Grafted

On Thursday, my order of grafting material arrived from the National Fruit Collection, in Brogdale. I'd ordered sticks of seven fruit varieties: two apples, Crimson Superb, and Craggy's Seedling; a pear, Hessle; two medlars, Dutch and Royal; and two quinces, Ivan and Vranja. The rootstocks arrived (MM106 for the apples; Quince A for the rest) a little while ago, and were planted out a couple of weeks ago, to give them time to settle in.

Today, then, was grafting day. I've managed to get three scions out of all the sticks, apart from medlar Royal and quince Vranja, which only produced two. That means at least two spare Quince A rootstocks, which is no bad thing. I collected the cut off rootstock, and have put them into pots, to see if they take as hardwood cuttings (it's not the right time of year, but there you go). I used a tongue-and-whip grafts on them all, and wrapped the joins with parafilm.

The grafting scions, well packed and safely delivered (© Ian 2014)

They're all in the nursery bed, apart from a Crimson Superb and a Craggy's Seedling, which I grafted onto rotostocks that had been planted straight into the apple walk last weekend.

The apple walk, with the two spoil heaps of stone (© Ian 2014)

The approach to the apple walk, with pear 'Hessle' in front and right of the first arch: the hawthorn on the left will be replaced with another Hessle, in time (© Ian 2014)

A side view of the apple walk, in its temporary deer-cage (© Ian 2014)

The nursery bed, with the other grafted rootstocks (© Ian 2014)

Beech Bench

When we ordered our bare-root hedging last year, we included a couple of dozen extra purple beech. They've been waiting, heeled in in the vegetable garden, waiting for us to be ready to plant them.

On the north-west edge of the garden, there's a large elder, and a large lilac with a holly growing through it. Between the two, there's a roughly 12' gap, in which a smaller lilac, and a potentilla sat. I have nothing against lilacs, other than that their season of beauty is relatively short, and somewhat unreliable. The potentilla has been a stalwart. However, neither really enhances the boundary, and it feels rather open (nothing in the sight line to the neighbour's big windows.

When we visited York Gate, we saw (though I didn't comment on it here) a bench that had a high beech 'hedge' grown behind and around its sides. It gave a sheltered spot, and formed quite a feature. We thought that the spot between the bigger two trees would be ideal for one, where a bench on the edge of the games lawn would be nicely combined with a feature visible from across the lawn, at the arched entrance to that 'room'.

Of course, this meant moving the lilac. The potentilla was easy, and has gone into the long border, where it's nicely filled a gap on the left end. The lilac was less simple, but eventually we managed to trench around it, cut under it, and drag it to the opposite side of the garden (on runners, which made it easier, if not easy). There, on the raised bank at the edge of the garden, between a silver birch and a sycamore, we dug it a new hole, and planted it in. At the same point, we've given it a good prune, as the shocked and reduced roots won't support as large a canopy: the smaller silhouette will also catch the wind less until its better anchored.

The lilac is now roughly above the blue hose reel, from this angle, in this photo from last year (© Ian 2013–14)

The space, those two out, looked perfect, thankfully, so we marked out a space for a 6' bench, and cleared a suitable border around it, into which we've planted 25 of the bare-root hedging plants. They look awfully twig-like at this moment, of course. Hopefully, though, the beech will grow quickly (it should), and in a few years, we'll have a pleasant, sheltered spot to sit.

Purple beech (left) and 'Golden Hornet' crab-apple (right) (© Ian 2013–14)

After doing this, we then dug the hole for the crab-apple, 'Golden Hornet', that was also waiting in the kitchen garden. This was rather easier than the hole for, say, the apple walk, and was quickly the right size. The apple's now planted (exactly the same mycorrhizal/stake/cage regime as before!), centrally on the games lawn (compensating for a planned border on the lower edge, that is), and is a good focus from the future bench.

The last job of the day was taking two branches down from one of the silver birches at the top of the colour wheel, which were damaged in the high winds of Wednesday. Tomorrow morning, we should be sowing a load of seeds: sweet peas, cineraria, tomatoes, chillies, aubergines; as well as potting up the All Year Round cauliflowers we sowed last month.

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.

Rootstocks

The MM106 apple and Quince A rootstocks arrived during the week, and have been heeled into a bucket of compost, waiting to be planted out. That was the first order of the day, so all but two apples are now safely planted in the nursery beds we dug on the hillside. We've put up the chickenwire cage that will protect all three beds from deer, and the rootstocks should now have a couple of weeks to settle in before we graft onto them.

Yesterday afternoon, we then drove the 22 tubes that will support the apple walk arches into the ground. These are 5/8" steel tubes, with the underground section cold-galvanized, and bitumen painted, for corrosion protection. They extend about 90cm above ground, and the rebar arches will slot into them in a few weeks. Alongside are the support stakes, that will ensure that the rootstocks don't suffer windrock while they establish.

Steel tubes, zinc-painted and ready for bituminous paint over-coat ( Ian 2014)

Having got these carefully positioned, we then dug the two planting holes for our sweet chestnuts, which are on the same order as the twenty apples and one pear (the last two apples for the walk are amongst the grafting set). This was astonishingly easy: we each went to one hole, planning to get started then reconvene once we knew how difficult they were going to be—and had the holes dug in a few minutes. Working in the very stony (historically terraced) corner with the apple walk has clearly given us a different perspective. The holes dug, I drove an 8' stake for each; this has the advantage of being able to see the position from the house, to check that they seem right.

The two trenches of the apple walk then needed refilling, so we poured in seven bags of sand, to help drainage, and eight trugs of compost, before scraping the spoil heaps back into the trenches. Even with the additions, the loss of all that stone from the trenches means that they were still underfilled.

To make up the shortfall, we've used loam from the stacks of turf we've been building in the copse while lifting turves from the quince, sweet-pea, and copse beds. Trenches topped up, we then decided to put up the chicken-wire cage for the applewalk, having previously thought of leaving it until after planting. However, with the centre of the walk now clear of soil (but still muddy and slippery), we decided there was good enough access, and the greater risk was of kicking a tree over while manoeuvring the heavy roll of wire net. The corner stakes aren't really secure enough to tension a fence (I couldn't drive them deeply enough into the stony soil), but they've sufficed for getting the protective cage round the apple beds. We also had to dig one or two more short drains, to ensure that the ground isn't too wet—the very wet weather of the last month means there are several stream flowing down the hillside, in the main gullies and land-drain, and the ground just inside the gap in the wall is a pond. Fortunately, all our drainage work last year seems to have done the job well, and the existing trees seem protected from the worst of it.

The fruit trees are scheduled to arrive this coming week, and so we should be able to plant up the apple walk next weekend, at long last.

Babies and Baking

No gardening news this week: we spent a long weekend in Cambridge, catching up with everyone at a biennial houseparty. We stayed with Philip and Rachel, and their now two-month old son. He's grown (considerably), as they do...as has James, now about a year old, and on the verge of reliably walking. We also managed to see Ann, and her three-week old, who's very cute (and mellow, actually), so it's been a very paediatric trip. We interspersed rocking babies to sleep with baking, largely, so it's been rather fun.