This Bramley has watercore. The flesh goes translucent and is very sweet and watery...not what you usually associate with a Bramley! We wouldn't generally want this in the UK but in places such as Japan, they market this as special. Particularly with their Fuji apples.

The Quince are absolutely stunning this year, a bit small but stunning nonetheless! A few splits but so far so good! As with everything else they're early this year and will be ready in a few days!

This week I had the pleasure of visiting Coton orchard @BonkersBusway and doing a talk for Coton garden club on growing fruit trees organically and working with nature. I can't possibly fit what I want to say in a smaller post. www.instagram.com/p/DOi8nJHiEK...

Some of our heritage fruit varieties. I love picking over these trees and seeing all the colours and differences. It's a happy picking bucket!

Varieties you can see... 🍎 Tickled pink (yes, they're a little under ripe but that's how the chefs want them.) 🍏 Blenheim orange 🍐 Beurre hardy 🍐 Gorham 🍎 Santana

Next up. Katy, the first pick of Red Windsor and Keswick codlin. That subtle pink is the most colour I've seen on the Keswick codlin.

Precoce de Trevoux is our first pear, much earlier than the others. Look at the size of this one, not bad for such a short growing season. It's from France and goes back to 1862. I think the one in my hand has to be the finest one I have grown!

The colours of the 2025 harvest are continuing with Discovery and Scrumptious. It hurts the eyeballs!! It's almost a shame to pick them as the trees look so bare now. This year these apple varieties are too sweet for my tastes, the flavours are incredible though!

Devonshire Quarrenden is our next apple variety to go into the pastry kitchen. This box is ungraded but once graded the best apples will go into the hotel rooms and breakfast buffet.

Just like that...it's harvest time again. Three weeks early due to the warm dry spring. I wonder how the rest of the season will go. This is George Cave and he's very prolific this year! In apple terms he is a youngster and was bred in 1923 and put to market in 1945.

Attending the Raymond Blanc Gardening school today were our Redcurrants, Blackberries, Blackcurrants, Loganberry, Blueberries, Strawberries, Raspberries and Figs. Plus some very lovely guests!!

I'm very excited to see sandy muddy "doors" covering these canes. It was all leaf coverings last year. I wonder what they are? Any guesses? The theory definitely works though, we have guests for the second year running.

The #ladybirds found their own bug hotels! It's usually #earwigs I find doing this in such numbers.

If you squint your eyes, aphids are quite cute really...just not in huge numbers on our trees and plants! 🤔🪲 #aphid #greenfly #roseaphid #macro #closeup #entomology #pest #insectcloseup #britishwildlife #wildlife #wildlifephoto

Last weekends orchard dining. 🍎🍏🍐🙂

My take on this unusual spring. The website is currently going through an overhaul so bare with if there's any issues at all. Have you got a similar story to us? thegroundedorchardist.co.uk/2025/07/02/m...

So we have sunburn on susceptible varieties already! 😔 Our susceptible varieties are Rosette, Red Devil and Discovery. Thankfully most of our 153 varieties are fine.

I just took delivery of the new apple "rainbow" from @frankpmatthews You can see the leaves are starting to get their variegation which is unusual on an apple, the fruit and bark are stripey and all the one year growth has very red stripes too.

The Quince are looking amazing...picture perfect in fact. There are lots and they are naturally perfectly spaced out. That puts the pressure on a bit as they are VERY thirsty trees and the weather is not looking like we are getting rain.

Taming the apple and pear espaliers. I quite like how where I've been snakes off into the background. Pruning these now keeps the shape, allows air and light into the tree, takes out unwanted growth and knocks back that energy into the tree.

A great day yesterday visiting Capreolous Distilleries new Quince orchard and stunning meadow! It's wonderful to see orchards going in....rather than coming out! I'm really looking forward to watching this grow and I've never seen an orchard of just quince before. Exciting stuff!! 🙂

The start of the "June drop". A welcome sight where the tree naturally sheds some of its fruit. The ones that drop are usually small, poorly pollinated or damaged in some way.

I'm absolutely amazed! I have found one apple with scab so far....just one. There's also no obvious signs of primary infection on the leaves either. I have never known an orchard with no scab. It must be down to having so little rain. This is an unsprayed orchard too.

Look at our little soft fruitlets! 😊🥰 🍇Blackcurrants 🫐Blueberries 🍇Blackberries 🍇Raspberries 🍅Redcurrants 🍓Experimental climbing strawberries 🍈And Gooseberries. A bit of artistic licence with the emojis there! .

In keeping with plenty of aphids this year there are more Rosy leaf curling aphid numbers then I have seen before. Tell tale signs are the curled leaves on apple trees but even more helpful is the red on the leaves! If you open up the curled leaves you can see the aphids inside.

In less exposed areas of the orchard, we have help! 🐞 🪲

Ugh, when the aphids get to the trees long before you do. That's another years rest for the Damsons then. (a bit of positivity there!) It was a bit of a shock as the leaf quality over all the other trees is fantastic this year!

🎊 Happy Birthday to us! Today The Orchard Project celebrates its 16th birthday. Founded in 2009 as the London Orchard Project we remain the only national charity dedicated solely to creating, maintaining and celebrating community orchards. #CommunityOrchards #GrowYourOwn #CommunityGardening

Well I've never seen that before. A floating strand of woolly aphids. I left them out of curiosity and they're a little stuck anyway. Thank you Mrs Spider. 🙂

Apples are so diverse, here's 20 apple blossom pics of our 153 varieties of apple. Masses of blossom, no major spring frosts, a lot of sun and barely any wind, meaning all pollinators are out and pollination is not a problem at all this year.

The apple blossom weevil wiped out a third of our crop last year before the season had even really begun. Thankfully there isn't much this year.

Happy Easter from our Easter pear in the heritage section. This is Pysanka and originates from the Ukraine, 1950's. We call it Humbug in the UK due to its stripes. A warm summer will give an orange hue. Even the one year whippy growth is stripey. Sadly, the blossom is not.

Twenty blooms of our thirty pear varieties. All with very subtle differences. Ornamentally beautiful and a bloom for every garden I would say.

Tiny, very hungry caterpillars taken off our Quince!

Now for something similar but a little bit different. It's very exciting but I grant you, there isn't much to see yet. However, in this bed we have Redcurrant 'Rovada', Gooseberry 'Mucurines' and Gooseberry ' Captivator'.

With apple #blossom season just around the corner (in our neck of the woods at least) now seems like a good time to reprise my article from a couple of years back, 'Lifecycle of an Apple, From Bud to Blossom to Fruit'. The story of a single apple, in 50+ photos. orchardnotes.com/2023/03/28/l...

Pine ladybirds are already helping with the pest control. Here they are, happily chomping away at the woolly aphid on this crab apple. Highlighting what we are trying to achieve in the orchard. A desire to not spray anything and work alongside nature.

Orchard pruned! It's absolutely beautiful! Bring on the blossom. (and no frost or apple blossom weevil please!)

Precoce de trevoux is winning the pear race. It was the colours that got me, like fruit salad sweets!

Yesterday's course at the Raymond blanc Gardening School was Apple grafting. The guests got to learn the theory, choose their Scions and rootstocks and take home a few trees for their gardens grafted by themselves.

Hurray! An interesting course, thinking outside the box in orcharding.

Interested in agroforestry? Join us this Thursday for what is bound to be an interesting discussion with @benraskin.bsky.social 😊 www.theorchardproject.org.uk/events/agrof...

Today's harvest of Rootstocks for future grafting. A nice mixture of M9, M25, M26, MM106, Quince A and whatever the Medlars are on. (Veeeryyy thorny whatever it is!)Temporarily planted up until I can prepare the new nursery bed.

Here's a very important pruning tip! We never talk about this enough!!! Always look up before pruning a tree to avoid an old apple going splat on your head...or the back of the neck (that was my worst one, never to be forgotten)!! If seen, remove the offending item then carry on pruning.

Happy world wildlife day! This coincided with our first blue tit (or whatever takes residence) boxes in the orchard. It's been part of the organic pest management plan for a while and it turns out our Falconers had the same idea.

I have spent a few days in France (pomologically speaking, sadly not geographically). This is in our French heritage section of the orchard where we have varieties of apples from Comte.

The taming of our veteran Bramley trees continues...

The Jargonelle pears have a ridiculous growth habit. It's the only pear out of the 30 that grow like this! Does it think it's a Wisteria? Maybe they're trying to have an Elvis quiff? Flock of seagulls hairdos?? I quite like them, but I'm glad we don't have rows and rows of them!

The Jargonelle pears have a ridiculous growth habit. It's the only pear out of the 30 that grow like this! Does it think it's a Wisteria? Maybe they're trying to have an Elvis quiff? Flock of seagulls hairdos?? I quite like them, but I'm glad we don't have rows and rows of them!

I have a few days off so this book from Andy Dibben and Ben Raskin landed at my door at just the right time! I'm always learning how to be a better grower and quite enjoy breaking the rules and finding new or different ways. After all, one way does not suit all of us!