How To: Make Mini Baked Apples with Flapjack Stuffing
This baked apple pudding is simple and quick to prepare and bake, and is absolutely delicious with lashings of custard.
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Gallery – Autumn Sunshine on Allotment Apples
A morning visit to the allotment just happened to coincide with a glorious burst of autumn sunshine, so I snapped a few apple pics to celebrate.
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Gallery: Autumn Fruit Tree Foliage
It’s been an unexpectedly good year for autumn colour in the orchards, and here are a few photo-highlights.
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Cordon Apple Tree Update – Autumn 2025 Edition
We’ve had a terrific year for apples and the mature cordon trees on our allotment plot have been very productive indeed.
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Book Notes: The Story of the Herefordshire Pomona, by Bill Laws
This new book explores the history, production and impact of one of the very finest examples of Victorian-era pomology and botanical art.
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A Few Notes on Palladius’s c.420 Recipe for ‘Liquamen Ex Piris’
I’ve fallen down another ancient Roman research rabbit-hole, this time looking into a pear-based version of the Romans’ favourite fermented fish sauce.
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Not ‘Cornish Aromatic’? A New Mystery Apple to Identify
We’ve got another apple that’s not true to type according to the label on the tree, but which variety could it actually be?
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A Few Notes on Yellow Currants
Yellow currants aren’t a particularly common crop, and after harvesting a few hundred berries, I think I might know why.
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Seeking Information on a ‘Hundred Ha’penny’ Apple
I have a bit of a mystery that I’m hoping to solve. Perhaps you can help?
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Gallery: Impressions of Three West Midlands Orchards
I’ve been on my travels again, visiting three more gardens with rather lovely orchard and fruit-growing spaces.
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A Late Spring Update on This Year’s Grafted Apple Trees
Sixteen of the twenty-four new apple trees that I grafted back in March are showing signs of life, despite the scorching sunshine.
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More Cordons! Again! This Year’s New Apple Trees Are In
I’ve added another nine apple trees to my allotment plot, most of which will be trained as oblique cordons in the years to come.
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How To: Z-Graft New Apple Trees
This is my favourite method for grafting apple trees, one that I’ve found to be easier, safer and perhaps slightly more reliable than whip-and-tongue.
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Stepover Apple Trees: Winter Pruning, Year Six
Six years on and the two stepover apple trees on our allotment are thriving under a winter-only pruning regime.
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Pruning Notes: Restoration of a Mature, Overgrown, Apple Tree
Loppers, secateurs and saw at the ready, as an old colleague and I apply a bit of much-needed effort to an over-crowded canopy.
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The ‘Beefing’ Apples Story, Chapter Two, Part Three is Now Live
The latest instalment of the story looks at the relative success of Robert Hogg’s plan to rescue ‘Striped Beefing’ from fading into obscurity.
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Gallery: Winter in Two Orchards
It’s been cold this week, so of course I took a few photos of fruit trees draped in snow.
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Happy New Year! And My Plans for Orchard Notes in 2025
Last of the Season’s Greetings to you! And here are my plans and ideas for developing Orchard Notes in 2025.
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My Apple Harvest Highlights – 2024 Edition
It has been a very good year indeed for apples; here’s my pick of the crop from our allotment, and the orchards at Quarry Bank.
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A Few Notes on Ancient Roman “Apple” Varieties
I’ve been looking into Roman fruit varieties, and the possibility that one or two apples might actually have survived to the present day.
