Chadderton Plants Community Orchard for Giants

Making Community Orchards work is blooming tough, and it helps if you start with the right size trees We are in full armchair gardener mode on this one. Granby Street in Chadderton, Greater Manchester, is bravely attempting a community orchard, the first of 4 planned in the area. Community Orchards, like communities in general, are usually… Continue reading Chadderton Plants Community Orchard for Giants

Cooking with Cider this Christmas?

How about pheasant with caramelised apple and cider sauce!   Ingredients (to serve 2-4) Method Pheasant and cider sauce Caramelised apples Once the sauce mixture is reduced, pour over and serve! Top tip This is a lovely, tasty wintery dish using well hung pheasant but if you’re not the gamey type, it works equally well… Continue reading Cooking with Cider this Christmas?

Lazy Sunday Fruit Tree & Rootstock Grafting Videos

Grafting is one of Mankind’s ancient technologies, generally done in Spring onto rootstocks planted a full year ago, or mature trees Grafting two plants together happens naturally when compatible species jam up against each other, rubbing their bark off and then getting stuck long enough to fuse together. You see this quite often when inspecting… Continue reading Lazy Sunday Fruit Tree & Rootstock Grafting Videos

Restoring Scottish Montane Flora & Bees for High Altitude Fruit Trees

Montane habitats are at the top of and above the treeline, below the even colder alpine habitats above, where the last wind-blasted trees and shrubs grow. Being high on a mountain may be pleasant, but going up a hundred feet is like taking giant strides towards the North Pole in terms of the temperature decrease.… Continue reading Restoring Scottish Montane Flora & Bees for High Altitude Fruit Trees

Apple Pollination Groups & Dates

October is a Good Time to Plan Orchards October is main bulb planting time. Why am I making you think about pollinating fruit trees? Pollination happens in blooming Spring over six months away, which is literally a whole year. But the bareroot tree planting season is almost ‘pon us merry fellows, starting when weather permits… Continue reading Apple Pollination Groups & Dates

Why Steven Edholm’s Fruit Tree Pruning Films are Better Than Ours

As a company, we have invested billions (approximately) in producing nicely edited videos about planting and pruning fruit trees Rodney, local movie star and coincidentally our warehouse manager, has been ogled over a million times on YouTube, where his charisma and acting skills steal the show in our best film work to date, how to… Continue reading Why Steven Edholm’s Fruit Tree Pruning Films are Better Than Ours

Planting a quince tree…

“They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon;…” What other reason could there possibly be for planting a quince tree? Well, there are a few: Now is time to harvest your quinces, and Julian, proprietor at Ashridge, has just gathered his first crop of Serbian Gold (pictured). We… Continue reading Planting a quince tree…

An Apple A Day…

Red apples on apple tree branch

It’s National Apple Day tomorrow (21st October 2022) Thoreau called it “surely the noblest of fruits”; it has been prized the world over for thousands of years; it inspired scientific thought for Isaac Newton; was, crucially, irresistible in the story of Adam and Eve; became a symbol of political and individual freedom after William Tell… Continue reading An Apple A Day…

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