The story of our orchard so far-September 2009 I have always loved apples and thought orchards very special places. I dreamed of having my own orchard much as a boy dreams of playing soccer for England, an impossible dream.  Julia and I married in 1976, a few years later we obtained a copy of "Practical Self Sufficiency" by John and Sally Seymour, the Good Lifer's Bible. As we read this, we began to dream about maybe a self sufficient smallholding, including but not primarily apples. I'm talking about our thoughts and dreams in the early to mid 1980s. One Sunday in a Sunday Times colour supplement there was a piece on old English apple varieties with a special offer from Highfield nurseries for 6 cordon apple trees. The varieties were Early Victoria, Michaelmas Red, Orleans Reinette, Ellison's Orange, D'Arcy Spice and Ashmead's Kernel. Accompanying the article were watercolours of each fruit. The very names of these apples sounded like poetry to me, the paintings were delectable, the descriptions of their flavours tantalising. Why couldn't we taste these apples, thought I?  Surely there had to be more to apples than Cox and Granny Smith? I was firmly hooked from that moment. The years passed..........work, mortgage, kids, the usual. I earned reasonable money but had no free time. I looked in the local papers for land adverts and quite often 1 or 2 acre paddocks came on the market for 3 thousand quid or so. I thought, I'll have one of them one of these days for an orchard, but not this year we're too busy.. Then came the property boom of the late eighties. When I tried to buy a bit of land, was horrified by the price hike.  I kicked myself for not having  done it a few years earlier-prices of small parcels of agricultural land in southern Hampshire were driven by property speculators to £20,000 an acre and worse. We more or less gave up our dream. Then came the property crash, a lot of speculators got their fingers burned, and one day in the summer of 1992 I saw an advert in a local newspaper that made me blink, rub my eyes, look again, and yes, it still said 9 acres in Durley for £35,000. It wasn't a misprint, but a neglected bit of rough pasture owned for decades by a widow in Basingstoke who rightly reckoned she would be better off with the interest on such a sum than the paltry rent she received for the grazing. I should mention that in those days you could expect 6% or more interest on savings, that was before the government became quite so badly addicted to financing public expenditure through massive borrowing. We bought it, legal ownership going through on September the 11th 1992. We knelt in thankful prayer on the land and asked God to grant us success. 4 months later 3 men and a woman tucked into a fine lunch at my expense at the Farmer's Home pub in Durley. They had just planted an orchard and 300 yards of new hedgerow. One of the men, Paul, a professional gardener, said "I've seen many apple trees planted in my lifetime, but never with so much care." Thanks Paul. We called the first planting Bunyards, after George and Edward Bunyard of Kent who wrote so inspirationally about English apples around the turn of the 19th/20th century. It contained 250 trees on just over an acre, varieties planted based on our reading, we hadn't been able to taste many of these apples since they were unavailable in shops. Varieties were Bramley, Ellison's Orange, Ribston Pippin, Laxton's Epicure, Egremont Russet, Sunset, Ashmead's Kernel, Spartan, Winter King (Winston), Sturmer Pippin, James Grieve, Kidd's Orange Red, Suntan, Lord Lambourne, Orleans Reinette, Red Pippin, plus a few plums (Victoria, Warwickshire Drooper, Merryweather Damson, Cambridge Gage). We also planted blackcurrants and Christmas trees (Norway Spruce) between the trees to try to make some money by taking an alternative crop from between the young trees before they filled up the space. I don't recommend doing this after our messy and unprofitable experience! The currants just about paid for themselves, the Spruces were far more trouble than they were worth although we did get a return from them. I discovered I had a contact allergy to Norway Spruce needles. One of the reasons I consider myself qualified, within limits, to offer advice is that we made so many silly mistakes that we can at least help others avoid. The next stage of the orchard was planted in 1997. The theme of this orchard, named Filbarrel after the old cider apple, slightly larger at 1.5 acres than Bunyards, was cider and rare varieties. 64 cider apples on MM111 large rootstocks were planted at 20 feet apart with Sunset apples on MM106 in between them to take a crop while the cider trees grew up. This has worked reasonably well although due to light sandy soil the trees haven't grown as quickly as I'd hoped. (In the winter of 2005/6 we removed the Sunset interplant trees to give the cider apples more room, the orchard is looking better for it. In spring 2007 I 'crown lifted' all the cider trees and cut back the Crimson King cider apples back to the trunk and main branches and top grafted them over to Dabinett and Harry Master's Jesey, which are more reliable croppers and less prone to disease. The Crimson King fruits rotted on the tree most years-they are a reccomended cider fruit but we have found them our worst performer by far-perhaps they would do better in a cooler climate. (*)The grafts took very well and as of September 2009 are carrying a very good crop, I'll have put videos up on youtube. (*) editing this in July 2011, in fact I have to change this opinion. Kingston Black has consistently cropped worse that Crimson King. Where there are a few surviving branches of Crimson King on grafted over examples, they are healthier and giving a better crop that the Kingston Blacks. I think this is largely due to better control of fungal disease. Kingston Black is overrated and I am probably going to get rid of the last ones. It may perfeorm better in wetter soil but for us its an extremely weak orchard performer. We now hope to let the cider apples on MM11 stock in the Filbarrel orchard get really big and manage the orchard very minimally, as a place of beauty and an informal camp site for sleep overs etc with maybe a light crop of 100 gallons of high quality cider almost as a by product. We also have a semi wild area called the 'Peace orchard' which we are developing as a wild flower meadow with widely spaced semi-neglected trees. We let any interesting wild flowers that appear stand by mowing around them and have bought in some Cotswold flower seed like corn cockle, marsh marigold, poppy etc and are going for maximum bioderversity and minimum inputs of nutrient and energy, even if it means a smaller crop. Cider varieties were Kingston Black, Crimson King, Sweet Alford (Le Bret), Yarlington Mill, Dabinett, Harry Master's Jersey and Tremlett's Bitter. More about these elsewhere. All the trees in this orchard and the next were grafted by me to save money-several £thousands were saved. We grafted the cider trees on MM111 to give bigger, longer lived, trees. The sandy nature of the soil has not helped, but they are growing better now as the roots get down. This very light sandy soil is far from ideal for apples but it's what we had. As the late John Seymour wrote, 'Give a man an acre of desert and he will make it into a garden, rent a man an acre of garden and he will make it into a desert.' Ownership and continuity are good-you will invest for the future as you hope to see the benefit. The trees took better than our earlier planting since we were not hamstrung by our earlier refusal to use herbicide and pesticide-the first planting had had to struggle unequally against insect and fungal pests as we waited for the "natural balance" of pests and predators which never came. We realised we had to start a spray programme like everyone else or abandon the project. Julia ended up planting a lot of the trees herself in the late winter of 1997/8 after I hurt myself in a cycling accident. She did a pretty good job, but its better for two people to plant a tree. The rest of this orchard is made up of rare varieties such as Pitmaston Pineapple, Saint Edmund's Pippin, Adam's Pearmain, Miller's Seedling and a few others, as well as some sound 'bulk' varieties such as Bramley, Lambourne and Kidd's Orange Red. (*) writing in July 2011, I have grafted over all but 2 of our MIller's Seedling to May Queen ( al late variety) and Baker's Delicious (early) because these are more reliable croppers and sell much better at market. I overdid Miller's Seedling earlier probably due to an exaggerated account I read in a book. Live and learn. We planted the final orchard in 1999/2000. Resisting the temptation to call it our Millennium orchard, we named it after William Cobbet, the 18th Century radical, writer, MP and farmer who lived in Botley, our village's most celebrated historical resident. Cobbett's was a simplified orchard made up of 12 rows of 33 trees each made up of the 'bulk' varieties we thought would sell best. We planted 3 rows of Lord Lambourne, 2 of Kidd's Orange Red, half each of Sturmer Pippin and Orleans Reinette, 1 of Epicure, 2 of Egremont Russet, 1 of Winter King,  2 of Spartan (this was a mistake as despite it's merits, this variety does not sell well and is very prone to scab and canker, I grafted the Spartans over to Suntan and Ashmead's Kernel). In the centre of the field there is a space surrounded by Sunset, which always produces profuse a dense show of  large pink blossom. This creates a great visual effect at blossom time. Behind them in the direction of Mincingfield Lane are 2 rows of Bramley, and beyond them a row of Merryweather Damsons. Beyond that are (were, see below) blackcurrants, gooseberries, a few more plums, some rare apples and 3/4 of an acre of Market Garden area, sadly neglected due to time and energy constraints. The soft fruit proved to be unprofitable, so it has gone. Not that profit is our main motive, but when we couldn't sell blackcurrants or gooseberries for enough to pay ourselves the miniumum wage just for PICKING the fruit (not a penny for growing, transporting and serving at a market stall etc) it was time to re-evaluate, so all 120 currant and berry bushes (except half a dozen for our personal use) have been dug out and burned. Opal, Victoria, Marjorie's Seedling and Blue Tit plums have gone in their place. Plums are easier to pick and sell than currants and berries. Nobody will buy gooseberries I'm afraid. I don't think people know what they are anymore, much less what to do with them. We have reduced the number of trees to give them more space, removing the commoner and less popular varieties first, Sunset for example, which is a lovely apple but tends to go a bit soft by November which many people find unacceptable. We have reduced the number of Sunset by half. Now there are about 800 fruit trees and about half a mile of hedgerow, plus the poplar windbreaks and the copses of willow, larch, cherry, chestnut, birch, hazel and oak etc. They are lovely.   We chose which trees to plant for the original plantings in 1993 and 97 based on books and intuition. The final orchard, Cobbett's, was informed by what we knew sold well. We made reasonable but flawed choices, based on our interpretation of the limited information available to us  One reason for this web site is to help others who might be inclined to plant trees to make better informed choices than we could. Contact hayes373(at)btinternet(dot)com if you want to bounce ideas off us about a new orchard, however small. I mean that, I have corresponded with several people, but since I first posted the above, someone invented Youtube and I have posted many videos there, search Youtube where I have said a lot of what I have to say about choosing, planting, pruning and grafting apple trees. But I do like hearing from enthusiasts and anyone genuine will receive a reply (eventually) The best way to contact me is via a personal message on  my YouTube channel stephenhayesuk. The orchard has become quite a wildlife haven. It is well accepted that sensitively managed mixed agricultural land with woodland edge supports more wildlife than purely 'natural' land, we have observed kestrels raising a family, feral cats hunting voles (there was a vole population explosion due to the enclosure of the orchard to keep rabbits out) Grass snakes are observed from time to time and foxes and deer often pass through the wildlife corridor of our copse. 2 sorts of woodpecker and a tawny owl are frequently seen. Buzzards have been seen much more frequently over the last 2 years, there is a family of three we often see whirling and mewing above us as we work (or indeed look up at the sky with a mug of cider in hand, an agreeable activity especially after using a scythe.) We are managing the large copse to spread bluebells, snowdrops, primroses, foxgloves and other wild flowers under the trees. Wild plants like ferns have emerged under the partial shade as the meadow was replaced by coppice we planted. I use a scythe rather than weedkiller to control nettles there to encourage plant diversity. We also sowed a wildlfower meadow in a quarter acre we are developing as a widely spaced orchard of standard perry pears on seedling rootstock. The mixed deciduous hedges hedges (whitethorn, sloe, hazel, field maple, wild rose, quince and odds and bits) are now up to 15 feet tall (prior to cutting and laying which is done every 4 years or so) and yielding a sustainable harvest of hazel poles, and the poplar wind shelter belts are up to about 60 feet tall and, with the white willows in the copse, are visible from the football pitch in Kyte's lane a mile away. Hopefully we are at least carbon neutral! PS it is now September 2009 (*), I am completely rebuilding this site, perforce due to Yahoo's decision to close Geocities and delete all old sites. This was a great annoyance but does at least force me to re-evaluate and take into account the on line developments since I first began, particularly Youtube and blogging. Some of the dates don't add up as I've left old bits as I add new bits. (*) today is 7th August 2011. I have begun the task again and will try to spend an hour a week at least tidying up and improving the site. The YouTube channel has taken yup most of my attention as it has been so popular, probably up to 2 million hits by this autumn. Kind regards and thanks for being interested. All the information and advice here is as accurate as I can reasonably make it but is offered in good faith with no guarantees. Kind regards. The story continues. Stephen Hayes return to menu