Category Archives: Trees

Apple Tree Pruning Courses

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Do you have an apple tree that you wish you knew how to prune?
Do you find it frustrating trying to work out how to prune a mature tree from a book?

Our mates June & Neil down the road in Glastonbury have a company called the Orchard Pig that makes world class cider.

They also run workshops under the name Orchard Ground Force – you can read about the apple tree pruning workshops here.

The courses are a day long and run from January – March each year.

They are only £50, which includes a tasty lunch of local goodies.

Their HQ is here (link opens in a new tab), just outside Glastonbury & the practical part of the courses will be held in an orchard nearby – call them on 01458 850 154 to confirm the location for each course.

Apple Tree Pollination Groups & Pollination Dates

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Spring and apple blossom are months away, what does pollination have to do with anything in October?

Well, if you already have trees that are happily partnered up, the answer is nothing.

But the bareroot tree planting season is almost here and if you are planning on adding some apple trees to your garden, you need to make sure that they have the right pollination partners for them to bear fruit.

Even if your trees are listed as being self-fertile, they will still only give the best crops when cross pollinated.

To help you choose the right trees, we have cooked up a colourful new apple tree pollination table.

This table combines 2 different ways of choosing a pollination partner – pollination groups & pollination dates.

This is not meant to confuse you! They are really the same thing – a pollination group is just a group of pollination dates.

They are both ways of seeing if two trees will be in flower at more or less the same time.

So why do groups and dates exist?

Pollination Groups were invented to make life easy and to simplify choosing partners from a massive list of apples.
They are commonly used in one of two ways:

  1. “All apple trees in group B will pollinate each other.” This prevents disappointment, but unecessarily narrows your choices.
  2. “Apple trees in group B will pollinate with trees in groups A,B or C.” This is correct most of the time, but there’s a flaw with it:
  • Trees at the start of group B will not pollinate well with trees at the end of group C and
  • Trees at the end of group B will not pollinate well with trees at the start of group A

So here’s the trade secret: farmers & people like us in the apple tree industry prefer not to use pollination groups.
A pollination group is only a group of pollination dates, so why not just use pollination dates?

A pollination date is not a specific date of the month, it is just a number to show you which trees all have their peak of flowering on the same day – this exact day will vary from year to year and location to location.

Pollination Dates are very easy to use and give you an exact idea of which trees are compatible.

An apple tree will cross-pollinate with trees that have a pollination date up to 3 days either side of its own. For Example:

A tree with a pollination date of 10 will cross-pollinate with trees that have a pollination date of 7-13 inclusive.

That’s all there is to it!

This will all make perfect sense when you look at our lovely colour coded Apple tree pollination chart.

Please drop us a comment if this is confusing – we want to make it as easy as possible for you to choose the right apple trees. *

*After all, the less time we spend answering your questions, the more time we can spend on the internet watching videos.

Which Laurel goes where?

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At Ashridge Trees HQ, we have a very advanced system for logging all the queries that come in from our customers. Her name is Frances and we’d be in deep trouble without her, so please be nice to her when you give us a call.

One question that she’s heard a few times is about which of the three famous laurel bushes to use in a particular site. Cherry or Common Laurel, Portugal Laurel and Bay Laurel will all do well in shady spots, although Bay Laurel won’t be happy in very deep shade.

Cherry Laurel has the largest leaves and makes the best roadside hedge for blocking out the light of passing cars and muffling traffic noise. It won’t grow on chalk or by the sea and can struggle in the coldest parts of the North and Scotland.

Portugal Laurel has a ruddy tinge to the new stems and leaves and is the only one that will succeed on chalky ground. It is also the hardiest, so if you live in the far North and Scotland, this is definitely the one to go for.

Bay Laurel is the same plant that provides bay leaves for the kitchen and is the tenderest of the three. It will be fine in the dappled shade of a deciduous tree, or in a spot that misses the sun during winter, but isn’t recommended for a year round shady spot. There is quite a bit of varied opinion about how well it does in exposed sites – it may have a problem further North as the wind gets colder and more drying but down here in Somerset it looks great atop a blustery hill.

If you have any more questions, please drop us a comment!

Fruit Trees and the Mile High Club

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You will often hear people say that you can’t grow apple trees at more than 500 feet above sea level.

While there is a germ of truth in this – as in many old wives’ tales – it is only a germ.  I know of an enormously successful commercial orchard that grows at beween 800 and 850 feet above sea level and crops heavily every year.

So here are a few, rather random, thoughts about where to put your trees if you are thinking about planting an orchard.

Think hard about “the slope”.  The worst thing that can happen to your average fruit tree is to be frosted while in bloom. No fruit that year. Period.  So the first, and most important tip is to plant your fruit trees on a slope.  Don’t go silly and try to plant them where only eagles dare, but make it a slope. You do this because cold air is heavy and falls. It comes to rest in valley bottoms and in hollows and dips where it can fall no further and gets trapped. That is where you get late frosts. Oddly, in falling, the cold air drives out the warmer air that was there before and pushes it UP. In so doing it creates what is called an “inversion” layer.  On cold nights this generally exists at between 100 and 300 feet above sea level.  When fractions of a degree are the difference between crop life and death, the temperature gradient is measurable and can be critical.

Think hard about the wind.  One of the major drawbacks of slopes is that parts of them can be really windy. And wind is bad for fruit trees; pollinating insects work hard enough as it is without battling with head winds.  Bees are not the most aerodynamic at the best of times….  Therefore only plant an orchard on a south-west facing slope if it is sheltered or if you can plant a shelter belt to break up the wind.  This is important as the prevailing winds tend to be at their strongest at almost exactly the time fruit trees are in bloom.  A sheltered north facing slope is preferable to a windy southerly incline.

Think height. Because of frost pocket risks, don’t plant too low and recognise that it does get colder as the land gets higher (at a rate of about 1 degree farenheit for every 300 feet). This temperature fall off delays the day fruit trees come into flower and so reduces the time available for them to ripen their crop. I have mentioned shelter belts and these help enormously in raising ambient temperatures, but unless your position is remarkable, don’t try to grow fruit at much more than 700 feet above sea level and try to chose varieties that crop (as opposed to flower) early.

Think soil. People are always surprised when they are told that the human body is more than 80% water. Well, given how solid the body is and how juicy a ripe apple or plum can be, it is not surprising to learn that fruit is generally more than 90% water. So while fruit trees like nourishment and can be productive in relatively poor soils, they cannot do well without enough moisture. The key to moisture retention with plants is soil structure.  Fruit trees will die if their roots drown in winter, so there must be drainage and their fruit will be undersized and deformed if there is not enough water in summer.  If the soil is thin, or if it is heavy clay, be prepared to incorporate masses of well rotted organic matter. Don’t just put it in the hole (in fact on heavy clay, don’t put any in the hole) either work it in all over the orchard or just spread it as a mulch and let the worms do their thing. Soil that is in good condition can both allow great drainage and hold an astonishing amount of available moisture.

Think protection.  Orchards are a magnet for scrumping children, theiving adults, sheep, horses, goats and the like.  You can’t keep them all out, but not having a fence is asking for trouble. They are also a magnet for wildlife and in this ever industrialising world orchards are now recognised as crucially important safe havens for an enormous range of animals that are under pressure elsewhere.  So leave a little room for some brambles, make a log-pile, have a bit of a pond if you can and cut down on those chemicals (of which there is more coming soon).

Sit back and watch your fruit trees grow.