North Cumbria Orchard Group

Spring is always a busy time for gardeners and orchardists. It has also been a busy time for NCOG.
Following last year's very successful grafting workshop at Keswick, we held a similar event at Whitehaven Garden Centre on March 17th, 2012. Members were shown how to graft apple trees and then when on to graft their own. There was a good tun-out of members and over 40 new trees were created in the afternoon. The session was ably led by Hilary Wilson. Many thanks to Stuart Murfitt for letting us use the polytunnel at his garden centre, which was ideal for the job, and for his hospitality.

The following day, a small band of volunteers pitched up at Allerby Community gardens to plant a willow hedge and stake the trees, in an effort to deal with the windy conditions at this seaside site. A fair number of calories were both expended and consumed and a lot was achieved in the morning's work. We hope to return later to admire the result.

Finally on April 1st, just at the end of the spring warm spell, around 20 members turned up at Kath and Shaun Halfpenny's garden at short notice to admire the early damson blossom. This was truly magnificent (see picture below). but not the only impressive feature in a well-cared for garden of great variety and interest. We ended the visit with the traditional excellent tea and cakes. Many thanks to Kath and Shaun for their hospitality.

Researchers at East Malling Research studied apple varieties held at the UK National Apple Collection between 2007 - 2010 in order to determine the "ploidy" level. Most apple varieties are "diploid" and have 2 sets of chromomes, just like humans. However it has been known for some time that a number of varieties have 3 sets, and are known as "triploid" - the most well-known being Bramley's Seedling, the popular English cooking apple, but also several other commonly grown apples such as Ribston Pippin, a favourite apple for Northern Orchards, and Belle de Boskoop.

This research is useful for the home orchardist because triploid varieties have complicated pollination requirements, and usually will not pollinate other varieties. However they often produce larger trees with larger fruit, and tend to have naturally good disease resistance. These useful qualities have ensured these varieties remain popular despite the extra care needed in choosing pollination partners.

The research found that more than 10% of the varieties in the UK apple collection were triploid, a higher proportion than expected. One of the surprises is Ashmead's Kernel, a widely-grown traditional English apple. Ashmead's Kernel has always been known to be difficult to pollinate but previously it was assumed this was because it bloomed very late in the blossom season. Other well-known varieties grown in Cumbria that are now confirmed as triploids include Orleans Reinette, Tom Putt and Scotch Bridget.

The research paper can be downloaded from http://randd.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx?Menu=Menu&Module=More&Location=None&Completed=0&ProjectID=15150.

(Note this news item is based on one first appearing in the Orange Pippin website http://www.orangepippin.com)

If anyone would like some grafting wax, then Michelle Hughes has a supply and can provide it at a cost of £1.50 per 100g for collection from Stanger (or plus postage currently £1.72 per 250g). Please email her direct at enquiries@lowstanger.co.uk if you are interested.

Some sixteen NCOG members attended a pruning workshop at Bill & Mary Potter's garden orchard in Crosby, near Maryport. Excellent tuition was provided by Niall Wildwoode and Chris Braithwaite, and members had ample opportunity to have a go themselves; this they did with great gusto and many trees were looking much smarter as a result. Given that the trees had not been pruned for over thirty years, there was quite a bit to go at.
The weather was mostly very nice apart from one squall which drove members to take shelter, where Bill and Mary (and assorted family members) provided a superb spread of tea and cakes. In fact the food was so good that despite the weather turning fine and sunny again, members took some persuasion to return to the task in hand!


See the gallery at http://www.ncorchards.co.uk/gallery/index.php/NCOG-events/Pruning-at-Crosby-February-2012 for more pictures Many thanks are due to Bill, Mary, Niall and Chris for a successful event.

Please note that the planned event at Allerby on Feb 4th has been postponed as the ground is frozen solid and the forecast is for strong winds with with possibly snow.

Build your own apple press at less than half the price it would cost to buy one. Based on a talk that I gave to the South Lakes Orchard Group on December 6th, 2011, I have prepared an information sheet which is available for download from our website - go to the "Resources" tab of the
website and it is under "Information sheets", or just follow this link
Mark Evens

On Sunday 13th November, NCOG held its first Annual General Meeting. This was attended by about 40 people. As well as dealing with the Group's annual business, there were a number of interesting craft stalls and the Group's equipment was on display. A large number of different cooked apples were displayed for tasting, which was a very interesting exercise: Allington Pippin was generally considered to be the best flavoured and balanced (all apples were cooked without sugar). Afterwards there were lots of excellent cakes cooked by members.
As regards the business meeting, the reports from the Officers were all accepted and the Committee was re-elected. The Chairman proposed that Henry Noblett be invited to become the Group's Honorary President.
The venue (Newbiggin Village Hall) was excellent and it was proposed that we return to it for next year's AGM, although probably a couple of weeks later than this year.
All reports should have been received by members and minutes will be available to members in due course.

Members of North Cumbria Orchard Group gave demonstrations of apple pressing for Juice as part of ‘A Celebration of the Apple’ day at Caldbeck Village Hall on Sunday 30th October 2011. Many visitors tasted samples of the juice from the varieties of apples which were pressed during the day.
There was considerable interest each time the press was demonstrated. Between demonstrations many visitors were given advice about different aspects of apple growing and use including selection of new trees, grafting, pruning, pressing, cider making and methods of storing both apples and juice.
The day also included cookery demonstrations and various activities for children such as apple bobbing. In the middle of the day a soup and ploughman’s lunch was served to a very large number of visitors. We are grateful to Northern Fells Group for inviting us to be part of an excellent (and very well organised) day.

The October meeting of Tirril and Sockbridge Gardening Club was a 'Celebration of Apples' delivered by members of NCOG  with excellent secretarial help from Judith Morris.
We collected 25 varieties of apples which were displayed so as to allow tasting (cooked if culinary) and the opportunity to rank them for flavour. Ribston Pippin came out favourite.
There was some general information given about apple growing as well as an opportunity to question the 'experts'.
Feedback from villagers deemed the evening a success and we gained 2 new members.

Despite intermittent rain, there was a good turn-out for the second Brampton Juicing Day on October 29th. The group's new "Fruit Shark" apple mill was a star turn, as was the apple press kindly loaned to the group by Bill Potter. There was a steady stream of visitors (and juice) apart from a brief lull at lunchtime which enabled the pressers to grab a bite. The event made headline news, pushing out the Eurozone debt crisis from the middle pages of the Cumberland News, complete with a colour photo of the happy pressers.

Here we are, with our nice new banner, staying out of the rain
                                   
Left: Chris Braithwaite provides a helpful commentary as Terry Green gets on with the milling in our shiny new Fruit Shark.
Right: Bill Potter's press in action.

As Mark Twain might (not) have said, reports of the Apple Day (October 16th) cancellation were an exaggeration. In fact all the "core" apple events and quite a few more were present and the weather put on a good show for the day as well. Highlights included a near record sale of apple trees (some grafted by NCOG members), a magnificent apple display in the house and a huge quantity of juicing by the Cumbria Organic Gardeners. The apple identifiers were kept busy throughout the day.
Equally busy were those members of NCOG manning our stand. We answered (or at least tried to answer) a vast range of questions. There were a number of people enquiring about establishing a new orchard, which is encouraging. A huge amount of enthusiasm was shown and ten new members joined the group. NCOG also did a fair bit of juicing, using our new equipment, and provided tastings of juice, cider and perry. If you weren't able to bring your apples for juicing, then come along to the event at Brampton on 29th October.
A new feature this year was the joint NCOG/SLOG cider competition. A total of 14 ciders and 2 perrys were entered by members of SLOG (South Lakeland Orchard Group) and NCOG. A team of independent judges were press-ganged (not too unwillingly) into tasting them all. The results were as follows:
Cider Winner - Adele Jones, using a blend of Bramley, Red Falstaff & Sunset according to a Pershore College recipe
Runner-up - Jill McDonald, using a blend of Lord Lambourne, Laxton's Fortune, two cookers which the apple identification team are still struggling to identify, and a few crab apples for added tannin
Perry Winner - Paul Neary, using a blend of 50% Blakeney Red pears from Acorn Bank and 50% perry pears from Ousby.
Chris Braithwaite announced the results and awarded prizes to the surprised winners.The winning ciders & perry were put on display on the NCOG stand for visitors to sample for themselves. Needless to say not much was left by the end of a successful day.

We have moved the NCOG website to a new hosting service. If you are reading this then you are on the new site. Hopefully this will resolve the problems we have been having with the old site being occasionally unavailable.

Paul Collins, the son of NCOG members Fred and Joan Collins has been building some fruit presses over summer. The are made from solid oak and stainless steel. He’s been able to sell them through a
home-brew outlet in Cheshire, but the materials are all from local Cumbrian tradesmen, from Carlisle
to Kendal via Penrith, so wondered whether any of the other orchard group members would be interested in them. Fred and Joan have one in their house in Sockbridge if anyone wants to have a look. See the picture below and http://www.brew2bottle.co.uk/blog/2011/08/14/westmorland-cider-press-aug-2011/ for more details. If any NCOG (or SLOG) member wishes to buy, then contact Fred and Joan directly, or via info@ncorchards.co.uk as an additional discount may be available.

About 22 members attended a summer pruning workshop at Allerby Community Gardens, near Maryport. This is a market garden with a lovely view over the Solway coast. It acts as a working market garden run by West House, with work training linked to their Employment Project. West House is a voluntary organisation providing a range of community based, high quality support services to people with learning disabilities in West Cumbria and Carlisle.
There are number of medium-sized trees in the orchard which provided plenty of opportunities to learn and practice the skill of summer pruning. Afterwards we had tea and delicious cakes kindly supplied by members. There was also an impromptu demonstration of chip budding by Hilary Wilson.
Many thanks to Mandy Cullen and West House for hosting the event.
For those who were unable to attend, then there is a useful video of summer pruning at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pReVULvggJE&feature=player_profilepage

The June Drop has arrived in June this year! So soon it will be the time to thin your crop.
We thought it would be a good idea to hold and informal workshop for thining of apples at Acorn Bank Garden. It's not a complicated job, but it is nice to be sure you are doing the right thing.  Once done the benefits are bigger and better fruit and knowing that you have given your tree every chance of producing a good crop next year as well as this.
Fridays are orchard days at Acorn Bank so if you want to come along and join in we expect to be thinning our apples on 1st July starting at 10.30 am and again on 15th July. Give us a phone on 01768361467 and leave a message so that we know to expect you. 

Owing to the success of our grafting workshop, a number of members have a few extra trees which they don't need which are available for purchase. A topic has been set up on the "Orchard talk" section of the website to help match buyers and sellers. If you wish to buy or sell trees, please visit viewtopic.php?f=8&t=74 and reply to the topic/post or contact a poster directly by private message.

About 25 NCOG members visited Alan and Glenda Bowman's beautiful grounds at Watemillock on June 12th 2011. Although the fine day turned slowly into a steady drizzle, the event was very enjoyable. It was an opportunity to socialise and discuss various orchard and non-orchard matters, particularly the very fine wild flower meadow adjacent to the orchard (see picture below). The views over Ullswater were stunning, as were Glenda's home-baked scones. In addition, the raffle raised about £30 for group funds.
Many thanks are due to Alan and Glenda for their hospitality and to all those who donated raffle prizes.

Nearly half of England's traditional orchards are in a neglected condition, a study of aerial photographs suggests. Some 35,378 orchards - home to wide varieties of apples and pears, as well as wildlife - were identified by the People's Trust for Endangered Species.
Researchers say 9% are in pristine condition, 46% were in a good state and 45% were in a poor condition.
The five-year project aims to map sites that are in decline to provide a basis for future work to protect them.
With the help of 200 dedicated volunteers across the country nearly 4500 of these have been surveyed and over 300 orchard owner questionnaires returned.
To view the orchard inventory in your area visit the MAGIC website.The data set is also available to download, free of charge, from the Natural England website.
If you do this, then you will need to view the maps at a fairly fine scale (say 1:62500) and turn off layers you don't want. Also, the dataset gives a lot more information than the maps.

Over 25 NCOG members attended our first grafting workshop at Portinscale on the afternoon of Saturday March 19th, 2011. After an excellent demonstration by Hilary Wilson of the magical art of grafting, members proceeded to create their own magic on over 90 rootstocks and a huge variety of scion wood. The previous morning, NCOG had run a similar session for Sustainable Keswick ("SusKes"), who had kindly arranged the use of Portinscale village hall for both sessions. SusKes used 65 rootstocks, so in total over 150 new apple trees have been created in North Cumbria in one day!

Hilary demonstrating the art of grafting.
A series of information sheets have been added to the website to assist members in caring for their new trees:
"Care of the newly grafted tree" tells you what to do when you get it home and
"Apple tree pruning" shows how to prune in the subsequent years (assuming you want a "bush" form).
If you forgot what Hilary told you on the day then look at:
"Why graft apples" and
"Grafting"
Many thanks are due to Hilary, to Chris Braithwaite for organising rootstocks and scion wood and to David Miller and Maggie Potts of SusKes.

Our first event of the year was a pruning day at Brampton, on February 5th. The location was the 100-year old orchard on the allotment tended by Malcolm Craik. About 25 people attended. Demonstrations were provided by Chris Braithwaite and Graham Wheeler. Chris focused on the smaller trees and how to prune for shape and fruit. Graham tackled some of the larger trees, showing how to reduce them to an appropriate shape and size, without encouraging excessive re-growth or damaging fruiting potential. It was an instructive afternoon, and enjoyable despite the increasingly damp weather. It was also an opportunity for some members to gather scion wood for grafting purposes. Eventually we adjourned to  a nearby farm shop for well-earned tea and scones and a useful question and answer session. The picture below shows Graham Wheeler demonstrating how to prune a neglected old tree.

Pruning Event Brampton Feb 2011 - Pruning by Malcolm Craik, on Flickr

The National Orchard Forum is closing and its role will be taken over by the Orchard Network website. Its final newsletter is attached. Back issues are still available at http://www.nat-orchard-forum.org.uk/newsletters.html .
The Orchard Network website is http://www.orchardnetwork.org.uk/

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Natural England issued a press release on 17/12/10 highlighting their reports which provide latest the advice on planting and looking after traditional orchards.
The guides are designed to provide practical advice to land managers on how best to look after orchards in their care and are now available as PDFs on Natural England’s website www.naturalengland.org.uk and by following the links indicated below. For the full press release see http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/about_ ... 71210.aspx
TIN012 - Traditional orchards: a summary
TIN013 - Traditional orchards: site and tree selection
TIN014 - Traditional orchards: planting and establishing fruit trees
TIN015 - Traditional orchards: an introduction to pruning
TIN016 - Traditional orchards: formative pruning of young trees
TIN017 - Traditional orchards: maintenance pruning
TIN018 - Traditional orchards: restoring and managing mature and neglected orchards
TIN019 - Traditional orchards: fruit tree health
TIN020 - Traditional orchards: orchards and wildlife
TIN021 - Traditional orchards: glossary

On October 30th members of the group set up apple mills and presses at the community centre in Brampton. This free event was also well attended by the public, several of whom brought large quantities of apples for pressing as this year has seen a bumper crop. The apples, which would otherwise have gone to waste, provided excellent juice for drinking and cider-making.
There was a steady stream of visitors with apples to mill and press:
First the apples were milled:
then pressed in one of two presses:
resulting in lots of lovely juice: