Orchard

Welcome to Church house orchard!

open month: September-October 2013

Please feel free to look around but please don’t scrump or eat our apples.

We have 17 varieties (including a Prune and a Quince) in all we have 28 trees.

 We will be hosting some harvesting days and pressing sessions for anyone interested to help and learn alongside us! this will be a first for us so bound to be messy fun! you can find us if you walk the Mariners Way Footpath which passes through the orchard and behind the Church in Throwleigh, Dartmoor. The church is well worth a visit... look for the Green Man and the Three Hares roof bosses. The Village is also a Delight filled as it is with listed medieval thatched cottages!

Summer Stubbard var. 2013 harvest

apple details on handy sheets to read in orchard

We are very excited to introduce our bottled apple juice "Winter Peach" a spicy, sharp and full bodied delight... chilled its just simply perfection! limited to 66 bottles... first come first served!

Our first harvest, we have harvested the "winter peach" and pressed a lovely juice from it! a real beauty... watch out for the cydre... we have some old country varieties and look forward to tasting!

We are not certified organic due to costs of registration but our trees grow on land that has never had any chemicals near it, the trees have and continue to grow and mature in a sacred orchard on the hills of Dartmoor National Park. Just an added a very special note, we also have carefully placed tuned wind-chimes, hand made in Mariposa, CA (our other spiritual home) that serenade our trees!

This week its the Ergremot Russet (see below) ...10 crates from one tree... this tree has been pruned in the "Polish method" which makes for stong limbs, great for climbing up!

Egremont, stored and ready to eat n juice!

From our other "forgotten" garden is the young Walnut tree... small crop as and its first year to produce but wow, lovely taste!

1/2 a Tonne of Black Dabinett or Tommy Rodford mixed with Tommy Knight apples 85% to 15% this will be our Cydre base... have to wait a few months before tasting!

Church house orchard guide. 17 varieties (28) trees

The garden apple tree... <not in orchard>

Egremont Russet

The Egremont Russet is a cultivar of dessert apple, of the russet type. It has a rich, nutty flavour and crisp, firm and fairly juicy flesh.
It was first recorded in 1872, and is believed to have been raised by the Earl of Egremont at Petworth in Sussex, UK.

1. (1) Summer Stibbert (Stubbard) - cooker

Fruit mall, conical, distinctly five-ribbed, one of the ribs occasionally very prominent. Skin, clear lemon-yellow in the shade, but covered on the side next the sun with bright crimson. Eye, small and closed, set in a puckered basin. Stalk, slender, rather deeply inserted. Flesh, very tender, with an agreeable mild acidity.

An early kitchen apple which comes into use in the middle and end of August

This is a very popular apple in the West of England, especially in Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset.

2. (4) Rosemary Russet - eater

First described in 1931 – more of a reinette than a russet in spite of its name.  Listed in the catalogue of the 1888 Apple and Pear Conference.
Medium size. Conical, irregular, flattened at base, tapering to apex. Slightly five crowned. Irregular, sometimes lopsided. Pale green/ yellow with red/brown flush and a few short red stripes. 

3. (3) Black Dabinett (aka Tommy Rodford) - cydre

Bittersweet, flowering group 4, pick October/early November.  A vintage quality cider apple which will make an excellent single variety cider.  It is a vigorous, well spurred and reliable cropping tree.
Dabinett probably dates from the early 1900s, when it was found by William Dabinett growing as a wilding (a natural seedling) in a hedge at Middle LambrookSomerset.^[1] The exact genetic makeup of Dabinett is unknown, though one 'parent' was probably the Chisel Jersey apple, a similar late "bittersweet" variety. The variety became very popular and was widely planted across the south-west of England.

4. (2) Barnack Beauty - LATE DESSERT

Crisp, crunchy & juicy - striking both in fruit and flower. Orange Pippin Cultivar
A heritage Lincolnshire variety raised in Barnack Village, next to Burghley Estate, Stamford in 1804
Pick early October for use between October and January

5. (1) Golden Pippin - eater/cydre

Sussex, England, United Kingdom. Introduced: 1629, Orange Pippin Cultivar. Uses: Eat fresh, Cooking, Good for pippin jelly, Juice, Hard cider.

Gold with russet dots. Sweet rich taste with a lemon tang. Cooks well despite being a small apple..

6. (2) Tale Sweet - cydre

This variety of sweet cider apple tree is perfect for those wanting a good vigerous grower that has a natural resistance to apple scab that can occur in wetter climates. The fruit creates a mild bittersweet cider.
'Tale Sweet' originated from the small hamlet of Tale in East Devon

7. (1) Bramley - cooker

The old nickname for the Bramley was “The King of Covent Garden” and still exists today in the New Covent Garden Market, where all specialist fruit wholesales can offer Bramleys to their customers for 12 months of the year.
The original Bramley apple tree continues to bear fruit to this day. Those few pips planted by a little girl in her garden in Nottinghamshire 200 years ago are responsible for what is today a £50 million industry, with commercial growers across Kent, East Anglia and the West Midlands.

8. (1) Cornish Aromatic - Eater/cooker

high-quality late-season dessert apple from Cornwall, with an attractive red / russeted skin. In a good year the flavour can be excellent - a rich pear-drop note to the firm flesh.

Cornish Aromatic apple was first described by Sir Christopher Hawkins in 1813 but thought to have been in Cornwall for many centuries.

9. (3) TOMMY KNIGHT - cydre

A dessert/cider one of the best trees for windy sites from St Agnes it has the apperance of a thorn bush a crisp sweet and juicy in flavour and will keep untill june. Season late to very late. A superb tree

10. (1) Shropshire Prune damson trees

Shropshire Prune is the definitive northern English damson, with a distinctive astringent richness which makes it a versatile fruit for culinary purposes.
The centre of commercial damson production in the UK is Lyth Valley in Cumbria. Shropshire Prune (or its close relations) is the most widely planted variety in this area. Unlke almost all other fruit trees, damsons, particularly Shropshire Prune, actually like a damp climate.

11. (1) Tregonna King - eater/cooker

This variety of apple tree grows a good dual purpose eater and cooker with a sweet flavour that improves with time, thought to be at it's best when stored until or just after christmas.
The apples themselves are large and golden, flushed with red and orange and slightly russetted. The tree grows vigerously and generally crops well.

Originally from Rezare near Launceston in Cornwall. 

12. (2) Lucombe's - Pine juicer

Lucombe's Pine is often favoured by growers for it's great juice. The resulting flavour is rich, aromatic and strongly acidic with slight suggestions of pineapple. It ripens to a golden yellow apple with russet flecks. Well suited for growing in the west of the country as it's resistant to apple scab.

  

This apple tree was originally developed in Exeter by Lucombe and Pince during the mid 19th century.

13. (1) Harry Masters Jersey - cider apple

Compact tree of weak vigour. But heavy cropping and grown in many commercial cider orchards. Medium, conical fruit, that drops when ripe. Yellow-green, flushed dark-red. Vintage qualityn juice from a white fleshed, dry and firm apple.

14. (1) Golden Bittersweet - eater

Described by Robert Hogg in the Fruit Manual 1884 as ‘A good Devonshire cider apple which bears well and keeps without wasting.

A mild bittersweet apple often with little tannin. Medium - large pale greenish yellow, slightly crowned conical, with russet dots. Stem usually quite short. Flesh chewy and sweet.

15. (1) Golden Knob Apple - eater

Somerset UK 1700

Golden Knob is a small russet apple with an intense sweet-sharp flavor. 16. (2) Winter Peach - eater/cooker The 'Winter Peach' variety is probably best known for it's spicy flavour. Although it's sharp juicey firm flesh makes it best suited for use as an eating apple it's also good for cooking making it a decent dual purpose apple. The tree is a moderately vigerous grower and is great for organic growers due to it's disease resistance. Originally It was originally from Hanniford Nursery, Paignton, Devon.

17. (1) Quince 'Vranja'

An attractive tree with beautiful rounded silver leaves and pretty green-pink flowers in spring. The large, fragrant, pear shaped fruits that follow ripen to a lovely shade of yellow, and can be harvested from October. Freshly picked quinces are bitter and inedible, but once cooked they soften to make excellent jams and jellies, and enhance the flavour of apple pies when a few slices are added before cooking.