Gloucestershire Orchard Group

The Gloucestershire Orchard Group's annual general meeting, held at Churchdown Community Centre on 3 February 2005, was well attended with many members and some new faces coming to hear Barrie Juniper's illustrated talk on the origin of the domestic apple. With his abundant good humour and light presentation what could have been crushing heavyweight science became a fascinating tale of exotic lands, bears, traders and ponies. Dr Juniper has kindly given us permission to reproduce this resumé of his lecture.

A dozen Gloucestershire Orchard Group members assembled on the 15th October for an evening of training in apple identification, led by Richard Toft, at Pershore College. He took us through the intricacies of deciding on shape, period of ripeness, colour, acidity and ridging which enable use of the keys in Bultitude and in Sanders, then through a more detailed examination of the fruit to confirm. We worked with two varieties provided by Richard with considerable success, then with our own specimens with predictably less convincing results. But we all gained insight on the critical features to look for. A large display of named varieties was available for comparison.

Pictures by Peter Smith.

Held by kind invitation of member Tom Gilchrist of Stroat, Near Chepstow. Tom has a small orchard of about an acre of mostly plum trees, with a few pears and apples. About 20 members gathered for an informal walk discussing pruning, replanting, protecting from livestock, farm-gate sales, wildlife and the Countryside Stewardship scheme amongst other issues. There were examples of a dozen varieties of plum to examine, plus a display of fruit literature (and some very nice Welsh cakes).

The annual GOG pruning workshop was a success with about two dozen folk increasing their skills in pruning both mature and young apple trees. BBC Radio Gloucestershire were also present at the beginning and this went out on air the following week. We were delighted to have a teenager join us at the workshop, showing that enjoying and learning about orchards is for any age!

This is a good time of year for chip budding. A sliver of young growth, and inch or so long, carrying a bud of the variety of tree you want to propagate, is slipped in to a matching cut made in the rootstock tree. Bound well to prevent it drying out, with luck a graft union will form and within a few weeks the binding tape can be removed. The rootstock tree above the grafted bud is then cut off. Next year this graft bud should start to grow away, and you continue removing competing rootstock material.

The tree planting session in the Museum Orchard at Day's Cottage was a great success, with about twenty-five people planting a total of twenty-one trees, ready for budding later this summer. There was also the opportunity to practice grafting techniques, with a choice of rootstocks - MM106/111/25 - and over twenty Gloucestershire varieties to graft. Remember to keep your tree in a safe spot for a year or two, protected from animals, children, slash and burners etc. If all is well and it comes into leaf, it's very exciting, knowing you've created a new tree! Remove the grafting tape by autumn.

Green Farm Community Orchard, Quedgeley
This old orchard is now a public open space, providing a beautiful backdrop to the surrounding new housing, where you can walk your dog or send the kids scrumping. The youngerapple and pear trees, planted about five years ago, belatedly received their first pruning. Some of the huge old pears also received a haircut, taking off the sucker growth from the base and some unsafe broken limbs. But as this orchard is as important for wildlife as for fruit, plenty of old wormy wood was left for the woodpeckers.

The Gloucestershire Orchard Group put on a display of varieties of Gloucestershire apples at the Folk Museum to celebrate this national event.

Photos by Ann Smith.

In late summer apple varieties can be propagated by grafting buds of the desired variety onto an apple tree of a different rootstock. Members of the Gloucestershire Orchard Group were invited along to the chairmen's farm to observe the process and learn the technique by practising on willow shoots.

Courtesy of Jim Aplin

The farm is in its second year of organic conversion and was neglected for nearly 15 years before that. Currently, most of the pruning at Warren Park Farm is for renovation. Some of the pear trees had already been partially renovated and received a summer spur prune during this event, with the aim of starting off new spurs rather than maintaining an established spur system.