What is fruit tree grafting? Fruit tree grafting is a historic propagation method where a stem (scion) is fused to a rootstock to create a new plant. The purpose of fruit tree grafting is to take one plant’s qualities and merge them with the roots of a stronger, resilient, already established plant. By choosing the […]
Winter Pruning Insights from John Easton for fruit trees – Summer/ Autumn 2022 and How to prepare for 2023. Tis the season to be winter pruning… Gardeners know that growing can often be a challenge, but even accepting that is sometimes not enough. Following the rules of growing and winter pruning you may think that […]
Eton Mess Cheesecake Recipe from Jane Beedle On a hot day you don’t want to be slaving in the kitchen, this is a no bake cheesecake that needs chilling but no gelatine so great for vegetarians too. I used strawberries but any lovely summer fruits, raspberries, apricots or peaches would be great too. Time: […]
Gardening Hints and Tips for June By Brogdale’s Sirplantalot! Apples will naturally thin their crop in early June – the ’June Drop’. After this they should be thinned by hand to one or two fruits per cluster. This helps to get even sized healthy fruit and can avoid biennial bearing with a heavy crop one […]
BROGDALE WELCOMES TWO NEW BEE COLONIES With of acres of orchards, Brogdale Collections heavily relies on pollinators such as bees. To help ensure the trees have as much help with this as possible, we recently welcomed two new colonies of bees. Unbelievably, the buzzy, busy parcels arrived by post. Mick the postman was chuffed to […]
COOKERY MASTERCLASSES – LOCK DOWN STYLE! Great British Bake Off finalist, Jane Beedle, was due to be holding a series of Cookery Masterclasses at Brogdale Collections. Each one focusing on topical or seasonal fruit and produce. She is a great baker, wonderful cook and also a rather lovely person – so we’re over the moon […]
One of the many enquiries we get at Brogdale is how to prune a traditional large fruit tree. Have you tried your best and not achieved the result you expected? Has someone pruned the tree for you and made a hash of it? Have you moved into a new property and have no idea what […]
Why do we graft? If you are lucky enough to germinate and nurture a fruit tree seed you cannot be sure what variety it will become. There are only two ways of ensuring that a variety of fruit can be truly replicated. One is to take a cutting (called a graft) and plant it in […]
The National Fruit Collection is one of the largest fruit collections in the world and is located at Brogdale Farm, near Faversham, Kent.
