What an outright idiot.

ICE advice being given to American farmers in one of their publications today.

It's interesting to observe that typically most flower buds on apple trees carry five flowers (and hence five potential apples) like pictured here. Elstar often has more, like in the picture with the previous post in this thread.

In response to yesterday's apple blossom puzzle. I can confirm the salmon pink one was Discovery, and the deeper pink one Bramley's Seedling.
Here's a flower cluster of Elstar (Elswout) to celebrate.

And here is another of the flower cluster on the right, also at an earlier stage.

Here is another shot of the blossom on the left at a slightly earlier stage.

A little test for apple blossom lovers this afternoon, to celebrate full bloom in Irish orchards at the moment. Pictured are blossoms of Discovery and Bramley apples. The puzzle is, which is which?

The type of tree form this grower needs has vertical branches every 25cm (like pictured). So he needs to encourage those to form in spots where they didn't naturally occur.

One of our apple grower members needs to grow some branches on this young trees, in spots they would not naturally occur. By notching just past the dormant buds, it encourages those buds into life, creating those branches. The notch temporarily stops the flow of auxin - see Alt text with photo.

While the apples won't bloom for another few weeks in Ireland, the plums are coming into full bloom now. Also pictured is a ladybird, which will emerge from hibernation once the weather warms a little more. One of several predators growers use to manage pests in Ireland.

The apple trees awaken in Ireland. Plenty buds beginning to open in the orchard. The pictured bud is at green tip stage. Unfortunately over the past five decades this stage in apples has arisen progressively earlier in spring, and it now happens two to three weeks earlier, due to climate change.

Today our annual apple seminar was held at Keelings orchard in Dublin, and afterwards with contributions by Teagasc, Fresh Forward (via Teams to keep the carbon footprint down) Bord Bia and Dept of Agriculture. A very informative day.

Apples grow really well in Ireland. Despite that, only about one in twenty apples eaten in Ireland is grown here, with the other 19 imported. This group represents apple growers in Ireland, and is involved in the redevelopment of the apple growing industry.