Thanks Steve - great to read Phil's story in more detail, he was a true pioneer. I had developed my own theories about apple coppice without knowing he'd done it too, until we had a conversation back in 2014 when he mentioned about Bramley on its own roots maybe being as vigorous as you can get. Since planting my own experimental system here at Applewood in 2018, I've watched the Bramley both on M25 and on own roots far outgrow the M25 by itself, and finally made the first coppice of 20-25% of the seedlings last month, so we shall see how they do.
Always felt a bit annoyed that the Bramely is called the Bramley and not the Brailsford after the young person who planted the seed. It's still producing apparently. I let the coppice apple shoot, then select three that I arc over, works for me:-) Good luck with yours. Thanks for writing.
I had another epihany about root stock/grafted trees a while back - I always buy root stock from a local nursery usually M25, 106 or 111 and they're all grown from layered cuttings, meaning they have no tap root. Imagine a large (mature) apple/pear or whatever with no tap root top heavy with fruit and biomas on a slope - no wonder they often lean -> fall over! So will "own root" trees have a tap root? Or is it only if grown from seed and allowed to grow one naturally?
They aren't daft IMO, if they need to they should produce a secondary tap root. All the big storms, like that one in the '80's, have shown that trees don't necessarily drop a taproot down, only if they need to. It takes energy after all. I haven't particularly noticed rootstock trees falling over but Hugh Ermin did say that his OR trees resisted the '80s storm much better than the grafted ones, his OR were from aerial layering.
Thanks for reminding me of Phil, I had completely forgotten about him. I'm pretty certain I met him one time in Newcastle in connection with Ed Tyler and Scotswood Garden and certainly read plenty about his coppice orchard plans and schemes. Time to bring his ideas back to the surface especially as I've just planted a new row of random leftover fruit trees in our market garden next to the bees
When the permaculture council of management held its meeting at Phil's place in Nottingham, we got to see his bucket compost toilet system but weren't allowed to use it. From what I remember he had fifteen or sixteen buckets with various pipes coming out of them to help with aeration. The buckets contained one years worth of Phil's poo, mixed with wood ash, shavings and compost, the oldest one being ready to go onto the compost heap and be cleaned ready to start the next annual cycle. I remember thinking, well that is committment. He wasn't happy with the nickname "Phil the Bucket" though so we had to restrain ourselves...
I had completely forgotten about Phil's 18 bucket revolution! It worked well, apparently, until a long cold winter when he had to buy some more buckets :-)) Thanks for the reminder.
I am trying to remember the circumstances exactly but Phil Corbett and others accompanied us on an early visit to Brynllwyn farm, 'Chickenshack' before we had completed the purchase of what was to be our first housing co-operative, in 1995. I am sure Chris Dixon must have been there too. Run down, overgrazed and windswept as it was at the time, its potential shined out even then. There was precious little plant diversity as what had been there had been ravaged by sheep and goats. One sole survivor was a gnarled rosemary bush in the corner of the yard, it was quite striking and very fragrant. I only mention this as years later, in 2009, I reached out to Phil as I was preparing for a PDC at Llanfyllin Workhouse and was planning to establish a section of forest garden there and was interested to see what plants he might have available for sale at Cool temperate, his nursery. In our initial conversation, he instantly remembered said rosemary bush and I remember being so impressed by the detail of his plant knowledge and empathy for ours and others endeavours. Thanks for your words Steve and for remembering his work to us all.
I had no idea you were involved with Chickenshack! The office of the UK perma assoc moved there after I was running it from Brickhurst farm, a bit a dark time for me.
I'm pissed off with myself that I didn't make more effort to stay in contact with Phil after his last visit over here. It's strange how friends can just drift apart.
Thanks for sharing that memory, and of course for all you are doing at the moment with your projects.
I was orchard manager 2013-19 at New Zealand's No.1 'real cider' company looking after five thousand trees, all vintage cider varieties. Previously I had managed a small market-garden so naturally had an interest in creating a system that combined both.
I had started propagating my own rootstock from stool-beds around 2016, but was unhappy with the performance of many grafted cider varieties, concluding that performance as grafted trees was likely a design criterion for modern varieties, not a given for heritage types. I resolved to experiment with growing on 'own roots'. I had realised that it was just as possible to reproduce varieties 'on their own roots' using the stoolbed method, and that it would then be possible to produce enough plants cheaply enough to create a hedge of apples or pears that could be pleached in exactly the same way as a hawthorn farm-hedge traditionally was, allowing intercropping with vegetables.
Apple, pear and hawthorn are all 'Rosaceae' species- indeed it was practice to graft pear onto hawthorn to induce earlier fruiting before quince came into favour as rootstock. Also, as any orchardist knows to their peril, damage to the trunk low-down, eg by rabbits, causes a myriad of suckers to be thrown, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect pipfruit to behave in a similar way to thorn given similar treatment.
Pleaching (aka 'hedge-laying') is a process that I have carried-out many years ago whilst farming in Sussex and Surrey. The pleaching process involves partial cutting through and laying-down of the material to be pleached into a nearly horizontal position then weaving through stakes to secure. On trees grown in the normal manner, laying down of young wood to horizontal stimulates the production of fruit-buds in the year following tie-down. One might then reasonably expect pleached stems to behave similarly. One would need judgement to determine when to go through and repeat the pleaching process, but could reasonably expect to get a decent crop of firewood in the process.
Cutbacks prior to the sale of the business meant I was unable to develop the system, but now I'm on my own patch (albeit only a quarter-acre section) having lived in a flat in the interim, I feel like this could be worth a second go.
Hi Kevin. Fascinating stuff, thanks for writing. A pleached apple/pear hedge would be a thing to see! Strangely enough I laid a few hedges in Sussex too.
A pleached cider and perry hedge surrounding a coppice orchard could be the way to go. They tend to be more rustic than dessert apples/pears. Maybe mixed in with some N fixers. I encouraged a Broom 'hedge' around the one I planted in Brittany. Traditionally the raised berms used to divide fields in Brittany had chestnuts and oaks for fruit and firewood with gorse which helped stop the cows crossing over. The gorse has harvested from time to time and chopped fine and added to horse feed.
My 1910 farm encyclopedia mentions gorse being ground under a horse-powered stone roller and fed to milch-cows in Wales. The claim is made that it greatly stimulates milk-yield, which I guess is due to it being a legume, so a protein supplement. what a rigmarole though- how farming has changed!
Thanks Steve - great to read Phil's story in more detail, he was a true pioneer. I had developed my own theories about apple coppice without knowing he'd done it too, until we had a conversation back in 2014 when he mentioned about Bramley on its own roots maybe being as vigorous as you can get. Since planting my own experimental system here at Applewood in 2018, I've watched the Bramley both on M25 and on own roots far outgrow the M25 by itself, and finally made the first coppice of 20-25% of the seedlings last month, so we shall see how they do.
Always felt a bit annoyed that the Bramely is called the Bramley and not the Brailsford after the young person who planted the seed. It's still producing apparently. I let the coppice apple shoot, then select three that I arc over, works for me:-) Good luck with yours. Thanks for writing.
I had another epihany about root stock/grafted trees a while back - I always buy root stock from a local nursery usually M25, 106 or 111 and they're all grown from layered cuttings, meaning they have no tap root. Imagine a large (mature) apple/pear or whatever with no tap root top heavy with fruit and biomas on a slope - no wonder they often lean -> fall over! So will "own root" trees have a tap root? Or is it only if grown from seed and allowed to grow one naturally?
They aren't daft IMO, if they need to they should produce a secondary tap root. All the big storms, like that one in the '80's, have shown that trees don't necessarily drop a taproot down, only if they need to. It takes energy after all. I haven't particularly noticed rootstock trees falling over but Hugh Ermin did say that his OR trees resisted the '80s storm much better than the grafted ones, his OR were from aerial layering.
Thanks for reminding me of Phil, I had completely forgotten about him. I'm pretty certain I met him one time in Newcastle in connection with Ed Tyler and Scotswood Garden and certainly read plenty about his coppice orchard plans and schemes. Time to bring his ideas back to the surface especially as I've just planted a new row of random leftover fruit trees in our market garden next to the bees
When the permaculture council of management held its meeting at Phil's place in Nottingham, we got to see his bucket compost toilet system but weren't allowed to use it. From what I remember he had fifteen or sixteen buckets with various pipes coming out of them to help with aeration. The buckets contained one years worth of Phil's poo, mixed with wood ash, shavings and compost, the oldest one being ready to go onto the compost heap and be cleaned ready to start the next annual cycle. I remember thinking, well that is committment. He wasn't happy with the nickname "Phil the Bucket" though so we had to restrain ourselves...
An all round lovely man.
I had completely forgotten about Phil's 18 bucket revolution! It worked well, apparently, until a long cold winter when he had to buy some more buckets :-)) Thanks for the reminder.
I am trying to remember the circumstances exactly but Phil Corbett and others accompanied us on an early visit to Brynllwyn farm, 'Chickenshack' before we had completed the purchase of what was to be our first housing co-operative, in 1995. I am sure Chris Dixon must have been there too. Run down, overgrazed and windswept as it was at the time, its potential shined out even then. There was precious little plant diversity as what had been there had been ravaged by sheep and goats. One sole survivor was a gnarled rosemary bush in the corner of the yard, it was quite striking and very fragrant. I only mention this as years later, in 2009, I reached out to Phil as I was preparing for a PDC at Llanfyllin Workhouse and was planning to establish a section of forest garden there and was interested to see what plants he might have available for sale at Cool temperate, his nursery. In our initial conversation, he instantly remembered said rosemary bush and I remember being so impressed by the detail of his plant knowledge and empathy for ours and others endeavours. Thanks for your words Steve and for remembering his work to us all.
I had no idea you were involved with Chickenshack! The office of the UK perma assoc moved there after I was running it from Brickhurst farm, a bit a dark time for me.
I'm pissed off with myself that I didn't make more effort to stay in contact with Phil after his last visit over here. It's strange how friends can just drift apart.
Thanks for sharing that memory, and of course for all you are doing at the moment with your projects.
I was orchard manager 2013-19 at New Zealand's No.1 'real cider' company looking after five thousand trees, all vintage cider varieties. Previously I had managed a small market-garden so naturally had an interest in creating a system that combined both.
I had started propagating my own rootstock from stool-beds around 2016, but was unhappy with the performance of many grafted cider varieties, concluding that performance as grafted trees was likely a design criterion for modern varieties, not a given for heritage types. I resolved to experiment with growing on 'own roots'. I had realised that it was just as possible to reproduce varieties 'on their own roots' using the stoolbed method, and that it would then be possible to produce enough plants cheaply enough to create a hedge of apples or pears that could be pleached in exactly the same way as a hawthorn farm-hedge traditionally was, allowing intercropping with vegetables.
Apple, pear and hawthorn are all 'Rosaceae' species- indeed it was practice to graft pear onto hawthorn to induce earlier fruiting before quince came into favour as rootstock. Also, as any orchardist knows to their peril, damage to the trunk low-down, eg by rabbits, causes a myriad of suckers to be thrown, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect pipfruit to behave in a similar way to thorn given similar treatment.
Pleaching (aka 'hedge-laying') is a process that I have carried-out many years ago whilst farming in Sussex and Surrey. The pleaching process involves partial cutting through and laying-down of the material to be pleached into a nearly horizontal position then weaving through stakes to secure. On trees grown in the normal manner, laying down of young wood to horizontal stimulates the production of fruit-buds in the year following tie-down. One might then reasonably expect pleached stems to behave similarly. One would need judgement to determine when to go through and repeat the pleaching process, but could reasonably expect to get a decent crop of firewood in the process.
Cutbacks prior to the sale of the business meant I was unable to develop the system, but now I'm on my own patch (albeit only a quarter-acre section) having lived in a flat in the interim, I feel like this could be worth a second go.
Hi Kevin. Fascinating stuff, thanks for writing. A pleached apple/pear hedge would be a thing to see! Strangely enough I laid a few hedges in Sussex too.
A pleached cider and perry hedge surrounding a coppice orchard could be the way to go. They tend to be more rustic than dessert apples/pears. Maybe mixed in with some N fixers. I encouraged a Broom 'hedge' around the one I planted in Brittany. Traditionally the raised berms used to divide fields in Brittany had chestnuts and oaks for fruit and firewood with gorse which helped stop the cows crossing over. The gorse has harvested from time to time and chopped fine and added to horse feed.
Thanks again, have a great day.
My 1910 farm encyclopedia mentions gorse being ground under a horse-powered stone roller and fed to milch-cows in Wales. The claim is made that it greatly stimulates milk-yield, which I guess is due to it being a legume, so a protein supplement. what a rigmarole though- how farming has changed!