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.