Pruning the fence line trees commences!

 This week we were four volunteers and two of us started the summer pruning of the trained trees on the orchard.  A trained tree is one that is pruned into a specific shape or form. On the orchard we have a long fence line of trees which have been trained as vertical cordons - this means they have one main stem with shorter fruiting stems - meaning they take up limited space. This allows us to grow lots of different varieties of fruit.  

Summer pruning is an enjoyable task, as well as a necessary one. If we don't do it the trees will develop long thin branches which will bear fruit - but the weight of the fruit will break the branches. 

Below is a photograph of the long fence line that we prune each year. There is also a fruit arch with vertical cordons that has another 12 trees which we summer prune.  Other work done this week - strimming and more tidying up around the base of trees then mulching.  There are a lot of trees so this takes a long time!

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Work session 18th June

 We had a returning volunteer this week, and hopefully they will be back for more Orchard action.  It's always lovely to welcome people wanting to help out - because Orchard49 is a very special space.  

This week we started clearing around the base of the trees within the Orchard - after finishing doing the long line of trained trees along the fence line.  We do this for the tree's health and vigour. After clearing the grass we've been mulching around the base of the trees to provide some added nourishment.  We received a delivery of free soil conditioner from Suez earlier in the year to enable us to do the mulching.

More strimming was done, carefully avoiding a couple of frogs that were hopping around close to where we were working. 

Next week we'll begin the summer pruning of the trained trees and this year we are going to have to thin out developing fruit - because there are so many very close together on the trees. 

You can see from these photos how tightly packed this tree's fruit is. 

This is because the trees have enjoyed the wet - and blossomed magnificently.  Helped by the on site bees the pollination rate was very high so thin we must - or we will have a crop of smaller apples.  Sometimes, after this scenario a tree will decide not to produce blossom the following year because they over exerted themselves the year before. It can be quite tricky persuading them out of this habit once this happens.

Come and join us

Despite the cool and shower June weather we are busy on the orchard on Tuesdays.  This last week we had a musical accompaniment as the Foo Fighters were doing sound checks for their 2 gigs at the cricket ground.   

We finished mulching around the cordon trees along the long fence line and some strimming of the long grass has been done so walking through the orchard is a bit easier.  We also planted a new tree - a Damson Farleigh which has been grown on a new rootstock called VVA-1. This is a semi dwarfing rootstock that grows to approximately 2 -2.5 metres tall and is supposed to come into fruiting very early with large amounts of fruit.  It is suited to heavy soils (the orchard is quite heavy clay).  We will see how it fares, as the other damson we have (and the other plums) haven't been very productive at all.  

We had more visits from a Robin - it comes in search of worms and is quite fearless, coming really close to get them and check us out.

You can find us on the Orchard between 5 and 6.30 on Tuesdays - come and join us.