Winter is our busiest time of year, with tree lifting, despatch, bagging/potting, seed sowing, rootstock harvest, benchgrafting, field grafting and planting. Phew!

Winter is a time of planting and housekeeping in the home orchard. 

Family tree plantings are a selection of deciduous fruit trees planted very closely together, with all branches pruned to grow outwards. Without looking closely, the trees appear to be one.  Family tree plantings means that fruit will be harvested over a longer period with several varieties, rather than a glut over a week or two, while only taking up the space of one tree. 

For espalier training, the most suitable apple varieties are those which produce fruit on spurs - which is the short stubby clusters of tiny branches (as pictured below). These spurs produce fruit year after year, and ideally an espaliered apple tree would have spurs along every branch. 

Fruit trees with more than one variety growing on the tree are called ‘doubles’, ‘triples’, ‘family trees’ and ‘fruit salad trees’. Compatible varieties are selected to grow on the one tree which must be in the same family. It is not possible to grow a tree with apples, pears and plums on it. However it is possible to grow a tree with a peach and nectarine on it, as these are both in the Prunus family so are compatible.

Cara Cara oranges are not a true blood orange, but are a pink-red fleshed Navel orange. The flesh colour is due to carotenoids (like  the orange in carrots!), whereas blood oranges have the flesh pigmentation from anthocyanins.   Note that the flesh colour of Cara Cara intensifies in a warm climate - in cooler climates or cooler seasons, the fruit can have lesser colour intensity. 

A tasty freestone peach with red-pink skin and yellow flesh. The tree shows good resistance to leaf curl so can be grown without spraying. Provisional PVR protection.

A great small, very hardy tree with fruit that can be cooked now or frozen for later. Fruit are large, golden, sweet and juicy and produced early in the season. Best pollinated by Santa Rosa. 

Good early variety, with smaller yellow skinned fruit overlaid with red and juicy yellow flesh.  Partially self-fertile. Pollinators include Omega and Santa Rosa. 

Galaval is a full colour blush over stripe apple with improved stability. This highly coloured sport of Galaxy was discovered in France.