Gallery: Winter in Two Orchards

We’ve had a bit of a cold snap this past week. Or at least, it’s a cold snap for our neck of the woods. Temperatures of -4°C (25°F) might not sound all that drastic -indeed, positively balmy – to any passing Scandinavians, Canadians, Siberians or Falkland Islanders, but it’s still damn chilly for Manchester, U.K.

These sort of temperatures are probably a little too low to contribute to the beneficial chill accumulation that fruit trees need to help their fruit- and leaf-buds to initiate and grow strongly once the trees come out of dormancy. But with any luck it will help to divide the garlic bulbs and maybe kill off a few excess slugs.

As for me, I’m hunkering down for the time being, catching up on some admin chores, and definitely not indulging in any orchard work. I’m also feeling very glad that I refrained from pruning my back garden fig tree when we had a mild spell back in December. I think this current frost would have reached havoc on exposed pruning wounds and led to a lot of die-back, as happened a few years ago.

Before I battened down the hatches though, I was able to snap a few artistically frosty photos of orchard trees, some at work, and some at my allotment. Enjoy!

Down at National Trust Quarry Bank

Here – and at the top of this post – are a few photos of the linear orchard in the kitchen garden, taken on Tuesday 7th January, before the site was closed due to the worsening weather conditions. (I didn’t get chance to take any photos in the Apprentice House orchard before we were sent home, which is a bit of shame, as I expect it looked rather lovely over there.)

Down on the Allotment

There’s not a lot of actual work to be done on the plot in these conditions – I can’t even turn the compost heap as it’s frozen solid – but a bit of snow on the ground means I can take some nice, high-contrast photos of the fruit trees.

The two stepover-trained trees are looking good after their usual season’s worth of strong vertical growth of the lateral stems. As usual, I’ll be pruning these in a month or two, removing all the excess growth. (See my series on winter-pruning stepover trees for more info: year one, year two, year three, 2024 update.)

Here’s the ‘Keswick Codlin’:

And here’s the ‘Howgate Wonder’:

My annually-expanding collection of cordon apples is coming along nicely, too. Here’s a fairly mature section. The trees in this row are now four or five years old:

And here’s a younger section, of trees that are coming up on three years old. The ‘Pitmaston Pine Apple’ on the right looks like it’s developing some nice fruiting buds along the main stem, which is ideal for cordon-growing.

These are the new trees that I grafted and planted in this nursery bed back in March, all of which have done well in their first year – all the grafts have taken, which highly pleasing – and all of which will be planted in their final positions, or transferred to air-pots, in the early spring, once I know they’ve made it through the winter intact and are showing new growth.

This is the soft-fruit section. From left-to-right there’s a row of yellowcurrants and redcurrants, then two rows of blackcurrants, behind those we have gooseberries, and then whitecurrants and pinkcurrants at the back. None of them have been pruned since last summer. Again, I’ll wait to see whether we’ve lost any stems to die-back and then make my pruning decisions accordingly.

A bit of a blast from the past to finish with: the plot #79 orchard, which I planted a few years back on the allotment plot opposite mine, but haven’t been directly involved with for a couple of years. (Although by the looks of things I might need to jump back in at some point, it could probably do with a bit of t.l.c.)

So, how’s your winter going? Do your fruit trees look like they’re weathering the cold snap, if you’re having one? Or do you live somewhere where our idea of a cold snap is your idea of a slightly cool spell? And if so, how do your trees cope with your local winter? Do please let me know, via the comments.