Glossary · Orchard
Frost pocket
Definition
A hollow or an enclosed low-lying site where cold air collects on still nights, giving temperatures several degrees below the surrounding slope and a much higher risk of blossom frost.
- Subject
- Orchard
In more detail
Cold air drains downhill like water and pools behind obstructions — a hedge, a wall, a belt of trees across a valley. Sites are chosen and hedges gapped with this in mind, and it is why orchards on gentle slopes outperform orchards in the valley bottom.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Production
Site selection
Choosing the ground an orchard will stand on, weighing frost drainage, exposure, soil depth and season length decades before the first full crop is picked.
Production
Climate and site risk
The weather exposures an orchard carries across its life — frost at bloom, summer drought, hail, wind and winter cold — and how a shifting climate is changing the balance between them.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Flowering
The blossom period, when the crop is set or lost. Cider cultivars flower over several weeks in spring, and the sequence is consistent enough between cultivars to be used for planning even though the dates move each year.
Orchard
Orchard floor
The ground layer beneath the trees, and its management: permanent grazed grassland in traditional orchards, mown alleys with herbicide strips in intensive ones.
Orchard
Traditional orchard
An orchard of widely spaced standard or half-standard trees on vigorous rootstocks, with a permanent grassland floor that is grazed or mown. In the United Kingdom it is a recognised priority habitat.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
A Somerset Pomona: The Cider Apples of Somerset
Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001. ISBN 9781874336877 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against Open Library: Liz Copas, The Dovecote Press, 2001, ISBN 9781874336877. The author was Long Ashton’s cider pomologist, which is why this work is registered for Somerset cultivar identity at all — it is the nearest thing to a successor to the station’s own descriptions. No copy was opened. Not digitised in any open collection.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.