Apples looking good at Appletree Cottage

Fingers crossed for a good harvest

Maggie Sinclair old Scottish apple variety fruiting nicely in the Appletree Cottage garden.

We're hoping for a bumper year for apples here at Shandon Farm and Appletree Cottage.
The last two years late frosts put paid to spectacular blossom leaving it a dirty brown colour.  Very little fruit pollination and setting survived the frosts.
This year however things are looking more positive

Healthy looking specimens enjoy the sunshine

We started planting one hundred trees in 2014.  Since then we have grafted the scions (cuttings) from the trees onto root stock bringing the total number of trees up to 400.

This year we trimmed trees to height to facilitate picking

Some apples grow in clusters of more than two or three.  These clusters require thinning to bunches of about two or three.  Thinning is also required on thin branches which have too many apples and are in danger of breaking.  Thinning can be done chemically or by hand.  We do it by hand - which takes a bit of time but is a very satisfying day in the orchard.

A bunch of four fruitlets which will be thinned to two or three.

So hopefully things are looking up and we'll get a good crop this year.  We press what we grow into apple juice which we pasteurise so it last longer and also use the apple pulp for making jellies, marmalade and our popular black butter.

Things are looking up