This time in the gardening year the main activity is harvesting. I try to go to the allotment every day, I don’t always do much but I always take home some produce.

Today it was apples. I planted a number of apple trees a few years ago and created a little orchard in front of my shed. All those trees are small, grafted on a miniature root stock. They took a few years to get going but this year they are just great. I have a variety of them, some early, some late, eating as well as cooking apples. Also one pear tree and that is doing very well indeed, the first time I will have some pears. So far they are hard but I’m patient.

This one is Louise Bonne of Jersey and I’m looking forward to harvesting them. I have got a couple of plum trees, they both had a few plums and specially one, called Warwickshire Drooper, was delicious. Hopefully we’ll have more in the coming years.

One of the apple trees is James Grieve, it was laden this year and I had to thin the fruit so that I would get some reasonably sized apples.

This is a very useful apple to have, it can be cooked early in the season when the fruit is a bit tart and later it is delicious to eat.