PRESS RELEASE

September 2009

Apple Harvest Day

The apple harvest in Somerset begins in earnest in early September, and to celebrate the wonderful bounty of one of Somerset’s finest products The Orchard Pig, at West Bradley Orchards, near Glastonbury, is hosting a day of events for all the family.

Over the years, we have often heard a story very similar to this one: a first time fruit tree owner was delighted at the sight of their trees coming into maturity, flowering beautifully and being courted by all manner of bees and butterflies before becoming weighed down with piles of slowly but surely swelling fruit.

Tags: Fruit trees

People seem to think that every newly-planted tree needs a stake. They are sometimes (but not always) right as despite lots of writing to the contrary, staking is not always the best thing to do for your tree.

Here are a few reasons why.  Staked trees:

• tend to have a smaller root system than unstaked ones
• they also tend to grow taller and so are not as well anchored as unstaked ones.

Tags: planting, Staking

I had this all ready written about 2 months ago (because it was going to be topical now) and then forgot it. Hopefully the warning will go unneeded (as opposed to unheeded).

The Autumn equinox passed almost unnoticed (apart from it being the nicest day of the "summer" so far). But the equinox in September is every bit as dodgy as the one in March. Remember poor old Julius Caesar and "beware the Ides of March"?