 2008 as a teaching resource and to celebrate orchards-why not do the same if you can-it's free.
While wandering round youtube, and of course there is a lot of rubbish, and much schoolboy wanabbee guitar hero bedroom/study material(guilty, your honour), but there is also some really nice material. I particularly commend this splendid orchard video with the reading of a poem 'The old apple tree'. Do yourself a favour and click on the link below and watch it.
