PEAT COMPOST: OF SAINTS AND SINNERS

May 23rd, 2020

Mea culpa. We’ve committed a crime. We’ve bought the wrong sort of compost. Out of our comfort zone and bewildered by the choice of mud available, a queue started to form in the garden centre as we considered all the options, the compost section being on the main thoroughfare between Perennials and Shrubs. Not wanting to cause a disturbance or contribute to the spread of virus, we grabbed 3 bags of John Innes No. 2 and headed for the exit. Only on reaching home did we discover that John Innes No. 2 contains PEAT. Forgive us, for we are sinners. Somewhat innocently and from an abundance of ignorance, we had assumed that a name as famous as John Innes would no longer be involved with peat.

WHAT LITTLE WE KNOw

It turns out that John Innes, along with George Davis and Bill Posters, is almost entirely innocent, since he died in 1904. A property developer and philanthropist, John Innes changed his will a week before he died - contested by his family, unsuccessfully - and instructed that his fortune be used to establish an horticultural school. The John Innes Charity was formed and in 1910 the John Innes Horticultural Institution was founded, in Merton, South London, and became a place of serious scientific research. It started off by being the first place in Britain to study plant genetics and a hundred years later its successor organisation, the John Innes Centre, was ranked #1 in the world for academic citations in the field of plant and animal science.

In between, it has had a BIG impact in the world of apples. In 1951, together with the East Malling Research Station in Kent, John Innes released a series of wooly aphid-resistant rootstocks, the result of 30 years work. The rootstocks were referred to as the Malling - Merton series and were labelled MM101 to MM114. One of the most common rootstocks we use today is MM106 and we planted a lot of MM111 in Kent earlier this year, it being well suited to poorly drained soil. More recently, John Innes has conducted research into vernalisation - how and why plants (including fruit trees) wake up after winter hibernation.

And what of John Innes’ compost? Looking to find a better growing medium for all the plant trials they were conducting, the Institution experimented with soil sterilisation and proportions of N, P and K fertilisers, the result of which were the John Innes composts we know today. In 1938 they published the formulae, rather than patent them, and helped to publicise the benefits of their compost as part of the war effort to increase food production from gardens. They have never manufactured peat-based compost and have made no financial gain from “their” compost. So, far from being the Sinners we thought at the outset, John Innes sits firmly in the Saints category. We think we can forgive them for their use of peat in 1938, when the world had other things on its mind and when the phrases “carbon sink” and “climate change” had yet to be uttered. Today we know a lot more … but are no wiser.

MORE KNOWLEDGE, LESS WISDOM

Peatlands are immensely valuable. Occupying between 2 - 3% of the world’s surface, peatlands hold approximately 30% of the world’s terrestrial carbon pool, more than all the vegetation on the planet - and that includes the Amazon and Congo rain forests. Peatlands hold over 10% of the world’s freshwater and help to filter and purify it and, parochially, over 70% of the UK’s drinking water comes from upland peatlands. Peatlands are havens of biodiversity (even more so than traditional orchards, about which we wax lyrical); studies in Yorkshire have shown that peatlands are home to over 3,000 species of insect, 800 flowering plants and hundreds of mosses, liverworts, lichens and fungi.

Peatland: the image

peatland: the reality

Estonia : Ireland : England

Today we know the planet is warming and the overwhelming evidence is that anthropogenic carbon is either a major contributor or the predominant cause. We know that when we dig up peat we release the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. We know that when we dig up peat we destroy biodiversity. We know peatlands “grow” at around 1 mm a year - and we typically remove 220 mm a year. We know that global carbon emissions are now over 36 billion tonnes a year and are too high (in the 1930s they were around 4 billion tonnes a year). We know all this, and yet … in the UK alone, we mine 280,000 tonnes of peat a year and import a further 525,000 tonnes, mostly from Ireland but also from the Baltics and Scandinavia, emitting further greenhouse gases as we cart it over the seas. Only 6,000 hectares of peatland in the UK remain in pristine condition.

Despite growing awareness and availability of peat-free composts, despite the government calling for retailers to reduce peat use by 2020, nothing has happened; between 2011-2017 there was an increase in peat-based products in the plant-growing industry and in 2017, 56% of growing material on retailers’ shelves was still peat-based. We’re all sinners and addicts.

We know it’s bad but we still use it, garden centres still sell it, manufacturers still make it and governments still allow it. And our dahlias are lovely.

Kiribati may cease to exist, drowned by a rising sea. Just a small little island with a few thousand inhabitants, so no matter. Our peonies look good.

The 13 million citizens of Lagos and the 13 million citizens of Metro Manila face an uncertain future as rising sea-levels erode coastlines, contaminate sources of potable water and flood entire suburbs. Our roses are particularly beautiful this year.

The 160 million citizens of Bangladesh face an uncertain future as rising sea-levels, combined with more frequent and more violent cyclones, erode coastlines, salinise farmland, displace thousands upon thousands of people and threaten the homes of millions. But the delphinium have never looked so good.

there is an alternative

Of course, none of this is deliberate. No one buys John Innes No. 2 to drown the people of the Philippines. Gardening is a quintessential British thing. We’re good at it, we like it, we’re famous for it, we take pride in our neat and colourful gardens, villages and towns, in our dahlias, peonies, roses and delphinium. But there are peat-free alternatives and other people shouldn’t have to suffer for our pleasure. For example, and perhaps benefitting from their proximity to the John Innes Centre (now relocated from Merton to Norwich), the Norfolk School of Gardening uses a combination of Sylvagrow, “which is producing excellent results and contains no peat at all” and Plantgrow, a 100% plant-based fertilising soil improver. Monty Don manages perfectly well. Alys Fowler (and others) get the message. It’s perfectly possible to live without peat-based compost.

Levington, Arthur J Bowers, Erin and others need to stop making it. Dobbies, Notcutts, Wyevale and others need to stop selling it. “Expert” gardeners need to stop promoting it. And we all need to stop buying it.

replanting orchards: the rise and fall of civilisations

The avenue of perry pear trees at Boyce Court is old, if 200 - 300 years counts as old, and it’s beginning to show its age. The image of the avenue in Luckwill & Pollard’s seminal book on perry pears, published in the early 1960s but using a picture taken a few years earlier, shows trees in robust good health, tall, vibrant, strong and sturdy. Today, attractive though it still may be, the avenue is tired. Several trees have died and disappeared altogether, leaving obvious gaps in the fraying regiments either side of the track. Others stand still and statuesque, nobly occupying their place in the squadron even though they transpire no more. In the 1960s and for centuries before, this was an avenue of predictable familiarity, where pears of known quality and characteristics would fall to the floor in abundance, with tens of tonnes carted away in trailer-loads each autumn to be made into fine, locally made perry (or taken to Weston's). Thorn, “an old variety without history”, first recorded in 1811, commonly planted and still widespread, one of the earliest pears to fall each autumn, from short, upright trees, known for making excellent perry but also used in the kitchen and sweet enough to eat. Barland, older (dating back to 1674 or before) but less common, bigger, bolder trees producing smaller, greener pears that fall a week or two later, less versatile than Thorn, it's tannic acidity making it unusable except for perry and harsh medicinal purposes. Thorn and Barland … different but complementary.

But now the rootstocks are beginning to infiltrate and new, vigorous limbs emerge from older wood like a nimble insurgency or an invading force, taking over the lower reaches of trees, the older, sclerotic branches above a cruel and stark reminder of the passing of time. Different pears fall from these new branches, wild, native, unruly. These pears hark back to the ancient, original roots of the tree; they aren't the Jutes, Angles and Saxons replacing the Romans, they are the Celts, the Picts and the Scotti, the original occupants of the tree, now back reclaiming their birth-right and shoving the superimposed culture aside.

Pleased though we are with this analogy it is of course a trifle pretentious to compare the demise of a pear tree to the passing of civilisations, but we do regret the emergence of the wild, untamed pears and the decline of the named varieties. It heralds the demise of the trees, through old age but also due to diminished utility; the trees were planted for the named varieties, Thorn and Barland, not for the untamed and unnamed cousins that are beginning to proliferate. There's not a lot we can do to slow the process, let alone reverse it. It’s best to let the trees decline slowly and when the end eventually arrives leave them in situ, both as a memorial to their own ancient history and as a repository of invaluable dead wood habitat, home to countless saproxylic beetles, many other invertebrates as well as cavity-nesting birds. It may be dying or dead but, as David Attenborough says, it still plays host to a rich community of life.

But what we can do is try to ensure there are trees here in 200 - 300 years’ time and the best way to do that is to plant new trees … which is what we did with Andy Ellis, fellow Trustee of the Gloucestershire Orchard Trust; four new Thorn trees on vigorous Kirchensaller rootstock planted in February 2022, a donation to the owner of the land. And whilst we’re feeling virtuous about this - we don’t ever expect to sit under the shade of these newly planted trees - we haven’t discovered the meaning of life. There is an element of self-interest involved; we use the pears from this avenue to make The Avenue, our bottle conditioned perry. Made mostly from Thorn and Barland, it does also contain some of the wild pears that are now emerging and if Bushel+Peck is still around in a few years’ time, a batch of The Avenue will probably contain at least a few pears from the trees we planted. We’ll let you know about that, too. In the meantime, value the trees we have around us … and please plant some more.

peat compost and MANGO CIDER: two very silly ideas

May 20th, 2021

Without wanting to be too gloomy, Homo sapiens faces three major emergencies: climate change, loss of biodiversity and mango cider.

Focusing on the first two items to begin with, as they may be marginally more important than the third, of all the stupid things we do to trash the planet, it would be difficult to find one as damaging as mining peat. Not only do peat bogs store a huge amounts of carbon - approximately 30% of the planet's terrestrial carbon is stored in peat bogs, which cover just 3% of the world's surface - but they are also one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Digging it up, whether to use as compost or as fuel, releases all that carbon back into the atmosphere. Digging it up also destroys all that biodiversity. A Double Whammy of damage and stupidity. It's a topic that irks us (there’s an article above devoted to the subject) largely because it's totally unnecessary, as there are perfectly good alternatives.

Eleven years ago, the UK government requested or suggested the horticultural industry phase out use of peat and in those eleven years just about bugger all has happened. There are peat-free alternatives available, but we continue to use the peat-based versions because that's what we’re used to, because garden centres continue to sell it, some “experts” continue to peddle it, manufacturers continue to produce it. And it really isn't necessary; there ARE perfectly good alternatives. If Monty Don, Alys Fowler and our friends at the Norfolk School of Gardening can manage without it - all of whom make a living from gardening - then us amateurs can probably muck along too. Which we'll have to, because - at long last - the Government is going something about it. From 2024 sales of peat based compost will be banned. Although there are still gaps and loopholes in the plans - the burning of peat moors so grouse can be shot more easily is one such glaring omission - it's a big step in the right direction. Credit where it's due.

And what of mankind's third existential crisis and our own particular bugbear, mango-flavoured cider?

Apples grow very well in these islands, which is why about half of the world’s 5,000 recorded apple varieties come from these shores. Apples grow in orchards and unsprayed orchards are havens of biodiversity. Real cider, made only with local, unsprayed apples has low food miles, a low carbon footprint and has helped sustain orchard biodiversity. Main headline: real cider can be good for the planet or, at the very least, not bad for it. Mango cider, on the other hand …

Mangoes are grown in India, also in China, Thailand, and Mexico. India is 4,200 miles away, China and Thailand even further. Mexico is a bit closer but is still 3,400 miles away. That's a bit further than the location of the orchard furthest from our home from where we get apples, a whopping 35 miles away. So, as you sit in the pub and the sweet mango flavoured alcopop slips down your throat - don't let it ruin your evening - you are contributing to our climate crisis. And let’s not even get started on the use of apple juice concentrate, which may be the other major ingredient of your mango “cider” (along with sugar and water). (Actually, we realise that if you're reading this it's unlikely that the very idea of a mango cider really appeals, so apologies for preaching to the converted.)

In the 1960s and 1970s Poland was a very different country to the vibrant place it is today (albeit now with a dangerously illiberal government) and back then the Polkska Agencja Prasowa, the Polish Press Agency, couldn't afford to have correspondents everywhere. The man they sent to Africa - one journalist to cover the entire continent - was Ryszard Kapuscinski who, unlike his counterparts from the western press, took the trouble to try to understand the place and its people. His despatches included a charming and perspicacious article about the central role huge mango trees play in the life of African villages, the densely shaded area beneath their canopies forming an arena for … everything; pre-school breakfast club, ante-natal class, the market, basket weaving factory, ladies-who-lunch venue, local council chamber (a lot cooler than the corrugated iron roofed structure built on the edge of the village, a location convenient for no one), polling station, after-school club, general gathering point, evening and late night bar. Basically, any activity involving more than one person happens under the mango tree. Not only central to cultural life, we can imagine that mango trees, like our own mighty oaks, are also vibrant ecosystems in their own right, providing shelter and habitat to literally hundreds of species.

However … the mango juice in your mango alcopop (masquerading as mango cider) doesn't come from these cultural beacons, it comes from regimented plantations. A cursory glance through the internet reveals that Potassium Nitrate (KNO3, for those of us who've forgotten our chemistry) is commonly applied in mango plantations, along with other pesticides. It’s a common problem in monocultures; the natural checks and balances that allow mangoes to grow and ripen abundantly on one or two trees in the middle of a village, where an abundant variety of birds and invertebrates don’t allow particular pests to flourish, are absent in plantations dominated by one type of tree. We do hope this doesn't completely ruin your night out, but your mango “cider” has contributed to the warming of the planet and probably isn't doing great things for the world's biodiversity, either.

So, peat compost and mango cider have a lot in common; they both contribute to climate change, they both inhibit biodiversity. And on the taste front, it's all a matter of personal perspective and preference. Fruit flavoured ciders aren’t our thing but there are some well-made examples - do both Pilton and Little Pomona make a cider with quince? - and if you do hanker after the sweetness another fruit imparts we encourage you to choose raspberry or strawberry, something that grows a little closer to home, and in a cider made with real apples from healthy, vibrant, local orchards … for the sake of our planet (as well as your taste buds).

FOXWHELP: OLD, RED, IMPROVED, FAUX …?

January 23rd, 2022

Whatever you think of Foxwhelp apples, or of cider made from them, the place to start a discussion is its simple, playful name, an amalgamation of two common enough words that somehow invites a warm chuckle and a moment’s consideration.

Fox; a famiar sight across the globe, present in every continent (except Antarctica, of course), well-adapted to both rural and urban living, with triangulated face, elongated nose, pointed ears, bright-eyes and bushy tail, a global reputation for cunning and trickery, considered a pest by some but with affection by others, part of folklore the world over and, most importantly, the inspiration behind Basil Brush. Whelp; a puppy, also used as a slightly disparaging reference to a child or young adult.

But a young fox is called a cub, a pup or a kit, not a whelp, so how did the name arise? That's been lost is the mists of time and given that Foxwhelp has been around a long time there has been sufficient mist over the centuries for the facts of the matter to become rather foggy. Foxwhelp was first mentioned In Ralph Austins’s fulsomely titled work A Treatise on Fruit-trees, showing the manner of grafting, setting, pruning, and ordering of them in all respects, published in 1653. Foxwhelp then featured in John Evelyn’s Pomona, published in 1664, also in Robert Hogg’s The Fruit Manual (1884), where the notion that it's a Herefordshire apple seems to have started (but it did of course originate in Gloucestershire, specifically the Forest of Dean, something that John Evelyn understood over 200 years earlier). Charles Martell, in his Native Apples of Gloucestershire (2014), summarises some of the ways in which the name may have arisen; it was found as a gribble, or seedling, close to a fox's den; a fox-hunter discovered and named it; the eye of the fruit resembles the face of a fox; cider made with Foxwhelp has a distinctive and particular aroma, apparently reminiscent of a fox's scent. Take your pick.

Dabinett is named after William Dabinett, who first discovered it. Yarlington Mill is named after the mill in Yarlington, where it was first discovered. Harry Masters’ Jersey is named after Harry Masters, the nurseryman who grew it, sold it an popularised it. No such simple explanation attaches itself to Foxwhelp; its name derives from the vernacular, from random happenstance, chance, circumstance and the native wit of Gloucestershire's citizenry almost 400 years ago. It adds to the mystique.

Adding to the sense of occasion is the fact that Foxwhelp has a well-known tendency to mutate, to produce “sports”. Thus a tree can start to produce fruit from a limb that is subtly different to the “normal” fruit, hence the proliferation of Foxhelps; the original Foxwhelp (now unnecessarily called Old Foxwhelp in some circles), Improved Foxwhelp, Rejuvenated Foxwhelp, Red Foxwhelp, Broxwood Foxwhelp, even Fauxwhelp, apparently. And because of this tendency to evolve naturally, we can't be totally certain that what we know to be Foxwhelp is exactly the same apple as the Foxwhelp John Evelyn wrote about so glowingly all those years ago. The orchard from which we gathered Foxwhelp last autumn straddles the Gloucestershire - Herefordshire border, close to the very heart of its provenance, the trees are mature so we’re confident that we're dealing with the real thing, as is the cider-maker who generously introduced us to the orchard, the inestimable Pat Lock of Jolter Press, as is the owner of the land.

The most recent edition of Malus features an article on Foxwhelp, written by Cameron Peace, a professor in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University, someone who clearly knows his stuff. Single Nucleotide Polymorphism DNA analysis of an array of apples bearing the Foxwhelp name has helped to sort out the Foxwhelp lineage. For full details, we suggest and recommend you subscribe to Malus magazine - but here are what we think are the edited highlights:

With apples having the ability to proliferate and with Homo sapiens' instinct to explore, investigate and improve, it's no wonder there has been confusion, not just around Foxwhelp but many other varieties too. Cuttings are taken, scions grafted and budded, trees are planted, fruit is sampled, amateurs are involved, labels are misplaced, cider is made, names are given, traditions are started. The work of experts such as Prof. Peace and others who work at East Malling and elsewhere, is essential in helping to sort out the resulting chaos.

With some facts now established about Foxwhelp, all that remains is for everyone involved in the growing and supply of Foxwhelp trees and everyone involved in the making and selling of cider from Foxwhelp apples, from Maine to California, from Penzance to John O’Groats, from Perth to Brisbane and in every other land where the trees are grown and cider made, to accept the analysis, to stop confusing Rejuvenated Foxwhelp with Broxwood Foxwhelp, to destroy their stock of labels and get new ones printed. Most difficult of all, those affected may have to change the thoughts and opinions of a lifetime.

And we know in Gloucestershire how hard that can be. As we wrote in March 2020 “What’s in a name?” (see below) DNA analysis has revealed that what we thought was Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester is, in fact, Puckrup Pippin and what we thought was Puckrup Pippin is Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester. And where do we go with that discovery? Did the laboratory accidentally mix up a couple of record cards, or do we have to persuade the pomological world in Gloucestershire also to change the habits and knowledge of a lifetime? We’ve only been involved in that world for six or seven years and already have firm opinions on the matter, so good luck with that …

old foxwhelp? a plea …

Since when did Foxwhelp become Old Foxwhelp? Not in these parts, it didn’t. When some European settlers from the Netherlands landed on the shore across the Atlantic and booted the resident population off their elongated island home they called Manhattan, they erected a wooden barricade and called their new settlement New Amsterdam. Did the Amsterdam they left behind suddenly become Old Amsterdam? No, it did not.

The Dutch traded that little settlement with the British, in exchange for two small islands, in what is now part of the Indonesian archipelago, where nutmeg happened to grow rather well. When the British changed the name from New Amsterdam to New York, did the original York, home to York Minster, Clifford’s Tower and The Shambles, become Old York? No, it did not.

Does the emergence of Black Dabinett, a seedling of Dabinett, mean that we now have to refer to the original version as Old Dabinett? No, it does not.

Just because something is popular or successful, copied or imitated doesn’t mean that the original has to be retitled. Red Foxwhelp is Red Foxwhelp. Broxwood Foxwhelp is Broxwood Foxwhelp. Improved Foxwhelp is Improved Foxwhelp (and who gets to decide whether it’s an improvement on the original or not?). And Foxwhelp is Foxwhelp. Can we please leave it at that?

hunT’S DUKE OF GLOUCESTER: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

March 18th, 2020

Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester is, according to Charles Martell, author of the Native Apples of Gloucestershire, a “very pleasant little eating apple that should appeal to children on account of its small size”. As you’d expect, he’s right. Quite a few cross our path every autumn and they are sweet, crisp, yellow and small. Scrumptious. Puckkrupp Pippin, on the other hand, is bigger, is a yellowing green (or a greening yellow), has a crisp texture and a rich taste. And different to a Hunts’s in more detailed ways too; the Hunt’s stalk is longer than Puckrupp’s; the Hunt’s eye is closed, the Puckrupp’s open; the Hunt’s basin is shallow and narrow, the Puckrupp’s is shallow and wide.

So, enough differentiation to ensure that the two couldn’t or shouldn’t be confused. However, recent DNA tests of Gloucestershire’s apples has revealed that what we all have assumed to be Hunts’ Duke of Gloucester is, in fact, Puckrupp Pippin. And what we all have assumed to be a Puckrupp Pippin is, in fact, a Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester. Someone, somewhere, seems to have attached the wrong label to the right apple, or the right label to the left apple.

We’re not quite sure what happens next because, for many people in the pomological world in Gloucestershire and beyond, Hunt’s Duke of Gloucester is a (fairly common) very tasty, small, yellow apple … and Puckrupp Pippin isn’t. And within that wider apple world, there are other naming issues to be resolved. The Hunt’s and Puckrupp debate may be surprising but it isn’t contentious - both apples come from Gloucestershire so no local rivalries are involved. There’s a very common East Anglian apple that appears to be, according to DNA analysis, the very same as a very common Polish apple … and sorting out who has naming rights over that could well be a fraught affair.