Peasgood

Cut it down and burn it would be my suggestion. You should burn the bits you cut off at the very least really. Disinfect whatever you use to cut it too.

It does look more like fireblight than blossom rot to me.

If I said OK, I will go and plant a few acres of apples to do my bit it would be 5 years from now before I picked a meaningful crop. By that time he quite possibly won't even be a politician any more. If he said he would guarantee any growers a price that should give them a profit he could be drowning in apples. He won't, we can't. It doesn't take a genius to figure out this country is going to be very hungry in the coming years. It actually scares me as a lifelong fruit and veg producer how bad this supply situation actually is.

It is very simple and obvious where to open it, I just know this is going to sound rude but it is not meant to be, if you can't figure out how to do it you probably shouldn't hire it. How would you know if it was sharp enough without using it? I can see this one isn't particularly sharp looking but I wouldn't have known until trying it as I have little- no experience of them.

The rootstocks had been in the ground for 7-8 years and were too big to use. They were about as thick as my wrist at their base, straight stemmed and about 12" tall. I cut them off with a chainsaw at ground level, that is what I was chipping. Clean, no soil, no roots, rubbish, weeds or anything else. It was ideal conditions and ideal material for the job. I had done some previously using my sons small petrol engine chipper and that chipped them fine (he used that one not me). My plan is that where they were cut off they will sprout again and I can use that fresh growth to produce rootstocks and at the same time the landlords don't think I have planted a forest.

I should probably add that it cost £240 + VAT delivered and was delivered within an hour of me calling. It is a pity it was in such crap condition as I could have got loads more done but at the end of the day I did do what I wanted. Biggest downside is the chip is crap and not really any use to me, decent chip would have been. The rootstocks were in a rented field and they needed clearing, it is a weight off my mind that it got done.

The stuff I was chipping was clean and fresh cut, no soil contamination. I blocked the spout by allowing material to build up. I was chipping into bulk bags held up by my loader tractor. When I opened it to clear the spout there was a load of wire around the flywheel bearing. Not from me because there was no wire where I was, they were my trees in my field. Probably the joys of having a hire machine abused by others. Oh, the spout was only just blocked, quick poke with a stick and it was clear. Took longer to undo the bolts than clear it. Chip was going to be used as mulch but probably more useful as kindling!

They went through ok to start with but seemed to struggle by the end of the day. Have to admit I was struggling by then too. I got the rootstocks cut down and chipped yesterday which was what was needed but I had more stuff lined up for today but couldn’t be arsed with another day with it not working right.

Hired a chipper for the weekend. was hoping to make use of the chip but wtf? Looks like a crows nest. Wood was fresh cut apple rootstocks that had got too big. So 3-4” at the base. My sons small petrol chipper did a much better job but slower and had to trim the bottom tee foot off.

I think the Yorkshire men would have you believe that but we shipped thousands of sets all over the country. A lot was grown in the Evesham area and an increasing amount in East Anglia too. There are two sorts of rhubarb sold, one is the very pink stuff which is "forced" in dark sheds and the other is called garden rhubarb, just means grown outside. There is probably more garden than forced.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/653fce9846532b000d67f57a/hort-dataset-08june23i.xlsx

UK rhubarb figures 2022 510 ha (1260 acres) grown 15,000 tons Worth £22 million Don't know imports figures as not shown, just bulked together under "other"

I doubt there is anything like that amount grown any more. Probably 69,999,000 of those people don't eat rhubarb anyway and wouldn't know what it was or how to use it. Times have changed and when the old biddies died out so did the demand. If you see rhubarb these days it is 3 sticks in a plastic bag, usually only 5 bags on the supermarket shelf and all with yellow stickers on.

I don't know but I expect we are pretty self sufficient on rhubarb. There will be some forced stuff from Holland and most likely outdoor from Poland. Our trade into the jam industry stopped when Polish rhubarb undercut us to the point it wasn't viable, from memory we were getting £120/ton and that was only just worth doing.

We (me and my family) used to grow possibly up to 50 acres of rhubarb. We would send 3 wagon loads a day into Liverpool and Manchester wholesale markets. All handballed in 18lb boxes and all after a full day of picking the stuff. That family in Yorkshire famous for rhubarb, they used to buy wagon loads off us. We sent artic loads of it off to jam factories, they mixed it into the more expensive jams to bulk out the raspberries etc. We also sent artic loads of plants to Yorkshire and the rest of the country. Back in the day a lot of prisons had farms that fed the prisoners, they bought lots of rhubarb sets off us and most seasons involved a delivery to one HMP or other. I think I worked out that we as a family partnership were producing 12% of the UK crop. As trends changed and sales went to supermarkets rather than wholesale into greengrocers numbers dwindled to the point where one van load a week was enough. We stopped farming and nobody seemed to notice much but I hear you can't get rhubarb now because it is too expensive.

Lots of recipes for rhubarb and mackerel. Not for me though.

Everything feels very late here and only just warm enough these last few days. Tried to work my garden yesterday but it is still a very wet pudding. Got some garlic in that is doing ok. Last year I bought a load off ebay and grew it on, something like 100 sets or more. Was disappointed with the harvest but it has kept us in garlic until even now so was pretty good in reality. Rhubarb has done very well, an abundance of that and lots of people commenting how it is expensive to buy. Should start selling it. Have a lot of tomatoes but little more than seedlings yet, I did buy a few plants yesterday to try and advance that crop. Got some greyhound cabbage ready to be planted out, some sprouts too. Had late planted kale and broccoli in my polytunnel which cropped well and was very nice. The kale was especially nice and the best I have ever had, not that bitter leathery stuff you can get on an outdoor plant. Last years onions have just about come to an end, this years are not even planted out yet. I started a lot in plug trays but too wet to plant yet and they are maybe 9" tall now. I am expecting them to bolt. Got some more yesterday in the bargain box at B&Q so will give them a go. Also got a very poor asparagus plant that I will try to rescue. I do have salad leaves in the tunnel that I am picking, they are growing quicker than we are eating them and are good as no flea beetle seen yet. I'm sure they will be here soon enough. Cucumbers are up, courgettes are up, pumpkins about to be sown. I will sow 250 pumpkin and sell to local greengrocer. They don't make me a fortune but fun to grow and the grandkids delight in them.

It is a balance of pruning, fertilising and thinning of the fruit. Important to pick the fruit when ripe too, don't let them just fall off. If it is over set this year then pick off the extra fruitlets later this month and leave them spaced out enough for them to grow to the best size, so 1 fruit every 4" for example. You can do this when they are about the size of a grape. (you can do it whenever you like but the earlier the better but big enough to be sure they have set and not going to fall off with June drop. It also looks to have very little growth, a bit more pruned off in winter would encourage growth although it does look to be a dwarfing rootstock so not easy. I have been doing this professionally all my life and still not there 100%.

When I was a kid we were actively encouraged to have knives and guns, a lot different than today. Was given my first air rifle when aged 10 and my first shotgun aged 11. They were my guns and I was free to go off shooting unsupervised whenever I wanted. Can't say the shotgun got a great deal of use as we couldn't afford the shells, obviously. Even the air rifle pellets were limited and were bought in little paper type boxes of a couple of hundred. We would go picking strawberries or something in the summer, earn a few shillings and then wander off to the local shops and buy a penknife. Probably 6-7 years old at the time and nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody got stabbed or shot either, well not seriously anyway.

I've had apple orchards all my life and have never seen a rat damaged apple tree. Once had a colony of rats in one of the orchards, much to my surprise, but no damage. As said, voles are most likely and especially on young trees.Also as said, keeping the vegetation away from the base of the trunk cures that but not with a strimmer. Rabbits and hares will make a real mess of your trees, I have acres of orchards and every tree has a wire netting guard on the trunk to protect against rabbits.

I think the fella that came up with the idea in the first place is now very much against them. It's the sort of thing you might expect a non driver to come up with, hard shoulders are very scary places but infinitely more scary if there isn't one.

I doubt you would but I would think you'd be constantly thinking about it. My Ex's grandfather was a captain in the navy protecting the Atlantic convoy, it sounded pretty grim. If a ship went down you had to keep going and just watch the survivors float by knowing they hadn't a chance. I would think those images would be in your head forever more.

Scared to death of what might happen now it is at the bottom of the sea. Imagine being a sailor on a ship with such a cargo in the Atlantic with U-boats prowling. A different breed.

Fiskars X27 is the one that folk always recommend. Felling axes aren't much good at splitting even compared to a B&Q maul. Oxdale splitters are very much worth their money if going on a tractor. Personally I would never go back to an axe or maul having used an Oxdale but if funds are too tight then I guess you have to.

Nearly every professional apple grower I have ever asked what their favourite tasting apple was has said Spartan. I accept it may not be everyone's favourite but I am surprised to hear you don't like the taste. A fully ripe Spartan fresh off the tree is unbeatable for flavour in my opinion. They don't taste as nice after being stored though. As for storage qualities, I would class them as OK but not brilliant, for juice I struggle with them. They go soft too quick which makes them difficult to squash and no matter when you squash them they do not yield very well. Having said that, this season I pressed some in late January which had been picked October and stored in an opensided barn. They were surprisingly good quality, hardly any rots and yielded reasonably well too.