About
An independent local guide
Understock is published at boydorchards.com. It describes how an apple orchard is built, in the order the decisions are actually made.
The register begins at the graft union and works outward to the wire, the bloom, the thinning and the sealed store.
Most writing about orchards starts with fruit. This one starts below it. The rootstock a grower orders two years before planting sets the height of the tree, the year it first crops, whether it can stand up without a trellis, and how much ground each tree is given. Everything a visitor notices — the tight rows, the wires, the low canopy, the fruit at chest height — follows from that one line on an order form.
How it is organised
There are five sections and twenty-five entries. Union covers the joint itself. Structure covers the posts, wire and anchors that carry a dwarf planting. Bloom covers the few days in which the crop is set. Thinning covers taking fruit off on purpose, and Store covers keeping what is left asleep until spring.
Entries are written to be read on their own and to link to each other where a decision in one section is settled in another. Nothing here is a schedule for a particular orchard: soils, varieties and climates differ, and the numbers quoted are the ones the practice is usually taught with.
Who pays for it
The register is free to read because a small number of local businesses underwrite it. They are listed on the homepage under the entry they paid for. They have no say in what is written.
Corrections are welcome and published. If an entry is wrong, or right but incomplete, write to the desk.