Ella's First Apple

We've planted apple trees for each of the grandchildren in the Old Orchard Paddock at Struan Farm. Bramley for Ella, Cox's Orange Pippin for Livvy, Akane for Charlie, and Granny Smith for Freya. We've also got a Liberty eating apple up there as well. (As an aside, Freya's Granny got ravaged by some misbehaving lambs this year, so we may need to start over on that or declare that Liberty is really her tree.)

But good news, and appropriately so for the eldest of the lot: Ella's Bramley is the first to bear fruit.

We also planted a Malus Jack Humm crab apple nearby on the recommendation of Heather from Country Trading. While apples don't need cross pollinators, apparently crab apples help them and are used by commercial orchardists for this purpose as well.

Jack is very, very happy in the Old Orchard Paddock as you can see:

Hopefully the turkeys will leave him alone. These crab apples look really lovely, don't they?

Comments

[linda]

Lovely -- can't you put collars around the tree so the lambies cannot get to?

[Karen]

We do put fencing around them, but sometimes the lambs are able to push through the fencing. I didn't want to point any fingers, but in this case John was a bit lax in what he used originally, and this year the lambs were particularly aggressive, and the poor tree paid the price.