Orchard

One thing we have always wanted is an orchard so once our offer had been accepted in July we started some research. Living in Kent, we were surrounded by orchards and decided to visit Brogdale the Home of the National Fruit Collection. Brogdale maintains over 3,500 varieties of named Apple, Pear, Plum, Cherry, Bush Fruit and Cob Nut culivars.

We went along on the August bank holiday and joined a guided tour of the orchards led by a Professor who had worked there for most of his career. We mentioned in chatting with him before the tour started that we were planning to move to Pembrokeshire and would be interested if he could recommend any varieties that might do well in Wales as we went round.

He was clearly of the firm opinion that no apples were likely to thrive in Pembrokeshire and delighted in prefixing every comment about a particular tree with ‘and of course this variety will not grow in Wales’. We were basically the butt of his jokes for the whole 1 ½ hours of the tour. That is a lot of piss taking! Nevertheless, it was a very enjoyable way of spending and afternoon, particularly sampling the cider at the end.

To be fair, at the end of the tour he did suggest that we contacted a local nursery to see if they could recommend any local varieties. Advice we followed and found Dolau-hirion nursery near Llandeilo. They have some very good advice on their web site and specialise in supplying fruit trees that grow well in the challenging climate of south west Wales. In addition to more ‘common’ varieties, they also have a number of local ones collected from the area.

They recommend that to cater for the poor soils and less than ideal climate, apples are grafted onto very vigorous MM111 and Quince A root stocks for apples and pears respectively. The disadvantage of the MM111 root stock is that the trees can take 4 to 5 years to come into fruit so we will just have to be patient!

It was late in the season for bare root trees by the time we had got around to thinking about the orchard and Dolau-hirion had only a limited stock of apples and no pears. We therefore bought 4 eating and cooking apple trees which were a Xmas present from my three daughters Laura, Emma and Hannah. We then managed to find a stockist of the pear trees we were after on the Isle of White, Deacon's Nursery, and ordered 2 from them. This is only a first phase and depending on how they do will add another 6 or perhaps 9 next year.

In addition to considering pollination, we will chose a range of varieties that fruit over as long a period as possible and provide some that keep well into the winter.

Based on this, the first 'phase' we chose were:

Desert Apples: Beauty of Bath, Cissy and Claygate Pearmain

Cooking Apple: Mere de Menage

Desert Pear: Concorde

Dual Pear: Winter Nelis

As ever planting required the use of a pickaxe and mattock so it will be interesting to see how they do in the challenging soil conditions (none appear to have died yet as I write this in late April!). Each one was staked and protected with a sheep/rabbit guard and then surrounded with a mulch to keep the grass at bay. Several weeks after we planted them we had a sheep invasion from the neighbouring field but have seen no sign of rabbits (yet).