At an ‘Apple Day’ in Lancaster in 2007 one of our old garden apple trees which produces huge, tasty cooking apples was found to be a rare Lancashire ‘Royal George’ variety. This sparked our interest in grafting as a way of reproducing it but also as a cost-effective way of producing a large number of young apple trees which we could train as espaliers around our vegetable plot. We joined the South Lakeland orchard group (details of how to join are available from Brian Fereday) learnt about grafting and about the huge variety of apples that are particularly suited to growing in this area. See the Northern Fruit Group for details of the varieties. In February 2008 we grafted around 40 different varieties of trees and all but two ‘took’. In February 2009 these were planted out both around the vegetable plot and in a new hillside orchard which is also home to our bee hives.
We use a lot of apples in our cooking and the different varieties suit different recipes as well as being available at different times. When the new trees begin producing in 3-5years, we also hope to make our own apple juice.
As well apples we have also planted pears, quince, damson, plum and gages. As well as the fruit for us, the blossom feeds the bees and other insects, and any suplus fruit is left on the ground for blackbirds and starlings. We also have summer fruits including blackcurrants, redcurrants, strawberries, raspberries and whitecurrants.
