Work session 25th October 2014

Another successful work session today, led by Claire McAllen. Thanks to Richard, Pete, Claire C, Damien and Charlie for coming along, it was a great turnout ensuring all the jobs got done. 

There was some construction work - a raised bed pre cut, drilled etc. by Claire McAllen for the two blueberry plants.  They need a bed all for themselves as they require ericacous compost and it is a task that we've not got round to all year - so great to have got them in the ground finally. Now they can properly spread their roots and get productive.

Before planting

 

After planting

Another long standing task was to put a support structure up for the raspberry canes that were planted in March.  This really shoud have been done before the canes went it, but we didn't have time or the people power to do it at that time... here are a couple of pictures of this work.

Raspberry canes and support structure

Claire tying the canes to the wire supports

During the session the apple and pear trees were given a fruit tree grease treatment to prevent codling moth and inevitably weeding was also done! 

Apple Day - 2014

We had a fabulous day last Saturday, with hundreds of people joining us to celebrate the apple harvest.  The sun even shone for us, which had looked unlikely as the sun came up.

Here are some photos from the day. A big thank you to everyone who helped on the day, baked cakes, made soup, designed bug trails, bought pizza ingredients, cleaned the pavilion, tidied up before hand and at the end of the day. A great voluntary effort from all. 

The day started with BBC Radio Manchester doing an outside broadcast from the allotments.

Some of the baking - which raised £140 pounds. 

Amongst the display we had Lord Derby apple muffins and Chocolate and Apple Cake and Grandpa Buxton apple pie made from cooking apples from the orchard.

 

Apple pressing, a highlight of the day.

 We gathered kilos of apples from plotholders on the allotments, and some fallers from the orchard to press.  We had queues of people wanting to taste and buy bottles of freshly juiced apples.

Lots of interest in the process of apple pressing. As the handle gets lower the children get stuck in too.

Pavillion begins to fill up with visitors

Pizzas from the cob oven sold out by the end of the day.

The pizza oven we have on site was built by plotholders at a cob oven building course in 2012. The course was funded by the grant we had from Local Food for Orchard49.  Its been such a fantastic resource. Thanks to all the hardworking pizza makers on the day.

We raised £276 on the day and all that money will be used to maintain and develop  Orchard49. Again, thanks to everyone who made it possible.

Apple Day

First substantial harvest of 2014

Looking back over photos from previous years to see when we took pictures of fruit we'd harvested we can see that fruit seems to be ripe at least a couple of weeks earlier than previously.

This week we had lots to take away, shared between the 4 volunteers on the session. We picked figs, apples (a couple of trees
seem to have ripe fruit), pears, blackberries and the last of the mid season raspberries (Polka).

Here is the evidence!

Harvested fruit 18th August 2014

Thanks Abi

At Orchard 49 we really appreciate volunteers, the Orchard can't do without them.  This year Abi Paine came along, she found out about us via Google and volunteered very regularly on our Monday evening sessions.  Sadly though, at the outset she said she'd be leaving for Australia so wouldn't be around for long.

That may be so, and we said Bye to Abi last week, but while she volunteered she was a star.  On our last session it was raining really hard, so we made bee boxes under cover and here she is with her bee box.

Abi with her bee box

And with bee box builder, extraordinaire, Pete Abel...

These boxes will be painted and sold to raise money for the Orchard.

Abi also set up an instagram account for the orchard. If you'd like to follow us on Instagram look for Orchard_49

Work session 4th August 2014

Another productive session. As we'd had some heavy rain over the weekend we were able to dig up some plants that had become way to big along the fence line with a neighbouring allotment plot.

We've been needing to do this for some time, but because the soil type on the Orchard is clay its hard to do anything like that during a prolonged dry spell... you lterally can't get a fork into the ground.

We also finally transplanted a couple of gooseberry bushes into the long raised bed - another long over due task.

We've been enjoying raspberries and blackberries while we work and are noticing that some of the apple varieties are ripening very much earlier than in previous years. This makes planning when to hold an apple day really hard.  We usually ask plotholders on the site to donate fallers from their trees (of which there are many) and have apples from the orchard to taste (among other things). But if apples are ripening very early then there won't be much to juice or taste... In the past Apple Day has been in late September/early October. So, we are pondering what to do on that!

Thanks to Abi, Debbie, Pete and Julie for all their hard work.

Work session 21 July 2014

We were 6 yesterday for the work session.  It was a glorious warm sunny evening to be outside. We had a fair bit of weeding to do due to the OTAGS strimmer being out of action. Damien and Nicklaus (visiting WOOFer from Austria) got stuck on at the back of the orchard pulling bind weed out and tackling the weed growth.

Abi noticed that the raspberry plants which were only planted in March had some fruit on them, so we picked those and shared them at the end of the session.  Debbie also picked some blueberries, these plants are still in pots until we build a raised bed for them where we can use ericaceous compost.  These were also very tasty!

Lots of work done and a group photo taken at the end of the session.  Thanks again to all: Abi, Damien, Debbie, Gemma, Lorna and Nicklaus.

Left to right: Abi, Gemma, Debbie, Damien, Lorna, Nicklaus

Lovely raspberries - some of them!

 Postscript

Last week's session included making a pond - which was great. Trouble was the plant transplanted from a nearby allotment turned out to be poisonous and mistakenly Debbie injested some and was quite poorly as a result... Lesson is, wear gloves when handling plants like Bog Arum. It is high in oxalic acid and even small amounts entering your bloodstream (don't know how it got in my system) will make you very sick.  4 hours in A&E to get checked out isn't a nice way to spend a Friday afternoon!  Here is a picture of the pond and the plant!

Pond and Bog Arum

Yes its small - the Orchard is all about what can be done in small spaces, so its a small pond. Lets see how long it takes for frogs to find it. We also sowed some phacelia and red clover in the area that had been dug.

Work session on 7th July

We were three this evening and got busy with:

• uncovering a mound of manure which had rather a large number of weeds growing in it
• more pruning of trees to encourage fruit buds to form (many more trees to do)
• pruning one of the grape vines (variety Brant for those interested in such things)
• finishing fitting tree protection to the trees on the fruit arch, so the trunks don't get strimmed
• weeding around the base of one of the large trees we inherited
• picking up quince tree leaves - to try and stop blight from re-occuring (Quince Portugal)
• taking some photos of some of the trees.  Mainly (Quince excepted) they are looking great and growing really well. 

Apple: Plot 52

Apple: Ladies Finger of Lancaster

Not all top fruit - Blackberry Chester

Apple: Withington Welter

Apple: Yorkshire Cockpit

Quince Portugal with blighted leaves

Quince Portugal without blighted leaves

 Thanks to Lorna, Pete and Debbie for their time.

Busy Busy work session

We had another busy work session on Monday 30th June. Two new volunteers got stuck into barrowing manure and compost into the raised bed that Pete had made the week before.  Great work by Gemma and Mark. Meanwhile, Debbie and Abi busied themselves pruning and training pear and trees growing around the fruit arch and the cherry trees that are against the bakery wall.

Lorna tackled protecting the trees that were planted to grow over the fruit arch with tree guard material so that they don't get damaged when the grass is strimmed. Oh and Abi also put up some bird feeders. Last but by no means least Claire popped in to say hello on route to the OTAGS committee meeting where she represents Orchard49.

No pics this time, but it was a lovely evening once more. Thanks to everyone!

Mid summer work session 2014

We had a glorious work session yesterday evening. Warm and sunny, its not rained for at least 2 weeks so the ground is baked hard. We busied ourselves with watering the trees (using the land drainage pipe put in when the trees were planted to get straight to the roots), giving the trees a foliar feed, building a raised bed, pruning and tying in of vines.

Here are some pics taken yesterday.

Lorna tying in the grape vine

We have a percola with a bench underneath which has two grape vines and two thornless blackberry plants climbing up it.  Lorna isn't a giant, she is standing on the bench! 

Pete building a very long raised bed.

We share a fairly ugly fence line with a bakery, and in the winter we planted some raspberry canes along part of it. This is the next phase - we will plant more fruit, training it along the fence to hide the metalwork.The raised bed is made from recycled scaffold planks.  

The next two photos are of the fruit arch - which is coming along nicely (needs some prunign and tying in too) and the long fenceline which has cordon apple, pear and plum along its length. 

Fruit arch - apple and pear

Fenceline with cordon trees.

 We are always keen to have more people helping on the orchard, and I can't think of a nicer way to spend a mid summer evening!  We're there from 6.30-8 pm on Mondays.

Spring and Summer 2014 work sessions

With the evenings getting longer we can resume our regular Monday evening work sessions. These will resume on Monday 12th May.  The sessions will run from 6.30 to 8 pm.

We've also got a couple of weekend sessions organised so please put these in your diary and come along.

17th May 10am - 2pm

31st May 10 - 2 pm.

Hope to see you there.

March 2014 Planting Days

We held two planting days in March, and were blessed with dry days. By the end of the two days we had planted:

Apple

Crab Apple Dartmouth - this is to help with overall pollination of the apple trees on the orchard
*Bountiful
*Blenheim Orange

Pear
*Concorde
*Conference
*Comice

* grafted by us at a workshop in 2012
 
Stone Fruit
Damson Shropshire Prune 
Gage Denniston's Superb
Gage Golden Transparent
Plum Marjorie's Seedling

These are all maiden trees so it will take a while before we can harvest the fruit.

Soft Fruit
Raspberry Glen Ample (x 10) (summer fruiting)
Raspberry Polka (x 10) (autumn fruiting)


We also need to build a raised bed to put two blueberry bushes in - as these were in pots getting them in the ground wasn't so crucial. The varieties are: Coville and Bluecrop.


This means the orchard is almost full. We have a little bit of space along a fence line with the bakery, but its nearly full.