Brambles 🌱 #MacroMonday #PlantSky

Certificate in Community Orcharding Course (CICO) students recently met at the Lush Greens #Bristol site. They enjoyed summer pruning, orchard design & some plant guild matchmaking! Sign up for our next course here 👉https://www.theorchardproject.org.uk/events/certificate-community-orcharding-bristol

Bittersweet orchard story adamapples.blogspot.com/2026/07/tree...

Anyone finding their fruit trees are ripening much earlier than usual, because of the ongoing hot and sunny weather? I'd like to hear your UK examples, please, for a The Times story later this week. Drop me a message here or email me ([email protected]).

Strawberry phyllody.

2025 vintage of our draught Yarlington Mill and Somerset Redstreak is now ready! 🎉 Available in 10L bag-in-box from our webshop: www.templecider.co.uk/temple-cider... For trade customers, available in 10L & 20L bag-in-box. Email for details or see Eebria: www.eebriatrade.com/producer/r/t... 🍎🍻

This #PlasticFreeJuly we’re looking at the ways we can reduce plastics in #communityorchards. One of our favourite swaps is to ditch plastic tree guards in favour of willow or re-usable metal protection. Where young trees are in danger of damage from animals or passers-by, metal guards are best 🛡️

Upcoming event: Tegg's Nose Bilberry Pick - Sunday 19 July - 1pm. Join Totally Wild UK for a guided bilberry pick and jam making session at the top of Tegg's Nose Country Park. Booking essential - https://totallywilduk.co.uk/events/the-big-bilberry-pick-cheshire-2/

‘Pear.’ #Painting by Csaba Kiss (2002) #art

I'm going to call this a win..? 7-0, no penalties. 😊 Very happy that all seven grafts have taken & are thriving. I'll still be keeping my fingers crossed but not quite so tightly.. 👌"Cherry Melville's" on MM106 rootstocks. 🍏🍎🌱🌳 #appletree #grafting

Why not celebrate the cherry season with this lovely pie based on Hannah Glasse’s recipe of 1805. Serve hot with plenty of whipped cream and/or ice-cream. You can find the recipe piespuddingsandpottages.com/recipe-post/... #britishfood #foodhistory #recipe #pies #cherries #georgian

I use translucent plastic tubes to protect young apple trees in my orchard. These tubes have the potential to get really hot, so I set up a small side-by-side to measure leaf surface temperature in this extreme heat (air temps were low- to mid-90s F when I measured in the late morning)

Maqui berries

🌳 Are you passionate about orchards, communities and sharing your skills with others?  Applications are now open for The Orchard Project's free Consultant Development Programme 👉 www.theorchardproject.org.uk/community-or... #CommunityOrchards #TrainingOpportunity #SouthWales

Looks like we're in for a decent #fig harvest this year from our small 'Brown Turkey' tree. They're probably still a few weeks away from ripening up, but if the hot weather returns, who knows?

Now picking: backyard blueberries! 🫐 👍 We remembered to cover our bushes this year, before the local blackbirds had a chance to help themselves to the bulk of the crop. Only a small batch so far, but there are plenty more on our 8 bushes to ripen up later. 😋

Awww hell yeah, it's black cap raspberry time! 🌱

Looks like we're in for a decent #fig harvest this year from our small 'Brown Turkey' tree. They're probably still a few weeks away from ripening up, but if the hot weather returns, who knows?

Now picking: backyard blueberries! 🫐 👍 We remembered to cover our bushes this year, before the local blackbirds had a chance to help themselves to the bulk of the crop. Only a small batch so far, but there are plenty more on our 8 bushes to ripen up later. 😋

Four Perries & Two Ciders from Haselberger. @barmas.bsky.social tastes through six offerings from Austria’s Haselberger. #Austria #Mostviertel #Perry #Cider

".. the cook put on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes .." -Chekhov, "Gooseberries"

I've spotted a few split apple fruitlets on the cordon trees, down on the #allotment. I'm assuming this is down to recent weather patterns: a few days of high heat followed by significant rainfall, which caused some fruitlets to swell faster than their skins could expand.

I'm very happy with the progress of this year's newly-grafted apple trees. Of the 46 I grafted back in March, only 7 seem to have failed. If they all continue to grow well, I'll have 19 new varieties to add to my cordon collection next year, as well as a few backups of faves I've already planted.

Darn. I've maybe lost another cordon apple tree to canker. One of the inescapable perils of growing trees on an #allotment site, alas. A couple of weeks back, I cut off the affected top-growth, just above the cane. Hopefully there's enough scion left for regrowth to kick in this growing season.

The except refers to the little green apples on the ground under the trees. These are apples that began growing for a brief period, and then fell off during the "June drop". Apple trees often drop apples containing few or no seeds, as the purpose of growing the apple is seed production.

It's a lovely day in our Bramley orchard. After the rain yesterday everything is growing quickly, including the buttercup and other vegetation in the tree rows. Except...

Today's the start of #LondonClimateActionWeek (20-28 June) showcasing real-world climate action and ‘cooperation in a fractured world’. Our favourite type of climate action is, of course, community orcharding, where working together has huge positive impacts. #CommunityOrchards

June drop! Depending on conditions in your part of the country, it's probably about time to get the fruit thinning snips out again. Here's a quick How and Why guide I wrote and posted a while back: orchardnotes.com/2020/06/17/t...

Jack speaks with Martin Berkley and a host of fans of his Pilton Cider, as this highly influencial cidery winds down.

Early bird tickets go on sale on Monday at 9am! Get them quick!

I'm rather concerned by what I think might be a physiological disorder affecting this mature apple tree at work. On the left: healthy, normal leaves. On the right: sparse, stunted leaves. Two main branch sections are affected, the third is fine. Any expert grower thoughts on this one? 🤔

June drop! Depending on conditions in your part of the country, it's probably about time to get the fruit thinning snips out again. Here's a quick How and Why guide I wrote and posted a while back: orchardnotes.com/2020/06/17/t...

I'm rather concerned by what I think might be a physiological disorder affecting this mature apple tree at work. On the left: healthy, normal leaves. On the right: sparse, stunted leaves. Two main branch sections are affected, the third is fine. Any expert grower thoughts on this one? 🤔

Darn. I've maybe lost another cordon apple tree to canker. One of the inescapable perils of growing trees on an #allotment site, alas. A couple of weeks back, I cut off the affected top-growth, just above the cane. Hopefully there's enough scion left for regrowth to kick in this growing season.

I'm very happy with the progress of this year's newly-grafted apple trees. Of the 46 I grafted back in March, only 7 seem to have failed. If they all continue to grow well, I'll have 19 new varieties to add to my cordon collection next year, as well as a few backups of faves I've already planted.

I've spotted a few split apple fruitlets on the cordon trees, down on the #allotment. I'm assuming this is down to recent weather patterns: a few days of high heat followed by significant rainfall, which caused some fruitlets to swell faster than their skins could expand.

We need apple pickers for this year's harvest!💪 Harvest is still a few months away, but we need of hard-working individuals to help us pick apples on our farm in Tenterden, Kent. We pay competitively and are a great team to be part of. 1/2

Community orchards are incredibly welcoming spaces where people of all different backgrounds can find their place to belong. In our new blog for #RefugeeWeek, we're celebrating the courage of those seeking sanctuary and those who welcome others 👇️ www.theorchardproject.org.uk/blog/the-cou...

SQUIRRELS!!! 😡 The @*&%ing greys have started gnawing at the barely-formed and massively under-ripe peach fruitlets at work. Two years ago they stripped the tree. Last year they left them alone. This year they seem to have gotten the taste again.

Coauthors and I published a paper on an apple ancestry model: rdcu.be/fnI6j With this model scientists can estimate the wild species ancestry of any apple sample genotyped on the same set of DNA markers. We will be applying the model to a big dataset of >11,000 accessions in our next publication.

Reposting for the Sunday readers, a little article (ok, a long one) about Norway’s new cider culture. I’d love if Bluesky beat insta and FB as traffic sources for @ciderreview.bsky.social 😉

With thanks to Darren @orchardnotes.com for timely advice, all rootstocks on the "Cherry Melville" grafts have been trimmed of growth. Still early days & not counting chickens, but the number of bud bursts is impressive; these 2 pics taken 24 hrs apart. I'm thinking there's some change here. 🤔

I'm totally over my head with this but there seems to be a new way to analyze data to show not specific apple PEDIGREE (eg, Keepsale x MN1627), but SPECIES ANCESTRY (Malus sylvestris et al.).

If you are a follower of mine or cider making on social media; and a Reddit person, then please join r/perry_pearcider the only site on Reddit dedicated to perry 😊. There are also other subreddits on cider making, apples & pomme fruits.

How Norway Built a Modern Cider Culture. Part travelogue, part reportage, @barmas.bsky.social’s latest epic reflects on his recent trip to Norway and the remarkable cider culture taking shape there. #norway #cider

You could wait until the June Drop for your fruit to start thinning out naturally on your trees, but I like to do mine now to ensure less energy is wasted. Here’s a short video of why and how I do this: youtu.be/hfuS3Eka_Gw?... 🌱 #Gardening #UKGardening #VegetableGardening

Great News for Cider! Not sure I can get there but I'll give it a try some time

Louise Moillon, “Still Life with a Bowl of Strawberries, Basket of Cherries, and Branch of Gooseberries," 1631, Oil on panel, 14 1_4 x 19 3_4 in. (36.2 x 50 cm). Signed and dated "Louyse Moillon 1631" (Kimbell Art Museum)

How beautiful were the fruits of the early 1600s? #food #foodsky #art #painting 🍜 #arthistory

We love brambles for their many biodiversity benefits, but sometimes they need to be checked back a bit, such as this one swamping a young apple tree at Bryn y Don Park orchard in Swansea! #CommunityOrchards