Eve and the Apple

 The Snow Thaws  With a downpour of cold sleeting rain, a sudden surge of 10°C to melt the rigid loam in my pots, enabling some digging and planting quickly before the next possibility of a freeze. There's signs of winter around the yard, the usual garden guests looking for an easy meal or a refreshing drink. Buds appearing to start the spring yet the first day of winter is now upon the yard. I'm so keen to be picking my own apples I may show exuberance in my selection of orchard trees, now perusing the space wondering what I'm going to do with 100kg of apples and some plums. The BBC website is good for recipe and food ideas and I belong to a couple of online cooking app clubs which is fantastic for finding and sharing recipes. The BBC goes from a range of amazingly fancy and posh dinner party worthy, Come Dine With Me eat your heart out, to really basic budget student cost of living feed the family for a 5er a week type of menu plans. It's quite a good read! The apps I

 With Air-BnB Being So Popular The old pubs and inns are still worth considering for a weekend retreat or staycation. For a time there the Beer Garden would've supported a small orchard for the guests enjoyment. You could be thinking that there would not be the room to do that these days, with Apple trees being so large and needing specialist care and knowledge when it's pruning or mulching times, that it's not worth the effort? Well that's not so the case these days! With a multi range of rootstocks available and the encouragement for wildlife biodiversity it couldn't be more simplified. These tree planting diagrams show how to train fruiting trees against a wall or a fence. I like option b. and was thinking how fruitful it would be for the old country pub to grow a grafted multi fruit tree this way in their kitchen garden or around the Beer Garden. If I did start my own grafting project, I think I would aim for this kind of planting arrangement, easy for the harve

 A Friend in Need... ...is a friend in deed. Now I'm not saying plants are people, but it is worth noting that plants do react to stimuli. Known to be that way for millennia, perhaps why the Style, Stamen, and Stigmata are such quintessential entities in the lifecycle of the greenstuff. The bees and the butterflies, moths, birds, and other wise works of nature by instinct know how to live by carrying the propagation through time, creating more fresh buds for the future generations to enjoy. There's frequently an offset that can be handy to learn how to utilise; honey, silk, over abundant flowering, or crafts can be adept from the successes of nature over producing. On to considering my potted container gardens, a theme I find is approaching to bring some intelligence to the aesthetic values sensed upon viewing, working on, or passing by the development.  Regarding my mini orchard exploratory learning programme there has been a certain amount of research on the rest and growing

 Ever Heard of a Moon Garden? https://beekeeping.co.uk/products/beryl-cook-beekeeper-tea-towel - picture credit National Bee Supplies,  UK Artist, Beryl Cook OBE    (b. 10/09/26 – d. 28/05/08). Link to the Bumblebee Conservation Trust online shop, check it out some great things to buy reasonably cost effective 5% goes directly to the Trust! I was reading up today about Bees and thinking on the efficacy of either attempting a Beekeepers course or working on some wild Bumblebee Conservation programme. An interesting few hours of reading and deliberating!  The temps here are -4°C at night and the frost lingers throughout the daylight hours.  Companion planting and Soil Certification is on the agenda, reaching the end of National Tree Week 2022 and I'm looking into ways to make the mini orchard more suitable for a kitchen garden from where I can put the surplus onto the Open Food Network. And perhaps sell on a couple jams or chutneys?  I was reading about a guy who planted an orchard 5