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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: apple trees

GOOPs February

01 Monday Feb 2010

Posted by sallynex in pruning

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

accidents, apple trees, mistakes

Notes to self:

1) In winter, branches on apple trees are full of water and therefore VERY heavy.
2) You know that little cut you do on the underside of the branch to prevent it falling and stripping away a load of bark on the way? You do that FIRST, even if you think it might be slightly in the wrong place so you’d better just do a little cut in the top first to make sure you’re going to line the two up.
3) When you ignore the two points above, the following happens:

  • you slice through around, oh, let’s say 10cm of the top of the branch
  • you suddenly realise that previously stout branch is inexplicably moving away from you
  • there’s a sort of creaking noise and the sound of splintering wood
  • your chicken run fence disappears under half a tree that’s now lying on the ground
  • because you failed to make the underside cut first the branch takes with it a massive strip of bark and you have revealed yourself to be crap at pruning trees.

My final weekend finishing off the apple tree pruning didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. Fortunately I’d made this rubbish cut halfway along the branch so I could get rid of the top weight before making a neater cut closer to the tree – you see I do know the theory, I just don’t always follow it – so I was able to cut away most of the shockingly big tear, but there’s still quite a bit left and I feel the tree is reproaching me every time I look at it now.

This post is inspired by GOOPs – Gardening Oops, a meme probably dreamt up especially for me as it encourages us gardeners to stop taking ourselves so seriously and more to the point ‘fess up that we’re not all as perfect as we’d like everyone to think we are. So thanks Joene over in Connecticut – lesson in humility duly learned!

A tale of gardening failure

10 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by sallynex in pruning

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

apple trees, brown rot, canker, pests and diseases, squirrels, woolly aphid

My poor apple trees.

I was raking up the leaves they’ve so generously been scattering all over my chicken run, and to relieve the monotony (and the ache in my shoulders) decided to have a closer look at them – something I don’t do nearly often enough.

I found them etched with a sorry tale of years of callous neglect from their excuse for a gardener. I’m afraid that since they are in the chicken run, they’re something of an afterthought at the end of the garden and I don’t pay them anything like as much attention as I should: the constant and tender cares of better orchard-owners than I are sadly lacking here, and though they try to soldier on as best they can, they’re clearly showing signs of strain.

It doesn’t help that the person who planted them – not me, I hasten to add – put them far too close together: I have four standard apple trees, two Bramleys, two Cox’s, about 10ft apart in a square. That’s about half the room they should have, so they’re at a disadvantage before you even factor in the slacker gardener who’s supposed to be looking after them.

Here, like a doom-laden encyclopaedia entry of afflictions for apple trees, is what I discovered:

1. Woolly aphid

Like cotton wool balls sticking to the bark. There are little critters under there, sucking away joyously at the sap of my apple tree. I’ve seen this covering an entire tree in someone else’s garden, so it can get to epidemic proportions: luckily I’ve only got the odd fluffball or two.

Treatment: I’ll be getting out the hose with the spray set to ‘jet’ this spring: you just zap the suckers away and keep doing it till they’re gone. Very satisfying.

2. Brown rot

Actually I did know I had this problem – I just haven’t done anything about it. The apples go disgustingly brown and pustulent while still on the tree, and then – key to identification, this – they stay there, mummified. If you leave them, they’ll infect healthy apples next year.

Treatment: do the exact opposite of me and pick them off as soon as you see them. Get rid of them in the bin, or burn them: don’t put them on the compost heap.

3. Squirrel damage


This suspiciously regular area of bark damage is characteristic of a visit from one of those furry-tailed rats we’re all supposed to find so sweet. As you can see, it’s eaten away the bark right around the branch, cutting off the water and food and killing the branch. Still think they’re cute?

Treatment: Letting rip with air rifles is, for some inexplicable reason, frowned upon in our semi-suburban street. The dog is, uncharacteristically, some help here: though the main purpose of wildlife in his opinion is to provide him with merry chasing opportunities, he does share our opinion of squirrels and they’re the one and only thing on which he occasionally sates his inner wolf. However, he’s also a bit thick so they outwit him all too easily and laugh their squirrelly laugh at him from on high. I think this is one bit of damage I’m just going to have to put up with.

4. Canker?

I really hope I’m wrong here, but it’s not looking good. Apologies for the lousy picture, but I was in a state of shock when I was taking it.

Canker is the one thing apple growers fear to see. Sunken patches of bark like this, where the branch above the patch has died back (as was the case here) is a sign of a fungal disease that can kill the entire tree if you let it spread.

Now, before panic sets in, I’m not entirely sure this is canker. It’s a bit long and thin – cankers on apple trees tend to be rounder, like the horrific picture on the RHS advisory service page on the subject (now there’s a sight to strike fear into an apple tree’s heart). On the other hand, there’s no denying that there has been considerable die-back above the area.

Treatment: I can feel an extensive programme of winter pruning coming on. The organic way of dealing with canker is simply to cut it out: and if this is canker, it’s very much at the early stages, with only small branches affected and nothing on the trunks or major branches – so I’ve still got a chance to get rid of it if I act now. I’ll be cutting back at least a foot or so behind the canker into healthy wood, and again – I’ll be burning the wood, not leaving it lying around to re-infect healthy areas. And even if it isn’t canker, I’ll have given my languishing apple trees the first TLC they’ve had in oooh….. this many years.

And then I shall assuage my guilt by pampering them in an over-compensating sort of way all year. Before lapsing next winter some time into my usual state of distracted forgetfulness, of course.

I think I shall go and become an accountant now. Goodbye.

Trying to get it all done….

08 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apple trees, leafmould, leaves


Blimey, where did those weeks go?

Here’s one answer: I’ve been a total slave to my leafmould bin since about mid-November. What with the painfully short hours of daylight, I’ve been grabbing my leaf rake every chance I get and not coming in till dark (that’ll be when the kids get home from school, then). And on top of that I’ve been planting the remainder of the tulip bulbs, putting the last few plants mouldering on my patio into the ground at last, and finally getting on top of my legions of weeds.

I get very obsessed by autumn leaves at this time of year. The bottom part of our garden is pretty much a woodland, what with four mature apple trees and a boundary with next-door lined with hazel, oak and ash. So the result is a blizzard of multicoloured autumn leaves which starts some time around October and is only just starting to die down now.

I raked through the whole lot in November, and then turned round and started again. Now I’m on the home run with only a few stragglers thumbing their noses at me from the treetops and a leafmould bin piled high with lovely crispy leaves. It’ll take a year to rot down into good soil conditioner (if you want it for mixing up potting composts, leave it another year) – and though it’s a lot of work and a long wait, it’s so worth it. Piles of the very best black crumbly perfection to add to your soil every autumn – you can almost see the plants plunging their roots into it luxuriously the moment you shovel it on.

Beauty in unexpected places #2

09 Monday Jun 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

apple trees, lichen, moss, unexpected beauty

This lichen was clinging to an ancient apple tree on the Trevarno Estate in Cornwall (yes, I’m aware that I’ve banged on about this lovely garden before). It was in the walled garden – currently being restored to its former glory, and including a few remnants of the old Victorian kitchen garden it once was.

Lichen is a thing of total, wonder-inducing beauty if you look at it closely. It appears on older trees and lots of people think it’s doing damage – in fact it’s just a sign that conditions are perfect, which means damp and a little shady with a nice bit of roughened wood to cling on to. Those little tufts of hairy grey moss just add to the general sense of other-worldliness, don’t you think? It could be a scene from the surface of the moon.

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