Apple Walk

We spent this morning tying in shoots on the apples in the apple walk, as well as putting up the last of the horizontal wires (80% of the penultimate wire tier was there, but this meant adding the last wire, which is the last tier before the apex/ridge bar). We also weeded around the apple trees, which probably took as much time to do. They now look an awful lot neater, and the walk looks really good. They could do with a last prune in the next couple of weeks, before the leaves fall, and then I'll do a mid-winter trim (to encourage buds to break at critical points) some time in February, probably.

Apple Walk Training

This weekend we've had Liz's Scarborough grandparents visiting, on their way down to Ludlow to visit her parents. It's been lovely to show them round the house and garden, as it's been a couple of years since they saw it, and it's changed a lot.

This afternoon, after they'd set off for Shropshire, we did a bit of work on the apple walk. I needed to add the next tier of wire (above the rebar 'hand rail'), and tie in a number of new shoots. A couple of the apples have now got past the new tier (the fourth), which is excellent, although they'll get cut back down to it in February, to prompt side shoots to break.

We also painted the sheds, which needed a top-up, but then rain stopped play, so we had to call it a day.

Rearranging the Fruit Beds

Over the last couple of years, pruning the gooseberries, and then picking the fruit, has been a rather painful, thorny proposition. In addition, the plants have always tended to grow out into the path, which has made the journey along the fruit garden a little perilous when wheeling a barrow, and the wide handles almost always bring you rather close to the gooseberries spines.

Enough of that: we've dug up the nine gooseberries, and replanted them: the three red and green are now spaced out along the centre of the bed where all nine were previously, meaning they're much further from the edges. The three golden/yellow ones are where the bottom blueberry was. It's never really got going, in many years, so we're cutting our losses.

At the same time, we've lifted all the raspberry canes, and replanted the strongest along the centre of those beds: we were finding that the double row wasn't cropping well, and was a pain to weed and pick.

The revolution hasn't ended there, either. We've taken off all the nets, too. Over the next couple of months, I'll be replacing the wires which ran between the posts to support the cages with timber bearers. The roof is then going to be chicken wire, and the sides will either be netting, or wire. However, we're going to have doors at each end of the passage, making it one big contained cage, rather than four. It ought to make weeding, mulching, pruning, and picking an awful lot more pleasant, which seems sensible.

Today we've sawn, split, and stacked a load of wood, and spent this morning sorting out the garage, which now looks like a room once more.

Mulch Preparation

We've got a load of mulch arriving this week, ready to spread on the beds. That means that the first weeding of the year is now urgent, because the mulch does an excellent job of reducing new seedlings, but just gives existing weeds a boost, which isn't quite what we want. As well as weeding, we've also pruned the apples and pears on the hillside, tying in the slow winter growth in the apple walk as we go; pruned the fruit bushes; and admired the emerging snowdrops.

We also potted up ten new hellebores that arrived this week, which are now in the front garden growing on; six Chocolate Cosmos; and the 20-odd tender yellow things I can never remember the name of. Argyranthemum/margeurites, possibly. We take cuttings of them each autumn to over-winter, and they're out-growing their modules, now.

The other thing we managed was to tie together the willow growing down the sides of the septic tank, to start forming the arched tunnel over the mini-sheds. There's some way to go, admittedly, but you finally get an idea of what it will eventually achieve, which is nice.

Late Summer Flowers

After weeks of sweetpea arrangements, they're starting to come to an end, and so this week's centrepiece arrangement is a bit different (apologies for the shaky photo).

Golden rod, achillea, echinacea, grasses, and lysimachia in this week's flower arrangement (© Ian 2014)

We went up on the hillside, too, and it's very pleasing how the apple walk and graftlings are coming on. The apple walk's structure is a lot clearer than I thought it would be, in its first year, and the shoots need tying in again. In the graft bed, I'm delighted that we seem to have three viable Hessle pears, two each of the apples, Crimson Superb and Craggy's Seedling (a third, of each, is in the walk, grafted directly). There's only one of each of quinces Ivan and Vranja, and medlar Dutch, which is, admittedly, all we needed to make the effort a success. Sadly, the medlar Royal didn't take, in any of the three attempts, but there you go. I make that a 12 out of 21 success rate, for my first grafting attempts.

Tonight, we potted on three giant scabious, a load of Lysimachia ephemera, and a tray of Hidcote lavenders; all seed-grown, the first and last from the RHS. That's freed up a couple of module trays for some perennial plugs that will arrive soon.

Quick Morning

We've spent the afternoon with Liz's family, celebrating her grandfather's birthday, but managed to get a fair bit done this morning, all the same.

Liz has weeded most of the orchard (that is, cleared around each tree -- there are still plenty of 'weeds' growing!), and cut back the grass growing between the grafted fruit. Of these, many have taken: sadly, none of one of the medlars, but at least one of each other has, including all the apples and pears, pleasingly.

While she started this, I finished putting the roof on the bike shelter we started a couple of weeks ago. That can be painted tomorrow.

It's been a couple of weeks since I started trying to get round to it, but I've also trained the new growth in the apple walk. That's meant cutting back the inappropriately placed shoots to 10cm or so; tying the espalier-destined shoot onto the horizontal wire, and tying the vertical shoot onto the steel tube. Two apples (Cat's Head and Grandpa Buxton) are tall enough that they've got two tiers tied down, and need the arch itself putting in, as they're almost at the top of the support tube.

Sprung

Today's been a phenomenally nice day, with temperatures around 17°C, and bright sun. Yesterday was cooler, and a bit cloudier, which made it an ideal day for chopping a load of firewood (sticky tricky pine, but never mind).

The warmth and bright sun today's meant that there are probably a dozen daffodils pretty much out, where yesterday there were three. The crocuses enjoyed it, too, and I'm pretty sure a bee flew past me (too fast to be sure) this afternoon.

The dwarf irises in the long border, and around the pond, are out, and beautiful.

Dwarf iris (© Ian 2014)

When the acer in the front garden was first planted, in a large pot in our last garden, we underplanted it with snowdrops. They never came to much, but after we planted the acer in our new front garden (before starting this blog: I think it was September 2009), they've started to come up, and the last couple of years have given us a decent show.

Snowdrops under the acer (© Ian 2014) 

I've actually got a big consignment of snowdrops on order—1000 common singles (Galanthus nivalis) and 500 doubles (G. n. 'Flora Pleno')—which will hopefully arrive, in the green, soon, and can go out, on hillside and in garden.

Which brings us to today's efforts. First thing was finishing the winter pruning, by working on the fruit bushes. The blackcurrants, gooseberries, and red/whitecurrants all needed pruning, and we also removed some old wood on the blueberries, which are still proving troublesome. The two oldest ('Grover' and something unknown) were several years old when planted in 2010, and the other three are now four years old—and still not very large (to say the least). These three have definitely grown better over the last year (hopefully the good mulching last spring and resultant weed-free year has got them going), at least. However, we decided that we had to take out some old wood on the oldest pair, as ageing stems is possibly the cause of their much-reduced yield.

Once we'd finished in the fruit beds, we went up onto the hillside, to start work on clearing the blackthorn at the back of the orchard. This is partly to increase the size of the orchard, as the two sweet chestnuts are nestled into clearings in the blackthorn, and the space for the second mulberry (which, I'm astonished to realise, I never mentioned) is currently somewhere inside the blackthorn shown below.

Orchard, with back boundary of blackthorn (© Ian 2014) 

The blackthorn (which have never produced loads of sloes, sadly) lies in front of a line of trees (hawthorn, elder, and holly, primarily) which would make a better boundary, probably underplanted with hazel, beech, and bulbs. We're working on it from above, so it looks much the same today as it does in these photos, but we've actually hollowed out the undergrowth quite effectively. It's probably still a couple of days' work, but it's a good start. As Liz cleared, I was burning the blackthorn on a bonfire in the upper clearing (a hot, fast burning bonfire, I must note: no smoky, smouldering eyesore), as blackthorn's a nightmare to chip.

The entrance to the clearing, through, hopefully, arch-trained plums, will be roughly central in the photo below. You can just make out the sweet chestnut's stake on the far right; the other is hidden on the left. The mulberry will probably go behind and left of the established apple tree just in front of the blackthorn (for now). So; the mulberry. For several years, our local garden centre has sent a voucher around early November, which I've managed to use for a cheap fruit tree: a Broadview walnut in 2012, and a Serbian Gold quince in 2011. Last November, they had a 'Chelsea' mulberry (also known as 'King James', as it comes from a plant grown at Chelsea Physic Park as part of King James IV's misguided silk industry initiative), which we thought would make a good partner to the Jerusalem mulberry planted nearer the front of the orchard. And with 50% off, it was rather a good deal. It's had to remain in its pot, unfortunately, as we've not finished clearing its space, but fortunately, as it's container grown, it should be fine for a little longer: there's not the rush to get it in the ground, unlike bare-root, field-grown trees.

The orchard, looking up at the doomed blackthorn bank (© Ian 2014)

Pruning

After spending yesterday chopping a load of firewood, today was more pleasantly spent doing a load of winter pruning. The clematis growing on the arbour (Alba Plena) need cutting back to 18" in March, for instance, and the roses all need tidying. A lot of the spring bulbs are showing signs of growth, and the flowering currants are just in bloom. By next weekend, the daffodils should be coming out.

The biggest winter pruning job is that of the apples. The established apple trees all needed a tidy-up, just as they did last year. One more year, and they should all be reasonably organized: we've spread the wok over a few years, to avoid removing too much in one go. Several of the new, standard-trained apples needed laterals trimming, although most still haven't reached their 1.8m height, at which they get topped, and start forming the framework proper.

Most excitingly, we also cut all of the apple walk apples down to height. They've all been cut to about 30cm, where we want the first horizontal tier of the espaliers to fall. In two cases, Cat's Head and Grandpa Buxton,  I actually cut them off at 45cm above this, at the height of the second tier, and have nicked above an appropriately placed bud to form the bottom tier. I've taken this approach as I wasn't absolutely sure that these hadn't been double worked, as there was a wound and new leader trained in above where the bottom espalier will be, and I didn't want to cut off all the Cat's Head/Grandpa Buxton, and leave an unknown interstem.

This left me with a bundle of eighteen sticks of various apples...and a reluctance to throw them away. So, instead, I've grafted them all onto the established apple trees. If they take, they're a back-up for the apple walk trees, and I can use them to graft new (possibly step-over) trees next winter. If they don't, I've not lost anything (well, apart from a couple of hours work).

Apple Walk Planted

On Wednesday, our Yorkshire apples arrived, barerooted. They all came from an excellent (and relatively local) nursery in Pickering, called RV Roger, and are all young maiden trees, probably one or at most two years old from grafting:

• Court Pendu Plat (Norman)
• Joaneting (1600)
• Cats Head (1620)
• Ribston Pippin (1707)
• Dog's Snout (1720)
• Hunt House (1720)
• Balsam (1750)
• Greenup's Pippin (1750)
• Acklam Russet (1768)
• Hornsea Herring (1780)
• Yorkshire Greening (1803)
• Flower of the Town (1831)
• Fillingham Pippin (1835)
• Cockpit Improved (1850)
• New Bess Pool (1850)
• Winter Cockpit (1860)
• Nancy Jackson (1875)
• Sharleston Pippin (1888)
• Yorkshire Aromatic (1945)
• Grandpa Buxton (1990)

To these, we're adding Craggy's Seedling (I can't find a date for this, but guess around 1850), and Crimson Superb (similarly, but it's a sport of Laxton's Superb, bred 1897, so I'm putting it in the first half of the 20th Century, which is all the precision I need, as you can see). They're currently just MM106 rootstocks, as the graftwood will be arriving in a week or so.

We planted out almost all of these this morning, starting at the back left corner of the apple walk with Court Pendu Plat, and working through them chronologically, back right, then penultimate left, penultimate right, and so on. Pleasingly, this puts Cats Head (the biggest plant) next to Dog's Snout; and Cockpit Improved and Winter Cockpit adjacent. The bottom four on the left we've not planted, as we wanted to further increase the drainage, and re-assess the soil on Sunday.

They've all been planted with mycorrhizal fungi, and tied to their 2½" stake, next to their metal arch-foundation tube. I'll give them their establishing cut, at the height of the first 'tier', as part of the winter pruning in the next couple of weeks.

These trees planted, we also put the Hessle pear, and Marron de Lyon and Marigoule sweet chestnuts, which were part of the same order, in their prepared holes. Similar to the previous standard fruit trees, they're in decent planting pits, with more mycorrhizal fungi, a 2½" stake, and a 1.2m circumference, 6' height chicken wire cage, held in place with two 8' bamboos. (Sorry, terrible mix of units.)

Hessle, like the apples, is a Yorkshire native, coming from an eponymous village in the East Riding, near Kingston upon Hull. Sadly, there don't appear to be any Yorkshire-bred chestnuts (not terribly surprising, really), so we have the two French varieties that seemed best. I'm sure they'll be lovely.

Digging the Apple Walk

As intended, we've managed to spend a day working towards planting the apple walk. Unfortunately, about halfway up the left planting line, we uncovered a massive boulder, which is part—I think—of a terracing wall from long ago. The terrace has disappeared into the undulations of the ground, now, and isn't so necessary: the soil is stabilized sufficiently by the trees, I think.

The boulder, probably a meter square, and 30cm thick, has defeated us so far: it's too heavy to move (probably 500kg). I think it's entirely uncovered, so I have resorted to using the sledgehammer to break it up. Once it's smaller, and moveable, we'll heave what's left out. The ground here is so stony that the spoil heap of stones looks a lot like we're building a dyke.

Our other bits-and-pieces have gone ok: we've split a load of firewood, and stacked it, and re-oiled the hedge and fruit trees on the hillside. Some of the hedges had been nibbled, which prompted this reapplication of deer-deterrent. Fortunately, the hedge plants will benefit from the trim, as it should promote a bushier, denser growth.

Survey

It's the time of year to take semi-ripe cuttings of perennials, so yesterday, with the help of a fosterling, I took a number of pots of lavender, box, willow, dogwood ('Midwinter Fire'), Cornelian cherry, and a yellow-flowered herbaceous perennial from Jenny's garden the name of which constantly eludes me. They were all treated with rooting hormone (apart from the willows), and are in warmed propagators to give them some warmth and humidity. Before that, then I painted half of the window frames on the front of the house, and Liz weeded, as well as painting the trough planter for the goji berries.

We spent most of today on the hillside, which has been strimmed again. It might need doing once more this autumn, but that might not happen. Having done so, we went around and painted the trees with an anti-deer concoction of chilli powder in oil. Hopefully that will help keep them away: they've browsed the leaves from one of the tall shoots on one of the Victoria plums. While going round, I used a GPS app on my phone to take a reading of each tree's location, as we don't actually have a plan of which tree is where. I'm not sure it's worked perfectly, but it provides some idea.

Location of the Fruit & Ornamental Trees in the Orchard ( Ian 2013)

I'm going to work on plotting it with labels, too.

I also measured the length of the putative apple walk we're thinking of building in the 'top right' (left in the plan above) corner, which an avenue of trees leads you towards, and which takes you up into the first clearing. It looks like it'll be about 24' long: as we're planning trees 6' apart (probably with imitation 'trunks' intercalated), in an arch 8' across; each tree can then be espalier trained 3' each side. That makes for five trees up each side, so we need to start planning varieties -- and digging two planting trenches.

Finally, as we went round, I've done a bit of work training the primary laterals on the fruit trees which are tall enough, so that they're more, well, lateral. For example, most of the plums have reached a height where their leader shoot was cut, which promotes several new shoots to break into growth at the tip (about 6' tall). These will be the primary framework of lateral branches, which will ideally be reasonably horizontal (for many reasons, not least that this makes a larger crotch angle between trunk and branch, which is much stronger, mechanically). However, they start life really vertical, and need to be tied down, which I've done with guy twines.

Tidied Verge

We managed to get a couple of little jobs done this evening, in glorious weather. Liz weeded the gaps in the weed-suppressant membranes around the fruit trees (the slit where we fitted the membrane around the trunk, inevitably, gets some weeds growing), while I folded down the top of the chicken-wire cages that protect the plum trees. These are already at about the right height to start training in permanent laterals, but a couple of these have been damaged by rubbing against the cage: hence folding it down out of the way. That still leaves about 150cm of cage height to protect against deer.

Then Sigrid and I cut back the grass (and docks, nettles, and weeds) along the verge outside the house and hillside, which has needed doing for a while. I've delayed because the daffodil foliage is only just about gone—there's still some, which I tried to avoid. It's startling that there's still some showing in early July, but it's an obvious consequence of the delayed flowering. The verge now looks a lot better, which is good, because it was starting to irritate me, and some of it was making visibility poor when pulling out of the driveway.

It looks as though one of the blackcurrants has lost a lot of its fruit, which is a great shame. I fear it may be a lack of watering (it's never felt dry enough to need to irrigate the fruit, but I might have been mistaken): alternatives are a potash shortage, a pest (no idea what), or a cold spell shortly after fruit set (I don't remember one). So, I gave the fruit beds a good water, and I'll spread some food, as they're the two possible causes that I can affect.

Tidying Up

It's been a busy weekend of mostly tidying up, meaning accumulated progress, rather than any particular thing getting very far.

We've sown some more seeds: Dianthus amurensis 'Siberian Blues' (for the rockery wall in the front); Polemonium boreale 'Heavenly Habit' (Jacob's ladder); two aquilegias, 'Magpie' and 'Royal Purple'; and a mixed selection of hostas (hopefully some of which will be pretty!).

We've planted out half a dozen rows (about ninety plants) of carrots, and another block of beetroot (about forty plants) in the bottom bed.

Liz weeded the bed at the front of the copse, and we've done another prune/tidy of the shrubs in the bottom bank, which were hit by the cold east wind.

The pots on the patios, and sitting on the old shed base, needed some attention, so we've sorted through them, removing the dead/empty pots to the back patio, and weeding, tidying and fertilizing the rest. Another heuchera's been hit by root-eating grubs (which seem to focus their predation on primrose and heuchera roots, for whatever reason), so that needed cleaning up and re-potting, in the hopes that it might survive.

We dug up the buddleja that we planted in one of the front beds in 2010 (I think: I don't appear to have a note!), and is the bottom right of this photo (from April last year). Liz has never been sure about it, and we found a pretty acer that will replace it, and go well with the other, older acer that's the centre point of the adjacent bed.

I took the opportunity to add new guide wires to the wall behind for the Virginia creeper to run along. It's almost reached the ivy at the bottom (which I had to cut back earlier this week, as it was encroaching on the windows, again), and is looking pretty with its new growth.

Front garden (© Ian 2012–13)

We re-planted the hanging baskets, with bronze carex, cinereria, trailing nasturtiums, and petunias, and I re-hung the bracket that came off the wall late last year.

Liz potted up another 96 lavenders which arrived this week, into modules. They'll grow on ready to be planted into the herb garden edges later this year, hopefully.

The two clematis (C. florida 'Alba Plena') we bought at Tatton Park last year, and which are growing up the trellis sides of our arbour, are growing well. However, we want, if possible, to move the arbour later this year, in order to dig out and lay the paving that's going under it. That will be well-nigh impossible with clematis entwined up both sides. To solve this, I've used a couple of blocks of wood, and wire, to space two 1'x6' trellis panels, one behind each plant, away from the main trellis. We'll twine the climbers up these, instead of the arbour, so it'll still look good, but when (if) we have to move things, they can be transferred safely and separately.

To finish the weekend, we made use of a prolific spinach crop (very pleased with the spinach: it's 'Lazio', which is effectively new to us, as it didn't grow in last year's horrible conditions), and made a batch of spinach black pudding ('boudin noir du Poitou'). It's made with a kilo of spinach, a pint of light bechemal, half a pound of onion, four ounces of breadcrumbs, a pint and half of cream, and eight pints of blood; the seasoning (salt, pepper and mace) is extended to include nutmeg, too.

As with our batch of 'fry-up' black pudding (with pork fat and oatmeal, instead of spinach, bechemal, and breadcrumbs), we cooked it as cakes, in loaf tins.

It's frankly delicious, and a fine conclusion to a weekend of hard work.

Housesitting

Jenny and Philip spent the weekend with Katie, helping sort and decorate her new house, which left us in charge of their house, children, ducks, and dog. Undeterred, we've actually managed to get some stuff done, and even visited RHS Harlow Carr, to take advantage of their spring flowers, a spring plant sale, and the chance to see my parents.

Daffodils at RHS Harlow Carr (© Ian 2013)

On Saturday, I had some child help pruning out the wind damaged shoots on the berberis and similar shrubs in the lower border above the vegetable garden. These took the brunt of the cold east wind that characterized the weather in March/April, and led to a lot of dead, brown foliage. I've cut out the worst of it (there's a bit still to go), and they look better. There's a chance they won't grow back very well, which I'm actually pretty sanguine about: I don't particularly like any of them, so it might just prompt us to cut them down, and replant with something prettier. There are plenty of options!

One of them, in fact, is another rhododendron. We have a few, but none are particularly distinguished, but the pure white rhododendrons we saw at Harlow Carr on Sunday caught both our attention. The bulbs are also looking good, although we didn't see as much of the gardens as we'd like. There's a good drift of Erythronium 'Pagoda' (I think) that was pretty, as well as a number of snakes-head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), naturalizing happily under the trees.

Snakes-head fritillary (© Ian 2013)

The garden was hosting a spring plant sale, which had a number of different stalls. There were several offering a very pretty white pulsatilla, which I might, at some point, have to track down (Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Alba'), and the holders of the national heuchera/heucherella/tiarella collection, Plantagogo, were there.

Erythronium (© Ian 2013)

This was rather dangerous, as we then promptly overspent our pocket money on five new plants: 'Ginger Ale', 'Hercules', 'Pear Crisp' (all three heucheras), 'Brass Lantern', 'Golden Zebra' (both heucherellas).

Plum and Cherry Pruning

Most of the fruit trees were pruned near the end of February. That was while the trees were still dormant (just as well, given the snowy Easter we had), but we left the plums and cherries alone. These (Prunus genus) are particularly susceptible to Silverleaf infection (a fungal disease, Chondrostereum purpureum), which typically gets into the plant through wounds. Routine pruning of these trees should be left, therefore, until they're in leaf. As this was a formative pruning of a young sapling, we've waited only until the trees are starting to break bud.

I worked round the relevant trees this evening: Victoria Plum, Oullin's Golden Gage, Merryweather Damson,  ornamental plums 'Spring Glow' and Pissardii, 'Royalty' crab-apple and cherry 'Royal Burgandy', as well as 'Summer Sun' cherry in the garden. There's another Victoria in the garden, but I need to decide how to treat that, as it had its leader cut out at about 50cm when we bought it (a garden ago): ideally we'd have a 1-1.4m clear stem on it, but that might be tricky.

They've all had all feathers on the bottom third cut right back, those in the middle third halved, and the top third left. A couple of the fruit trees have a leader that's about at the right height, so we can train main laterals this year.

I also had a play with a plan for the herb garden today.

Possible Herb Garden Plan (© Ian 2013)

It could still change, of course. We're currently thinking of having three interwoven boundaries: one of box, one of euonymus, and one of lavender. The 55 sections then have different things in them. Some of them (the 'step-ins') will be rather more sparsely planted, to allow us to walk through them to get access across the garden. The ornamentals are likely to be plants like gladioli; the obelisks are probably going to wind up being  edible legumes, but attractive varieties. What the herbs are is still subject of discussion: the advantage of this sort of design is that each square can have different soil (enriched, impoverished, gritty, damp) to suit the planting, so Mediterranean herbs (sharp drainage, poor soil) can grow next to roses (deep rich soil).

And as for the roses: we'll probably get four varieties, possibly using the Sister Elizabeth and Eglantine roses we have as one group, with three others: I'd like at least one white rose, and one deep red.

Time to turn some more turf!

Boundaries

Yesterday, along with Peter and Sara, we put in the posts that mark the boundary where we split the hillside when we purchased it from Bob. There are about a dozen of them, all 2.5" posts (5'6" long), driven into the ground along the border. Five in the lower section, and then going up the hill, between the trees, to the stone wall at the top. It went surprisingly well, with Liz holding a ranging post at the 'corner' half way up (the post giving the height to see over the trees), and me at the top sighting down, while Peter and Sara positioned the posts coming up.

We have a slightly larger patch of blackthorn that we realised, having now clambered through it: almost certainly more than we need, so we may cut it back to a thinner, more hedge-like extent, and create space for another couple of fruit trees. Putting in the markers only took us until lunch, so we managed to get some tidying and clearing done, too: some renovation pruning on what we believe to be an unproductive few apples at the bottom of the tree line (if they show no sign of fruiting this year, they'll probably come out), clearing blackthorn and brambles around their bases, and finally clearing the driveway of the rubbish that's been accumulating (mostly firewood and abandoned cement blocks and stones: fairly unattractive). While Liz did some of that, I climbed onto the garage roof, and have repositioned and secured the roof stones that have slipped out of position. The pointing at the ridgeline is in a sorry state, and I'll have to spend a day on that over the summer: not my idea of a fun job, but there you go. The coping stones are all in place, but the pointing between them and the top run of slates is weak, broken, and patchy.

Having got the deciduous trees in two weeks ago, we've now also planted the Scot's Pines, in the spaces we'd marked out. With the holes already dug, planting the 24 trees was a day's work (just!), with most of the time spent cutting the turves from the holes up to be able to refill. The last pine (we bought 25) was intended for the hillside, but the lowest hole is impossible to drain. It lies so low, we'll have to plant a willow there, which won't mind the waterlogged soil. That pine will go somewhere else, but there wasn't a hole dug for it, nor time to make one.

In the fading light (aided by the light in the storm porch), we potted up three peonies that arrived ('Sarah Bernhardt', 'Karl Rosenfeld', and 'Shirley Temple'), and sowed a tray of celeriac; half a tray of kale; half a tray of sprouts; and four modules each of tomatoes, sweet peppers and chilli peppers. The leeks, sprouts and beetroot we sowed last week (but I forgot to mention) have started to germinate: not a high percentage of beetroot, though, so we'll need to sow more.

Pruning

It's getting towards the end of winter, which makes it time to make sure we've pruned many of the plants. The new fruit and ornamental trees need formative pruning, and the fruit bushes in the kitchen garden all need annual attention.

So, today, we have:

• Cut back all the laterals on the apples and pears below 1.75m (only one is this tall, in fact, so it mostly just meant cutting back all the side shoots). The oldest apple tree, which came with us when we moved in, is now tall enough to have it's leader cut out at the 1.75m mark (or so). All the laterals below this have been trimmed back, and it's got a few lateral shoots at that height, which we'll now train in to become the main lateral framework of the tree.
• Not done anything with the plums or cherries. We're leaving them another week or two, to minimize the risk of silver leaf infection.
• Taken out some of the old wood on the oldest blackcurrant, and a few dodgy looking stems on the other two.
• Tip pruned and shortened side-shoots on the redcurrants and whitecurrants.
• Taken out damaged wood on the blueberries (still too small to take out old wood).
• Tidied the gooseberries: they're particularly bad at branches flopping onto the ground, so this always needs quite a lot of work -- they're also bad at growing into the path.
• Undertaken major work on the three established apples that were already on the hillside. None of these has ever been pruned, we think. One of them isn't too badly formed, but the others are over-grown 'bush' forms. The first just needed a low, unbalanced lateral taking out, and is now pretty neat. The other two both had errant cross-cutting stems, rubbing branches, and dead wood: they're now both considerably better, but will never win prizes for training. Never mind: they should, at least, be healthier, stronger, and better bearers!

Apart from that, we weeded a few beds, chopped down and dug in the green manure, and potted up some new arrivals: four hostas ('Canadian Blue', 'Fire and Ice', 'Touch of Glass' and 'White Feather'); six mixed astilbes; and a dwarf red Japanese azalea.

I forgot to mention some acquisitions from the garden centre during our week of trench and hole digging: three kaffir lilies (the outside variety Schizostylis coccinea, not the houseplant, Clivia miniata, which we also have); an Australian mint bush; and a number of heucheras (two Dayglow Pink, two Can-Can, two Marmalade, and a Paris). All very cheap and out of season...we couldn't resist.

Orchard

The orchard has now been planted: seventeen fruit trees, and a further five ornamental deciduous trees. Later, we'll add the Scot's Pines, and there's space to add another 2–6 full size trees (that is, some more ornamental or fruit trees) over the next couple of years.

Each tree is in a decent planting pit, with extra compost and sand mixed into the soil. They each have a 6' post (2.5" diameter), and a metre of chicken wire, wrapped into a tube, secured around them with a pair of bamboos (to protect the main stem from deer).

The four plums and one walnut are tall enough to have their leader cut, ready to start growing laterals at that height as standards: most of the rest need to grow on for another year or more. In the next few weeks, we'll trim back any laterals they all have, to encourage the main stem to grow taller and thicker. The aim is to have a clear trunk up to around the 5'6"–6' mark, and then a framework of branches above that. Standards take up more space (but there's plenty of that), but have high yields, and aren't as vulnerable to deer -- in the case of the walnuts, it's also to reduce squirrel nut-theft...

Panorama of the orchard, from the kitchen gate (© Ian 2013)

Weigela

Behind a pond-side bench, between two of the fruit trees, there's a rather large weigela. As with most of the large shrubs, it's not been 'properly' pruned for some time (that is, a few decades). This is problematic, as it's starting to outgrow its space, and lacks new growth from the ground to enable the older branches to be replaced—that is, it's a bit dead inside.

However, we've grasped the bull by the horns, and started a risky rejuvenation, as we did with the flowering currants, and will have to continue with the other large shrubs. It's risky, because if they don't form new branches from nearer the ground, they'll look awful, and will have to come out. However, if we don't do it, the plant will just get too large for the space, not flower well, be an unattractive shape—and have to come out. Better to risk it.

We gave it a general hair-cut, and removed or shortened most of the branches, some of them significantly, where they were eccentrically long, and then I crawled into it and cut out about a fifth of the old stems. It means there are some gaps in the canopy, and a large 'hole' in the front, but the theory is that the pruning will provoke strong new growth, hopefully from near the base, and the plant will start to rejuvenate. By doing this every year, the plant stays small(er), compact, flowers well, and fixed in a juvenile state. Effectively, the average age of any stem is around 3–4 years, as 1-in-5 is removed each year.

Newly pruned weigela  (bit bare at the front!) (© Ian 2012)

Steam

It's Philip's birthday later this week, so we all went out for the day on Saturday, to Haworth. Coincidentally, and unknown to us until we arrived, it was a 1940's Vintage Day, which meant the streets of Haworth were filled with people dressed for the period, many in service uniforms from the War. Commonwealth, USA, and a couple of Axis, too. We walked through the village, stopping at the traditional sweetshop, and pausing briefly at the churchyard, before walking on to Oxenhope and back for a picnic lunch. We then went on to Oakworth on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway steam service, before walking back to Haworth.

KWVR Steam train arriving at Oakworth; waiting at Oakworth station; and between Haworth and Oxenhope (© Ian 2012)

Sunday was spent in the garden, mostly clearing and pruning. The last of the cotoneaster is finally out of the top bank (as in, cut to ground level: there are still roots I'd like to pull up); we also decided that the conifer in that bank wasn't worth saving. It was dead and bare where the cotoneaster had engulfed it, and its location wasn't good, blocking the view from the dining room quite badly. Down it came, and it's much better without it. There's also a laurel/bay that has a bare back from where the cotoneaster was behind it. However, it's otherwise quite an attractive bush, so we're going to leave it to see if it re-sprouts. If it does, I'll try digging it up and moving it to a better spot, as it's not in the right location.

A scraggy conifer next to the vegetable garden was next to come down, along with a sorry excuse for a conifer that's struggled along in the copse, and two sad looking pines near the fence. I also took the opportunity to trim back the leylandii along the bottom fence, and tie them into a more up-right pose.

Finally, we pruned the two flowering currants (one of them rather hard, continuing the rejuvenation program we started last summer), and other shrubs in the lower bank that have finished flowering. Our pile of brush-to-be-chipped is now enormous: fortunately, we've got a larger, petrol-driven shredder booked for the upcoming bank holiday weekend, and hope to get it turned into mulch then.