A bit of orchard TLC

Applying the final nematode treatment to the orchard this evening, without drizzle or wind, gave an opportunity to take a closer look at the trees and see how they’re growing. We’re lucky enough to have inherited a good-sized orchard with a range of 9 different fruits – from typical apple and pear trees, to more unusual trees such as fig and quince. As this is our first ever experience of owning fruit trees, we’ve followed much-valued advice and spent countless evenings reading through the RHS website to find out how to take care of them, and maximise our yield. 

We’ve already identified a bad outbreak of codling moth in our apple and pear trees – resulting in about half of the fruit being eaten away inside, and earwigs taking up residence (they still make me jump when they wiggle out of the apple core!) – hence the nemotode treatment. And we spent Saturday removing fruit suffering from brown rot (too late for our cider apple tree, as we lost most of the crop). 

Today has been a further learning curve – with more problems and TLC required. We’ve identified three extra issues to sort – from brown spots caused by a lack of calcium (bitter pit); signs of a bug that seems to just cause superficial damage to the apple skin (capsid bug); and a more serious fungal infection in some of the tree branches. 

Treatments seem to range from a simple spray to cutting out damaged tree parts and sealing the cut, so we’re hoping that a bit of time and effort over the next few months means we can recover the trees back to health, and save the 20-year old orchard. Who’d have thought six months ago that we’d be turning into fruit tree experts – this really is starting to turn into The Good Life. Next stop – kitchen garden vegetable beds!!