Why the Orchard Floor Matters

Walk into any old cider orchard and you will see two very different approaches to the ground beneath the trees. One is a tight, grazed sward, right up to the bark. The other has a clearing of mulch, herbs and low-growing flowers around each trunk. The second is almost always the healthier orchard, and it is no accident.

Grass — particularly perennial ryegrass — is a hungry competitor. It takes nitrogen, potassium and, in a dry summer, a great deal of water from the top 30cm of soil, which is exactly where an apple tree keeps its feeding roots. Young trees suffer most, putting on feeble growth and cropping late. A ring of well-chosen companions does the opposite: it covers the soil, holds moisture, feeds the soil life and brings in insects you actually want.

The trick is choosing plants that work with the tree rather than against it. Aim to keep a clear 60–90cm radius around the trunk for mulching and mowing, and use the space between trees for the plants described below.

Comfrey: The Orchard's Own Fertiliser Factory

If you plant only one companion, make it comfrey — and make sure it is the sterile Bocking 14 strain, which spreads by root division rather than seed and will not take over the county. Its deep taproot mines potassium and trace minerals from well below the reach of apple roots, and the leaves are rich in exactly the nutrients fruit needs for good bud formation and firm, well-coloured apples.

Cut the leaves two or three times a season — before the stems harden — and lay them as a mulch around the drip line, or steep them in a barrel of water for four to six weeks to make a potent liquid feed. Dilute it roughly ten to one before use; neat comfrey tea will scorch foliage. Let a few plants flower and you will have bumblebees working the orchard from late May into July, which is no small thing in a year when apple blossom passes quickly.

Plant comfrey 60cm or so from the trunk, one or two plants per mature tree, and cut it back hard if it starts to shade young grafts.

Chives and Their Allium Cousins

Chives are modest, shallow-rooted and drought-tolerant — about as undemanding a companion as you could ask for. Their sulphur compounds are what interest us. Gardeners have long sworn that alliums confuse aphids, deter carrot fly and even reduce the spread of fungal problems, though the trial evidence is largely anecdotal. What is certain is that chive flowers in early summer are a magnet for bees and hoverflies, and hoverfly larvae are voracious aphid predators.

Set clumps in gravel or a shallow trough about 30cm from the trunk, where they will not compete for water. Divide them every few years in spring. In shadier, damper orchards, Welsh onions, wild garlic and three-cornered leek do the same job and will happily naturalise along a hedge line.

Nasturtiums: The Decoy Crop

Nasturtiums are the sacrificial lamb of the fruit garden. Blackfly, whitefly and cabbage white caterpillars will find them long before they find your apple foliage, and you can then squash the pests by hand, leave them for ladybirds, or simply pull the spent plant and compost it.

Sow seed in pots in April and plant out after the last frost, or sow direct once the soil has warmed. A trailing variety tumbling out of a pot at the base of a tree looks charming and keeps the plant off the soil. Do keep them clear of young trunks and graft unions — a sprawling nasturtium can smother a two-year-old tree. The leaves and flowers are peppery and perfectly edible, so a handful for the kitchen is a legitimate harvest from the orchard.

Pollinators, Hoverflies and the Cider Crop

Most apples are self-incompatible, so a cider orchard needs a mix of varieties flowering together and a healthy population of bees to move pollen between them. Bees need forage before and after blossom as well as during it. That is where a diverse understorey earns its keep.

Good choices include:

• Borage and phacelia — fast, cheap to sow, and irresistible to bees.
• Calendula and poached egg plant — long-flowering, self-seeding, excellent in a rough grass margin.
• Dill, fennel and chervil — their flat umbels feed hoverflies and parasitic wasps that police caterpillar and aphid numbers.
• Marjoram and lavender — late-summer nectar for bees building up for winter.

In traditionally grazed orchards, remember that sheep will nibble bark from young trees; guard trunks with mesh and keep the animals out of the nursery rows.

What to Avoid — and How to Keep the Balance

Some plants simply have no business at the foot of a fruit tree. Vigorous competitors steal water and nutrients, and anything that demands deep digging will slice through the shallow feeding roots apples rely on.

• Perennial ryegrass and couch grass — thirsty, mat-forming, and best kept in the mown alleyways between rows.
• Brambles, bracken and ivy — smothering, and ivy climbing a trunk hides canker and woolly aphid.
• Running mint and comfrey that sets seed — fine in a pot, a menace in open ground.
• Nettles right against the trunk — wonderful in a wild corner for butterflies, but not where you need air and light.

Aim instead for a mown alleyway, a mulched clearing around each trunk, and a scatter of flowering companions in between. Cut comfrey before it flowers, divide chives in spring, sow nasturtiums after frost, and top up the woodchip mulch each autumn. Strimmers are the most common cause of trunk damage in small orchards, so mow with the blade well clear of the bark.

Do this for a season or two and you will notice the difference in the fruit: cleaner skins, fewer aphids, better colour on the cider apples, and a far livelier orchestra of insects working the blossom. Healthy trees make better cider — and it starts at ground level.