Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Christ Church and St Augustine's priories at Canterbury. They grew apples
and pears for eating and cooking and also apples for cider. The sale of cider
was recorded at Battle Abbey in Sussexin
and cider production was
recorded in Yorkshire at around the same time. In the South Tyrol, also at
around this time, apples were grown in the gardens of monasteries, castles
and rural settlements to supply local markets, e.g. the Obstplatz (fruit square)
in Bolzano (Oberhofer,
). In England two cultivars, the 'Pearmain' and
the 'Costard' were grown extensively in the thirteenth century and there are
records of apples and pears and their rootstocks being bought and sold. Pears
were much planted in medieval England, with new cultivars brought over from
the La Rochelle area of France. King Henry VIII ordered the importation of
graftwood of the best available cultivars in
and Richard Harris, Fruiterer
to the King, imported many apple cultivars, especially pippins, from France
and pear graftwood from the Low Countries (Netherlands). Subsequent to
this Walloon refugees settled in Sandwich in Kent. Some of these Dutch sett-
lers then moved to northwest Kent and Surrey to establish market gardens to
supply London and later established apple and pear orchards for this purpose.
In the sixteenth century the use of dwarfing 'Paradise' rootstocks was de-
scribed for the first time in Europe, by Ruellius in
. This 'French Paradise'
probably had originated in Armenia as a form of
Malus pumila
or a
M. pumila
×
M. sylvestris
hybrid. 'Paradise' apple trees were grown and used as rootstocks
to control the vigour of cultivars grafted on them in England in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The first 'Paradise' rootstocks had
been brought over from France but they were subsequently propagated in
English nurseries.
The introduction of apple and pear culture in North and South America,
South Africa, Australia and New Zealand accompanied European settlement.
The first documented apple orchard in what is now the USA was planted near
Boston in
, and this was almost certainly preceded by plantings in Latin
America.
Apple and pear production in the modern era
The distinctively modern era, from the perspective of apple and pear produc-
tion, dates from the development of cheap and rapid long-distance transporta-
tion by steamship, railway train and truck. It is characterized by the develop-
ment of science-based technologies to improve the productivity of fruit trees
in a wide range of environments and to enable apples and pears to be stored
in good condition for many months.
Prior to these developments apple and pear growing for market was pre-
dominantly in areas close to large towns and cities, such as in villages near to
Rome in the time of Pliny, and in Kent near to London in the Middle Ages and
subsequently. There was some international trade, e.g. over the Brenner Pass
