May 2001

Apple blossom is of course pink, but when you have many varieties of apple together it’s possible to see the variations in colour, size and density of the bloom on different trees. Spartan or Ribston Pippin have pale blossom, Spartan’s being almost white, whereas Brownlees Russet and Sunset have a much deeper pink colour. These last two varieties produce such a reliably dense show of blossom that they are recommended by some authorities as ornamental trees irrespective of the fruit. I have been spur and blossom pruning. Some of our trees produce so much blossom and set fruit so readily that if no thinning takes place there will be too many fruits, which is a bad thing. I was pruning a Spartan yesterday that I estimated had over 2,000 individual blossoms. If only 1 in 10 sets, that will be 200 fruits. The tree can carry perhaps 40lbs maximum, so if we want decent sized apples, 200 is the most apples the tree can be allowed to bear. Left to itself, the tree might give us 500 golf ball sized fruits, no use to anyone.

The trees we planted last year will be fruit-thinned even more radically and not allowed any apples at all-they need to put all their resources into growing. Their pruning will be “architectural”, to get the right eventual shape for the tree. Trees can have many different shapes, ours are being trained as delayed open centre bushes. I can think back to 2 miserable blossom times in the orchard, 1997 when a late, hard frost killed all the baby fruitlets so we had no crop that year, and last year when the constant rain led to our worst outbreak of scab. But right now, everything is lovely.