Good news! All three of us apprentices passed our tree and shrub identification test for the diploma this week with 100%. This is something that I had been worrying about. Although I was OK with the common names of a few well-known species, such as oak and hawthorn, when it came to Latin names and a list of twenty different species, I didn’t have a clue. So I’ve spent the last few weeks practising my tree i.d. to anyone who’d listen to me, and thankfully it paid off. All the units that we’ll be covering in the diploma have now been chosen and we’ve made a start on a unit covering propagation. For this, we’ve been learning how to take cuttings from an apple tree, ‘Winter Gem’, in the orchard at Ryton Gardens that’s growing on its own rootstock. This is unusual for apples, as the top part of the tree is usually grafted onto the roots of a different tree to restrict growth, which means that new trees grown from cuttings would normally grow much bigger than their parent. However, as the ‘Winter Gem’ apple is growing on its own roots, cuttings should produce trees identical to the original.
There’s a definite autumnal feeling starting to descend on the gardens. Apple harvesting is now well underway, autumn-fruiting raspberries are ready to pick in the soft fruit garden, and in the pest and disease control garden I’ve already harvested some parsnips and the pumpkins are a very respectable size. The pumpkins are a white variety called ‘White Large’, so they should make interesting ghostly lanterns for Halloween, while the red-orange flesh will make a delicious soup.
It’s now time to select and plant bulbs for early colour next year, and I’ll soon be turning my attention to winter pruning.
