I thought the magic orchard was going to be my last winter pruning job this year but I was visiting another neighbour who I hadn’t seen in ages and realised I had another pruning job left to do. I had tended to these trees once (maybe twice) before and I actually grafted the younger ones in my own little nursery back in 2018 or thereabouts. So I was very interested to see how these little trees were getting on, and in particular how they were shaping up.
I was orchard pruning recently for one of my neighbours and here are some of the photos. The trees are overly shaded to the south by some big Cupressus Leylandii trees making the situation not ideal from a fruit growing perspective but there is an absolutely magical feeling in there. The farm itself and setting is beautiful but stepping into the orchard is like like entering another world. Most of the work I did was cutting off dead dying and diseased wood (very little disease given the circumstances) and thinning and restructuring the trees to a natural shape. In some cases I kept branches that didn’t fit the future structure I was setting but were healthy with plenty of fruiting wood – they can always go later on as the replacement branches are developing. You can see in one of the photos I have splayed potential new scaffold branches from Continue Permaculture Story
