Of apples and pears

Haven’t posted for nearly two weeks. It would have been dull. For most of that time, we have been watching paint dry. Still painting the living room – and of course, filling in the cracks and the gaps between skirting board and wall, sanding down the filler, covering the elegant green blobs on the nice white ceiling, fixing the curtain pole that has repeatedly applied for a divorce from the wall…

We took down the Christmas decorations on January 5th like good people, and went out to wassail the apple trees. It’s an old ritual, with various formulae around the country, but the basics are the same. Make a loud noise to scare off evil spirits, choose an apple tree in the orchard, politely entreat the tree and all its colleagues nearby to provide a good harvest next year, pour cider around its roots and put toasted bread into its branches.

We went to an organised wassail some years ago. The loud noise was a shotgun blasted up into the air (away from all buildings or attendees), each person hung a square of toast in the branches and the head wassailer poured a generous dollop of last year’s cider in a circle around its roots (and then the rest of the gallon into a wooden bowl). His address to the tree was as follows;

“Old apple tree, we wassail thee, and hope that you will bear… Hatfuls and capfuls, three bushel bagfuls, and a little heap under the stairs!”

It was everyone’s job to pass the bowl around and help to empty it. It’s the kind of ceremony that wouldn’t have been open to the public over the last year or two, but we have kept up the tradition ourselves. Last year, I skipped the poem and gave the trees the kind of ‘Pull yourselves together’ talk that would have sent my staff running to their union rep in tears. The apple trees let us know they were offended – for the third year running, we had a poor harvest and the few apples that did ripen disappeared over a few days. Birds, we think. This year, it was a frosty evening and we chose a tree that hadn’t had our attention recently and gave it the wassail poem and patted its trunk before running back to the comfort of the stove.

It won’t end there. We will trim the branches and clear the grass from the roots, spray the leaves if we have another attack of whatever tiny pest has eaten the leaves of the nearby maple to lace over the last three years. We don’t usually spray pesticides, but even a good dose of soapy water might do the trick; it’ll be worth spraying half the trees with soap, two with pesticide and leave the rest to judge the effects.

We’ve been enjoying our cider and perry this winter, and we’re keen to pick up where we left off two years ago. Our perry pear trees are starting to produce crops of pears, and the cider trees we planted a decade ago were doing well until recently.

The propagator is set up, with pots of seed compost. Plugged in and warming up. It’s set to be frosty again tonight and the thought of planting the first pepper seeds tomorrow is a comfort. However bad the previous year’s harvest, I never stop hoping that this year we’ll be picking our own peppers and courgettes and aubergines. The first step is taken tomorrow, when I plant seeds with names like ‘Yellow Monster’, ‘King of the North’ and ‘Wicked Witch’.

Monster and King are from the Real Seeds Company. Their seeds come from heritage plants, bred by amateur or professional gardeners or handed down by grandparents from plants that have succeeded in their gardens. They have varieties like True Siberian and Sutherland kale (bred to withstand snow and ice), Asturian Tree Cabbage (grows to about six foot tall with kale at its top) and Cherokee Trail of Tears, a black bean said to have been taken across America by the Cherokees evicted from their native lands. They all have stories attached.

The Wicked Witch chillies also have a story, though they aren’t from the Real Seeds catalogue. There used to be a farmers’ market every month in a nearby village hall. The last time we attended, there was a plant stall, and the stallholder had some small chilli plants labelled ‘Wicked Witch’. I bought two of them, and asked about the name. Apparently, they grew on the plot next to theirs in the allotments, and the plot owner offered them a plant. A week later, they had obviously done something offensive – they never discovered what – and the plot owner was not just not speaking to them, she was rude, insulting, and possibly behind some of the sabotage inflicted on their plants. Other plot owners shrugged and said she’d always been eccentric.

“So we named her chilli plants after her,” the stallholder finished. “She was the Wicked Old Witch ever after.”

The markets ceased soon after, but we enjoyed the chillies and saved the seeds. Every year we grow a couple of Wicked Witches and save seeds, and are grateful that we have our own land and fences to keep out the witches of horticulture from putting the Spell of the Boot on our tiny plants.

Here’s to Spring.