The Grounded Orchardist

Just a few thoughts whilst pruning a single season early apple crop last week.

The farmer wanted to have a crop to harvest in one go. He’s a mixed arable farmer so fruit is not high on his agenda and he’s very busy. This orchard is a small piece of diversification to meet the requirements of planing permission. The brief…to include trees in order to hide a solar farm. Naturally as a farmer he wanted this to give back a little.

You may be wondering why I would choose the picture above for this post. It illustrates the wonderful work our wildlife does whilst eating apples left on the tree.

It also highlights that if you have a whole orchard of earlies, you may lose lots, if not all that entire crop.

You see, wasps love early season apples. They are an easy food source at a time when adult wasps need sugars/carbohydrates. What is left is eaten by birds, hornets and other insects. Beating the wasps isn’t easy and they don’t miss a trick.

If there was a full season of earlies, mids and lates then a crop is more or less guaranteed. If that’s not possible, perhaps aim for two seasons or don’t bother with the earlies at all.