Yesterday we planted new fruit trees in the orchard, much later than we’d planned due to weather conditions making the ground too boggy to dig. There are 9 mature fruit trees that make our orchard so enchanting (especially now, as the blossom starts to show), but we wanted to add a few trees of our own.
We planted Granny Smith apple, Scrumptious apple, Cox’s Orange Pippin apple and my absolute favourite, Bramley’s Seedling apple. This will become a very large tree and who knows, perhaps our future grandchildren will climb it someday! We have space for another Greengage or two which we are looking to buy soon, sadly our old Greengage tree is leaning dangerously and crumbling away at the base, so this will probably have to be removed at some point due to it being a potential hazard.
Chilly evenings and dewy mornings, my favourite time of year is fast approaching. The mature fruit trees in our garden were planted many years ago in rows, giving the appearance of an orchard. We’ve always wanted our very own orchard and that’s how we refer to our wonderful old trees.
Bramley apples
Dripping with fruit in shades of green, purple, red and yellow, the garden has never looked so colourful since moving here late January. Greengage and early plums are finishing now, tipsy wasps litter the lawn, feasting on fallen fermented plums alongside occasional Red Admiral butterflies.
Early plumsOne of the pear treesWasps gorging on fruit
The garden is very wide and therefore open in most places, fruit trees are a great way to provide cover to free-ranging chickens from aerial predators. We have a few more fruit trees to plant this autumn; Scrumptious apple will replace a small ornamental cherry that isn’t doing very well, Cox’s Orange Pippin and a Bramley apple. It’s almost time to release them from their temporary containers where they’ve lived happily since moving here.
Apple tree, possibly a Cox?Another apple, not sure of this oneAnother pear treeBramley apple treeAgain, not sure of this variety of apple
I’m jam making again with gorgeous Victoria plums, it’s unbelievable the amount of fruit the Victoria tree has produced.
Victoria plumsOur lovely Victoria plum tree
A pretty Comma butterfly seemed to watch me from one of the pear trees, it stayed quite still while I snapped away with the camera.
There are two pear varieties and three apple varieties in the orchard that we need help with identifying, along with an early plum (mid July fruiting). If you recognise a variety from the photos please do leave a comment.
