text taken from Chapter Seven of
the common ground book of orchards
Sharing with Nature

Traditional orchards tend to be less intensively managed, mainly because they satisfy a number of land uses such as grazing or haymaking, as well as fruit production. In any case, spraying a standard orchard requires expensive equipment and chemicals and in the case of cider, perry or juicing fruit, there is no need for blemish-free specimens.

Instead of using sprays, wise growers are also experimenting with ways to reinforce the natural predators' good work by broadcasting a scented pheromone, the pests' natural chemical signalling device, to disrupt their mating. One recent study in California showed that an array of automatic puffer machines hung in walnut trees, and set to release a puff of pheromone every 30 minutes for a week, prevented up to 98 per cent of the male codling moths finding females. Meanwhile, British researchers are actively investigating the use of aphid pheromones to disrupt mating in orchards. 'If we could divert them from the trees, so no eggs were laid in the autumn, it might be the long-term, environmentally benign solution to these pests,' says insect ecologist Simon Leather of Imperial College London.

The more benign pest control techniques of the pre-pesticide era might also be worthy of re-discovery. When DDT was first introduced in the US in the 1940s, to control codling moths in the apple orchards of Washington state, growers summarily abandoned a host of effective but labour - intensive techniques that had once kept pest populations at bay. Clues to this lost knowledge are tucked away in old manuals and technical treatises such as Eleanor Ormerod's Handbook of Insects Injurious to Orchard and Bush Fruits with Means of Prevention and Remedy, published in London in 1898. A Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, she was also a member of similar societies in Stockholm, the US, Canada, Australia and 'Cape Colony'. To tackle codling moth she recommends shaking the boughs of the trees onto cloths spread underneath, 'for thus a good proportion of the infested Apples can be gathered up before the grubs have time to get away'. The damaged fruit 'can be thrown at once to wet manure' or fed to sheep, she wrote, from her study at Torrington House in St Albans, where she worked with her sister Georgiana. To stop the codling maggots climbing up or down the trees she tells orchardists to 'wind a hay-rope in three coils round the trunk of a tree at a little distance from the ground,' and also to the larger branches.

To deal with other pests, Eleanor Ormerod often advises removal of the offending bugs or affected parts by hand ­ on cherry trees you might 'send a boy up the tree to nip out the nests'. But at the right time of day and season more shakings could be on the cards, perhaps 'over an old umbrella placed the wrong way up and daubed inside with adhesive mixture'. The timely arrival of a flock of hens or 'the attendance of the pigs might also be invaluable and save the trouble of spreading anything beneath the trees to collect into'. Bear in mind, she advises, that 'birds of various kinds ­ as rooks, thrushes, blackbirds and especially starlings ­ have been found to be of great use in keeping the grubs in check, and should on no account be driven away'. Throughout she reminds growers that the 'best methods of prevention lie in the regular measures of good cultivation' ­ healthy trees can generally weather the onslaughts of their insect visitors.

It is well worth thinking too about growing local cultivars that are resistant to diseases that are likely to be the greatest problems in your region. For instance, Cox has become a widespread apple variety, yet ironically it is one of the hardest to grow, being vulnerable to a range of diseases. Commercial apple growers may routinely spray a dozen or more applications of fungicide each growing season just to prevent one disease, scab ­ but good scab-resistant varieties are available and could be grown instead. An end to these sprays would bring an added bonus: in a fungicide-free orchard natural populations of beneficial predatory mites can recover, and then help to keep infestations of damaging mites at bay. Above all, encourage diversity in your orchard, and don't worry about a few spots or holes in your trees' leaves. In fact, such depredations could even be the trees' secret weapon, as research on tomatoes suggests.

Biologist Steve Wratten, now at Lincoln University in New Zealand, has found that tomato plants respond very quickly to insect attack, producing chemicals in the afflicted leaves that move caterpillars onto other leaves. The result is lots of leaves with a few holes in them. This is a happy outcome for the plant, Wratten suggests, because insect-eating birds such as tits notice all the holes and come looking for caterpillars. Fruit trees may well behave in similar ways in order to recruit their own natural defenders: the take-home message could be: don't panic, holes in leaves are a sign that the tree has everything under control. Further research into the mysteries of plant defences could be 'very rewarding', reckons Simon Leather, who specialises in the study of insects on cherry trees.

Traditional orchards tend to be less intensively managed, mainly because they satisfy a number of land uses such as grazing or haymaking, as well as fruit production. In any case, spraying a standard orchard requires expensive equipment and chemicals and in the case of cider, perry or juicing fruit, there is no need for blemish-free specimens.

Instead of using sprays, wise growers are also experimenting with ways to reinforce the natural predators' good work by broadcasting a scented pheromone, the pests' natural chemical signalling device, to disrupt their mating. One recent study in California showed that an array of automatic puffer machines hung in walnut trees, and set to release a puff of pheromone every 30 minutes for a week, prevented up to 98 per cent of the male codling moths finding females. Meanwhile, British researchers are actively investigating the use of aphid pheromones to disrupt mating in orchards. 'If we could divert them from the trees, so no eggs were laid in the autumn, it might be the long-term, environmentally benign solution to these pests,' says insect ecologist Simon Leather of Imperial College London.

The more benign pest control techniques of the pre-pesticide era might also be worthy of re-discovery. When DDT was first introduced in the US in the 1940s, to control codling moths in the apple orchards of Washington state, growers summarily abandoned a host of effective but labour - intensive techniques that had once kept pest populations at bay. Clues to this lost knowledge are tucked away in old manuals and technical treatises such as Eleanor Ormerod's Handbook of Insects Injurious to Orchard and Bush Fruits with Means of Prevention and Remedy, published in London in 1898. A Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, she was also a member of similar societies in Stockholm, the US, Canada, Australia and 'Cape Colony'. To tackle codling moth she recommends shaking the boughs of the trees onto cloths spread underneath, 'for thus a good proportion of the infested Apples can be gathered up before the grubs have time to get away'. The damaged fruit 'can be thrown at once to wet manure' or fed to sheep, she wrote, from her study at Torrington House in St Albans, where she worked with her sister Georgiana. To stop the codling maggots climbing up or down the trees she tells orchardists to 'wind a hay-rope in three coils round the trunk of a tree at a little distance from the ground,' and also to the larger branches.

To deal with other pests, Eleanor Ormerod often advises removal of the offending bugs or affected parts by hand ­ on cherry trees you might 'send a boy up the tree to nip out the nests'. But at the right time of day and season more shakings could be on the cards, perhaps 'over an old umbrella placed the wrong way up and daubed inside with adhesive mixture'. The timely arrival of a flock of hens or 'the attendance of the pigs might also be invaluable and save the trouble of spreading anything beneath the trees to collect into'. Bear in mind, she advises, that 'birds of various kinds ­ as rooks, thrushes, blackbirds and especially starlings ­ have been found to be of great use in keeping the grubs in check, and should on no account be driven away'. Throughout she reminds growers that the 'best methods of prevention lie in the regular measures of good cultivation' ­ healthy trees can generally weather the onslaughts of their insect visitors.

It is well worth thinking too about growing local cultivars that are resistant to diseases that are likely to be the greatest problems in your region. For instance, Cox has become a widespread apple variety, yet ironically it is one of the hardest to grow, being vulnerable to a range of diseases. Commercial apple growers may routinely spray a dozen or more applications of fungicide each growing season just to prevent one disease, scab ­ but good scab-resistant varieties are available and could be grown instead. An end to these sprays would bring an added bonus: in a fungicide-free orchard natural populations of beneficial predatory mites can recover, and then help to keep infestations of damaging mites at bay. Above all, encourage diversity in your orchard, and don't worry about a few spots or holes in your trees' leaves. In fact, such depredations could even be the trees' secret weapon, as research on tomatoes suggests.

Biologist Steve Wratten, now at Lincoln University in New Zealand, has found that tomato plants respond very quickly to insect attack, producing chemicals in the afflicted leaves that move caterpillars onto other leaves. The result is lots of leaves with a few holes in them. This is a happy outcome for the plant, Wratten suggests, because insect-eating birds such as tits notice all the holes and come looking for caterpillars. Fruit trees may well behave in similar ways in order to recruit their own natural defenders: the take-home message could be: don't panic, holes in leaves are a sign that the tree has everything under control. Further research into the mysteries of plant defences could be 'very rewarding', reckons Simon Leather, who specialises in the study of insects on cherry trees.

How the apple tempted the bee

We do know, at any rate, that whatever the leaves may be up to, the flowers of fruit trees are decidedly masters in the manipulation of beneficial wild life. Long before Eve, the apple's forebears found a way to make themselves irresistible to insects. They hit upon an ingenious way to reproduce, enlisting these six-legged allies as go-betweens to ferry pollen, the male sex cells, from one flower to another. This outlandish scheme was a tremendous success, not least because an apple blossom offers its insect visitor a gift of nectar ­ a high-energy drink that perfectly complements the tasty pollen, which bees and beetles consume as a rich source of protein. The apple bears the loss happily ­ not all will be eaten. There's plenty to go round. Indeed, as Charles Darwin suggested in 1876, it's likely that apple trees deliberately make far more flowers than will ever set fruit. The profusion of flowers is well worth the effort, because it enhances the tree's attractiveness to pollinating insects. To test the idea, a researcher in Oregon in 1909 painstakingly removed the petals from all 1,500 flowers of one apple tree: only eight bees visited the tree, and only five flowers set fruit. Another pomologist, working in New Jersey in 1924, removed the petals from 250 apple flowers; he found that no bees visited and none set fruit.

Unspecialised beetles, wasps and flies probably pollinated the very first flowers ­ which looked a bit like a modern magnolia. But this basic model was soon joined by thousands of novel variations, brightly coloured and bizarrely shaped. Pollinating insects kept pace, evolving body shapes to suit the new floral anatomies. Thanks to 150 million years of fevered negotiation, our planet is now home to a huge variety of bees, wasps, butterflies, moths and hoverflies, each equipped with tongue or proboscis custom-made to reach the nectar hidden deep within some fantastic flower. You could say that in temptation lies the origin of Eden, not its demise.

Beekeeping was born when early humans discovered that house-hunting swarms of honeybees would accept an artificial abode. From the start, orchards were deemed good places to lodge the hive ­ wild bees themselves might choose the hollow of an aged fruit tree to set up home. Not so long ago, few orchards were without at least one beekeeper's hive.

European honeybees Apis mellifera make good pollinators of apple and other fruit trees, especially when the worker-bees collect pollen to feed to the young brood. The light honey they make from the nectar of fruit blossom is said to have an excellent delicate flavour and fine aroma.

When the Romans invaded Britain, they found the locals tending dome-shaped hives made of willow or hazel twigs and plastered inside and out with cow dung. This kind of hive survived in parts of Britain until the 18th century, when it was gradually replaced by the straw basket hive or 'skep', which persisted well into Victorian times. To shelter the straw hives from the weather, recesses were built into walls, often in orchards. Commonly known as bee holes in Yorkshire and bee boles in Scotland, these recesses still persist in places such as Packwood House, a National Trust property in Warwickshire.

Traditionally, orchards were stocked with about two hives to the hectare, and even today many old orchards have at least one hive. But high-density commercial apple orchards typically rely on mobile bees ­ 'flying squads' ­ hired in from April to early May for about £30 a hive.

'Migratory beekeeping' has become a thriving industry. Every year several thousands of hives are moved into fruit orchards in Kent and the Vale of Evesham, as well as East Anglia and eastern Scotland, with Kent alone providing work for 1,700 mobile hives, according to the Bee Farmers' Association. By mid May or early June, as the fruit blossom fades, the bees are trucked off to pollinate oilseed rape, field bean and mustard.

By contrast, in old orchards, traditional beekeeping is sometimes still practised, and here the bees need access to a wide range of wild and garden flowers once the fruit blossom is over.

Even in perfect conditions, however, it can be a mistake to rely entirely on honeybees as pollinators, if only because they are always vulnerable to the spread of diseases or deadly parasites such as the imported mite, Varroa. Given the right environment ­ a healthy landscape with plenty of places to feed and nest ­ wild bees can do the job even more effectively than domesticated honeybees. Bumblebees ­ six out of 25 species are still widespread in Britain ­ take to the wing even when it's too cold for honeybees. They work fast too, clocking in as many as 20 apple flowers per minute. Because they're big, bumblebees tend to pollinate the flowers more effectively than honeybees do. And because they have longer tongues than honeybees, they are vital pollinators of scores of deep-throated perennial wild flowers as well as field bean and red clover crops.

Thirty years ago, John Free of Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire, writing in his Insect Pollination of Crops, noted scores of studies showing fruit set better in orchards grown in good countryside hospitable to bumblebees. In the late 1980s, enthusiastic young members of WATCH, the junior wing of the Wildlife Trusts, carried out a valuable national survey of bumblebees' flower preferences. Apple blossoms turned out to be a particular favourite of a beautiful gingery bumblebee, sometimes known as a carder bee; its Latin name Bombus pascuorum means 'of the pastures'.

Solitary bees ­ wild bees that don't form colonies ­ can also be important pollinators of fruit trees in Britain. But like all the wild bees, they need to find suitable nesting places close to prime feeding sites. Tussocky old pasture and banks alongside flower-rich hedgerows and orchards are bumblebee paradise.

Bees get most of the credit, but apple-blossom pollen is spread about by other less glamorous insects too. The apple's inviting flowers attract a remarkable diversity of flying insects. Keen-eyed observers of apple blossom have spotted fungus-gnats, aptly named for their penchant for mushrooms, as well as St Mark's flies (Bibio spp). Look in an orchard around St Mark's Day, 25 April, and you're likely to see these largish black insects drifting lazily about with long legs dangling. Other visitors include the sluggish fever flies (Dilophus spp) and the bee-flies Bombylius, which look rather like small bumblebees equipped with a permanently protruding proboscis. Representatives of the house-fly and blowfly families regularly put in an appearance, as well as small flower-beetles of the family Nitidulidae.

BUY the common ground book of orchards