Longer Articles – Notes From The Orchard

What Are ‘Chill Hours’ And Why Do They Matter?

The recent UK-wide cold-snap will have been really good for our fruit trees – here’s why.

It’s twelfth night – or one of them – which can mean only one thing in the orchard: Wassail!

Top fruit harvest season is here, so it’s time for a guide to picking apples and pears the safe and careful way.

Fruit thinning is an essential operation to carry out to improve your chances of better quality fruit this year and more fruit buds next year.

2020 has been a rather excellent year for fruit blossom. Here’s a gallery of some examples I’ve seen in various places.

In which I try to work out whether I can justify the energy consumption needed to cook up a classic apple dessert…

A grey but dry and hugely enjoyable Sunday afternoon was well spent on helping to finish off this year’s winter pruning work.

Here’s how I went about the first phase of restorative pruning on a mature apple three that has been sadly neglected for a few years.

Here’s how I pruned three stepover trees on our allotment plot, leaving them until January rather than pruning in late summer as usually advised.

On a grey and drizzly afternoon I spent a happy few hours helping to winter prune a few of the trees in Holly Mount community orchard.