As we head towards the longest day I thought it might be worth a wee update on the orchard. The majority of my trees that went in mid winter were cider varieties and were first growths that are spending the summer developing roots and growing. However I did put in one Sturmer Pippin an old Victorian dessert/ eating variety. It also apparantly makes ‘decent’ cider and was once the backbone of the NZ cider industry. It came from Harrison’s the local garden centre and its older and bigger than the rest of my orchard and is covered in fruit. It will clearly be the old senior tree of the orchard and the centre of proceedings for Wassail.