Veg Plotting

  It's Apple Day, one of my favourite days of the year and what better way to celebrate than to tell you about my recent trip to Longney, where Gloucestershire Orchard Trust have 18 acres of apple orchard under their tender care. Here you'll find older orchards with some trees well over a century old, plus their newer plantings of around 94 Gloucestershire cultivars which have just acquired national plant collection status at Plant Heritage . The jury's out on the actual number as DNA testing has revealed at least one locally named variety is actually a more well known one: Ribston Pippin in this case. Don't worry, there are dozens there which definitely have their origins rooted firmly in Gloucestershire and their cultivation at Longney is vital to their continued presence and preservation. There were around 200 local varieties at one time and today it's around 100 still in existence. Steve Mason - the Trust's Curator - was our knowledgeable guide who invited ...

It's been an amazing spring for blossom which turned into an amazing summer of fruit, even the usual June drop did little to thin my apple crop with up to six fruit left on each fruiting spur. This combined with the hot dry weather means the trees are suffering, so it was time to give nature a helping hand this week by thinning my crop. It always feels hard to reduce this bounty but I know I and the trees will benefit in the end with larger, more juicy fruit for me to enjoy. I removed all the damaged or severely misshapen fruit, plus any extras to leave a maximum of one fruit per spur. I must have removed hundreds of apples! Some people recommend a gap of around four inches between fruits, mine are around two. When I've done this in previous years I've always wondered if I could use this earlier crop of fruit, especially as many of them are of a fairly decent size. Some light googling reveals I can, with apple mint jelly or a pectin starter for future jam making given as th...

There's been a phenomenal fruit set on my apple tree - a combination of early warmth at the right time for pollinators followed by plenty of rain means June drop hasn't really happened here this year. I thinned these recently alongside dozens more and removed a couple of others with brown rot (see next photo). I think there might be more of that to come this year, so I'll be keeping an eye out and keep my fingers crossed it doesn't take a more determined hold.  As you can see from the photo below I picked lots of fruit of a good weight and I pondered over  on Insta whether I could make an early batch of apple jelly from thinned or June drop apples when they're of such a reasonable size. My garden books and internet search gave me conflicting advice: on the one hand 'it's OK', and on the other 'oooh you shouldn't do that as there's a  risk of illness from a fungus which isn't destroyed by cooking.' Hmmm. I'm so glad I posed that...

I've made no secret of my love of apples and it gladdens my heart to see it's the best year ever for my crop here at VP Gardens . Despite giving up my ten trees up at the allotment, two out of the three I have here have outdone themselves this year. Blossom time coincided with April's warm weather and the sound of happy bees droning through the flowers led to pretty much 100% pollination. Even with the drastic June Drop I showed you during the dry months of early summer, the branches of my 'Herefordshire Russet' and 'Red Windsor' are groaning downwards with fruit. I've been harvesting them since late August and we still have hundreds of apples to go. Freezer space has been cleared so I can load it up with chopped, cooked apples to go with my winter porridge. This takes care of the damaged fruit and soon I'll wrap the perfect specimens for storage. Of all the crops in my garden, apples are proving to be well worth their space in terms of both beaut...

In some ways flowers blooming out of season aren't that surprising here at VP Gardens , but I don't think I've found them in midsummer before. This week, I was surprised to find not one, but two instances on my daily walk around the garden. Here we have a few damp apple blossoms shining out in the rain; even more surprising seeing the tree is already bearing a goodly crop of maturing fruit. If spring to summer blooms isn't that much of a stretch of the imagination, then winter/spring to summer might just do it in the shape of this hellebore. It's so comfortable in what it's doing, it's put out another bud since I first spotted it in flower. This is one of a new batch I planted out last year, which were just small plugs when I got them. A few flowered at their allotted time in January, but many more didn't, which I put down to them not being mature enough. Perhaps it's showing it's all grown up now? I've been pondering the reason(s) why these ...

We've been in Lancashire for a few days where I had the opportunity to discover some apple varieties which suit more northern climes. I'm delighted I wasn't that familiar with most of these and there's just enough time left to write this post for today's Apple Day  celebrations. The larger picture shows ' Lemon Pippin ' with its unusual yet giveaway shape. Its site description says (which differs in some details with the one given in the link): An old apple of the 18th or 19th Century, origin either Norman or English. A dessert/cooker with a crisp flesh and slightly tangy in taste. Pick October to December. The other unnamed apples shown are ' Duke of Devonshire ' which resided in the basket of one of the scarecrow trail's figures. Judging by the crop in the orchard and on sale in the courtyard, this looks to be a prolific russet variety. Here are the links to descriptions of the named varieties in the photographs: ' Pott's Se...

It's Apple Day tomorrow and what a bumper crop we have chez VP Gardens and on the allotment this year. Today's post comes as a slightly premature celebration as we have family matters to attend to over the weekend. We enjoy fruit juice as a weekly treat on Sundays with our roast dinner, so it was a natural step to invest in a juicer. I swithered between this and an apple press, and in the end I plumped for a juicer as it's cheaper and fulfils our immediate needs. I did have a daydream about pressing oodles of juice for a full year's supply, but practical matters such as pasteurisation and storage swiftly brought me back to reality. I'm enjoying the process immensely and it's a great way of using up loads of apples, especially any windfalls where only the damaged or bruised bits should be left out. It takes around 12 of them to produce enough juice to fill 2 glasses. Our season started off last month with single variety 'Scrumptious' and I'm ...

You can read the whole of Robert Frost's wonderful After Apple Picking here .  I'm not quite as weary as Robert Frost's apple picker, but then I'm not doing it for a living. This year's crop is a good one, and now is the right time for picking most of them here at VP Gardens . It's the perfect way to celebrate today's Apple Day . This year marks a change in how I'll use some of my harvest. The bulk is for eating fresh or squirreling away in the freezer to extend the time I can add chopped apple to my daily porridge. The difference lies in what I'll be doing with the remainder: in the past windfall cake and apple jelly were our staple fare, but now we're trying to reduce the amount of refined sugar in our diet. As a result, a smart, shiny new juicer awaits these apples in my kitchen. I agonised for ages over whether to invest in this or a press. In the end I decided I'm not quite ready for a bulk approach to juicing, nor do I have t...

Malus domestica 'Scrumptious', October 21st 2015 

Isn't she lovely? The last Fiesta apple ripe for picking in the large pot on my patio today Every October I've written about apples on Veg Plotting , so it's   a pleasure to feature them as my Plant Profile this month. At first, I was quite daunted about growing apples. There are loads of varieties to choose from, some very off putting root stock names to get to grips with and a whole host of things that can go wrong in the pests and disease line. And then there's the pruning... But oh, there is such beauty to be found in an apple tree. There's deliciously frothy blossom in the spring and a rich variety in the fruit. If I could just pick one tree for my garden, it would have to be an apple. And yes, you can have just one apple tree in your garden as some of them are self-fertile, though having more than one in the same or adjacent pollination group is even better for ensuring plenty of fruit. Amongst the self-fertile possibilities is the ever popular Cox...

Back in Waterperry's orchard with Horticultural Manager Rob Jacobs - a very fine place to be In honour of today's Apple Day , I'm returning to last month's study day at Waterperry Gardens , where we learnt lots about the summer pruning of trained apple trees such as cordons and espaliers. Note this pruning does not apply to apples grown as bush or standard trees; their pruning is confined to the winter period . Summer pruning is carried out on the shoots growing out from the main branches. This is to increase the number of fruiting spurs on the tree for the following year and to let the sunlight through to ripen the current year's crop. The RHS guidance says that this pruning is best carried out in the third week in August in the south and around 10 days later in the north. This guidance also says the pruning should be done when the bottom third of the new shoot is firm and woody. This timing is judged according to the tree's vigour, its location an...

Spartan                                                                                      It's a mystery to me! I have an exciting 'Case of the Mysterious Apple' to solve up at the allotment as my Spartan apple tree is also sporting some completely different apples this year. The green apple shown on the right is confined to a sturdy upright branch. I've traced it back and it looks like I missed one of the growths from below the graft union when pruning a couple of years ago. I'm in the process of asking my apple supplier if he knows which variety it is. He often grafts his own trees, so may have the information to hand. When I asked about rootstock at Marlborough Apple Day  recently, the local nurseryman there was rather surprised as they're usually from ...

I'm trying to decide which apple is the most local to Chippenham - it could be 'Celt' from Melksham or 'Beauty of Bath', which hails from Batheaston. Click on the pic to enlarge if needed. After last week's post about Wiltshire's Apple Days , I decided to go to Marlborough's on Sunday. This was on the strength they were having some Wiltshire varieties available for tasting and I'd been wanting to find out more about them for ages. Marlborough has a community orchard project and they've decided the town's 'Diamond Jubilee Plantation' will "celebrate 60 years of HM The Queen's reign, and restore historic links between common land and local foods for local people". Part of this project has been to find as many apple varieties as possible which hail from Wiltshire. I knew of 3 before Sunday; that knowledge has now expanded to 10 and I've also tasted 7 of them :) Some of Wiltshire's apple varieties. Big p...

A few of this year's windfalls - Court of Wick, Falstaff, Kidd's Orange Red,  Princesse, Saturn, Scrumptious and Sunset October 21st is now firmly established as Apple Day in the calendar thanks to the sterling efforts of Common Ground over many years. Until 2010 they published a great calendar of events which made it ultra easy to find a suitable one to attend. Sadly the calendar is no longer kept up to date, though their  Apple Day page is still worth a visit to find leads for possible events in 2012. There's also lots of information about apple lore and traditions, apple based games and a 'toolbox' of ideas to help you arrange your own event. I've decided to go to a local Apple Day this year, so here's what I've found so far in case you'd like to go to one too. What's on in Wiltshire 2012 Holt - Punkie Apple Day at The Courts - October 29th @ 12 - 4pm (included in admission price) Lacock - Apple Day  at Lacock Abbey- October ...

I love apple trees, so October's pretty special because it's Apple Day on October 21st*. The decline of our orchards over the past 40 years or so is shocking, so I'm pleased I've found a simple way to help them, courtesy of Copella's Plant and Protect campaign. They're planting up to 100,000 apple trees on October 21st, with the actual number depending on how many people pledge their support. I've signed up already: I've only had to supply my name and email address** and they'll plant an apple tree on my behalf. There's just under 18,000 pledges made so far and only a few days left to swell the numbers to meet their target, so it'd be great if you can add your name to the list too :) I've also registered my apple trees. According to the National Trust's way of defining an orchard, I have one on my allotment as I have over 5 apple trees on my plot :o The picture is of some of the apple varieties I sampled at RHS Wisley F...

Do you have a glut of apples this year like I do? You don't have a juicer or press to hoover up those windfalls either? Then my timely discovery of a way to make easy apple juice, just might be the thing for you to try. I was going to adapt the Family 'Beena recipe in my Preserves bible to make some apple cordial to use in my drinks bottle for choir. However, a tasting at the sieved juice stage to gauge how much sugar I'd need was enough to persuade me that actually I could use it as is, so long as we drank it straight away. Ingredients 2kg eating apples 1.2 litres water Method De-stem and roughly chop the apples (no need to peel), discarding any damaged parts of the fruit (I'm assuming there's not too much damage to yours, else you may need to adjust the amount of water used) Place in a large pan and add the water Slowly bring to the boil and simmer for 45 minutes, crushing the fruit with a potato masher or large spoon from time to time Remove from...

It's Apple Day today, Common Ground's nationwide celebration of all things pomme. And to help my festivities (picking the last fruit in the garden before those pesky squirrels nick the lot), I've just received my favourite catalogue of the season. I discovered Adam's Apples three years ago after becoming interested in heritage apple varieties. The result was this internet discovery : lots of choice (over 100 varieties), far cheaper than most suppliers, who was doing a special offer on 10 trees suitable for cordons. E-mail and telephone conversations ensued where I described the soil, aspect and climate of my plot and some of the trees I'd like to have - Ashmead's Kernel, Falstaff and Egremont Russet were on my list. Adam then suggested some further varieties (e.g. Discovery to replace Beauty of Bath) and I ended up with a selection of 5. By then I was so confident of Adam's expertise, I left the choice of the other 5 to him. My 10 trees are a combination o...