Absolutely the Last Apple Entry this Year

It's been an astonishing year for fruit, but there's a price to pay. In ordinarily heavy years, plum tree branches can easily break with the weight of fruit. This year has had so much water that the damsons were the size of plums and edible straight off the tree while the table plums have needed props, to hold up the masses of disappointing bland fruit. And while the flavours been fine, we've had apple branches broken to create more challenges for the winter pruner. I drove past this old orchard today and saw trees pulled over or split in two -- it'll take more than pruning to fix that.