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.
Showing posts with label OTAGS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OTAGS. Show all posts
Sunny Apple Day - 2012
Today was Apple Day at the allotment site and Orchard 49. Juice was pressed, apples and potatoes baked in our cob oven and we had samples of apples grown on the orchard for people to taste. We basked in autumnal sunshine and warm - delightful.
Work for the day, when not talking to visitors, was some hoeing - using a beautiful osillating hoe (Hydra Swing Hoe) from Implementations - who gifted the tool to the Orchard last year. We also painted the trees with fruit tree grease to prevent codling moth next year and picked some apples - lovely they were too.
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| Some of our apple samples on the lovely oak bench in the sunshine |
Work for the day, when not talking to visitors, was some hoeing - using a beautiful osillating hoe (Hydra Swing Hoe) from Implementations - who gifted the tool to the Orchard last year. We also painted the trees with fruit tree grease to prevent codling moth next year and picked some apples - lovely they were too.
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| Claire making light work of hoeing with the wonderful Hydra Swing Hoe |
Open Day - 19th August 2012
OTAGS held an Open Day on Sunday 19th August. There were Scarecrows to see as well as pizzas from the new Cob Oven... and of course Orchard 49 to visit. Sadly we didn't have a brilliant day for it. But we were there and here are some photos I took of some of the trees that we grafted ourselves in 2010. You can see that they are with fruit. Two are being grown as cordon trees - trained to grow in a small space. In our case along the path fence line. Equally they could be grown along a sunny wall in your back yard.
We are very much learning about how to train the trees. So you can see with the minshull crab cordon we actually have two stems, as it grew that way, so we're letting ti grow along two stems rather than one. Peter Nichol from the Northern Fruit Group is helping us learn how best to train the trees.
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| Apple - Burr Knot - Cordon Tree |
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| Apple - Laxton Superb - growing as a bush tree |
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| Apple Minshull Crab - cordon (its not a crab apple). |
Cob Oven workshop April 2012
On Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st April a group of plotholders and local people came together to learn how to build a cob oven on the allotment site. Local Food funded the 2 day workshop, which was run by Annabel from Earthed . The workshop ran from 9-5 on two days, so everyone who participated put in hours of hard labour.
The photos here show the oven in its final form. Its full of sand right now, but once its dry this will come out and it can be fired up. More photos of the whole process of making the oven can be viewed here.
The oven is going to be a huge asset, as we can bake pizza, bread and other things in it - which will be great for open days and socialising on the site.
The photos here show the oven in its final form. Its full of sand right now, but once its dry this will come out and it can be fired up. More photos of the whole process of making the oven can be viewed here.
The oven is going to be a huge asset, as we can bake pizza, bread and other things in it - which will be great for open days and socialising on the site.
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| Sculpture with a nature/orchard theme |
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| See the apple with a visitor? |
Low Carbon Preserving Workshop
Saturday 10th September saw OTAGS hosting a preserving workshop in association with Cracking Good Food. The aim of the session was to show how you can manage gluts of produce without spending hours cooking chutneys! Vicki Leng, local cook and preserving enthusiast took participants through how to dehydrate apples, salt beans, pickle cucumbers and dehydrate tomatoes all in the 3 hour session.
The essential piece of equipment we used during the day was a dehydrator. It has 14 square feet of drying space, and is designed to run on a low heat (the temperature range can be set between (29 - 68 °C) whilst at the same time running a fan to dry the food out. So unlike dehydrating food in your oven its energy efficient and you can then store food in jars without the need to run a freezer. Food preserved this way will keep for at least 9 months, so you can be eating sun riped tomatoes that you've grown long after the UK tomato growing season has ended. If they are really really dry you can just jar them once they've been dehydrated. Or if they have some moisture remaining pack them into small jars and cover with olive oil.
Similarly, Apple rings are really easy to process with the dehydrator - simply core, thinly slice, dip into some water with lemon juice to stop them from discolouring, load into the dehydrator for 3 hours then pack into sterilised jars.
We also salted beans, which was quick and straightforward. Vicki explained that this isn't a technique that enables you to serve up green beans that will taste the same as those you cook freshly picked in the usual way (e.g. steam). Rather its one way of managing part of your bean glut that doesn't require freezer space or use of fossil fuels. Very simply, using a clean sterilised jar we packed sliced green beans (french or runner) in layers with salt. A layer of salt followed by a layer of beans, then another layer of salt until the jar was full. After the beans and the salt have been in the jar overnight you can top up the jar packing more beans and salt in, as the salt draws the water out of the beans which makes them shrink.
We tasted some salted beans that Vicki had de-salted earlier in the day and while they didn't taste like fresh beans adding them to soups, stews and chillis would certainly work... once you've rinsed them to remove as much salt as possible.
The session was funded by our Local Food fund grant for Orchard 49. Thanks to Laura for organising the workshop and to Vicki for sharing her knowledge with us.
The essential piece of equipment we used during the day was a dehydrator. It has 14 square feet of drying space, and is designed to run on a low heat (the temperature range can be set between (29 - 68 °C) whilst at the same time running a fan to dry the food out. So unlike dehydrating food in your oven its energy efficient and you can then store food in jars without the need to run a freezer. Food preserved this way will keep for at least 9 months, so you can be eating sun riped tomatoes that you've grown long after the UK tomato growing season has ended. If they are really really dry you can just jar them once they've been dehydrated. Or if they have some moisture remaining pack them into small jars and cover with olive oil.
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| Vicki showing Claire, Dave and Roy how the tomatoes are coming along in the dehydrator. |
We also salted beans, which was quick and straightforward. Vicki explained that this isn't a technique that enables you to serve up green beans that will taste the same as those you cook freshly picked in the usual way (e.g. steam). Rather its one way of managing part of your bean glut that doesn't require freezer space or use of fossil fuels. Very simply, using a clean sterilised jar we packed sliced green beans (french or runner) in layers with salt. A layer of salt followed by a layer of beans, then another layer of salt until the jar was full. After the beans and the salt have been in the jar overnight you can top up the jar packing more beans and salt in, as the salt draws the water out of the beans which makes them shrink.
We tasted some salted beans that Vicki had de-salted earlier in the day and while they didn't taste like fresh beans adding them to soups, stews and chillis would certainly work... once you've rinsed them to remove as much salt as possible.
The session was funded by our Local Food fund grant for Orchard 49. Thanks to Laura for organising the workshop and to Vicki for sharing her knowledge with us.
Planting completed
January-March 2011 was a busy time for us. We had lots of trees to plant on the community orchard. Challenging weather conditions November-January meant that our planting window was quite small.
All the trees we had to plant for the 2010-2011 dormant period are now in the ground and florishing. We planted 30 trees, 17 of which are cordon trees - they will grow along a fence line as a way of demonstrating how fruit can be grown in smaller spaces. So, we currently have 13 trees planted in the top half of the orchard. All but 9 of these are trees we grafted.
The trees we grafted ourselves (in March 2010) and planted are:
(Pollination group in brackets)
Lord Derby D
Yorkshire Cockpit C
Lemon Pippin D
Allington Pippin C
Bossom (Mid)
Stripped Beefing C
Queen Cox B
Minshull Crab C
Lord Lambourne C
Burr Knot C
D’Arcy Spice D
Crispin (10)
Downham Pippin D
All the above are cordon trees
Ashmeads Kernel D
Bee Bench ?
Eccleston Pippin ?
Laxton‘s Superb D
Lord Suffield B
Plot 52 ? This is a tree on our site (on plot 52) yet to be identified.
Tydeman’s Early Worcester D
Withington Welter C
And we purchased and planted:
Duke of Devonshire B
Fillingham Pippin B (grafted by Peter Nichol locally)
Flower of the Town B
Grandpa Buxton B (grafted by Peter Nichol locally)
Greenup's Pippin B
Keswick Codling B
Ladies Finger of Lancaster C
Ribston Pippin D
Tydeman's Late Orange D
All the trees we had to plant for the 2010-2011 dormant period are now in the ground and florishing. We planted 30 trees, 17 of which are cordon trees - they will grow along a fence line as a way of demonstrating how fruit can be grown in smaller spaces. So, we currently have 13 trees planted in the top half of the orchard. All but 9 of these are trees we grafted.
The trees we grafted ourselves (in March 2010) and planted are:
(Pollination group in brackets)
Lord Derby D
Yorkshire Cockpit C
Lemon Pippin D
Allington Pippin C
Bossom (Mid)
Stripped Beefing C
Queen Cox B
Minshull Crab C
Lord Lambourne C
Burr Knot C
D’Arcy Spice D
Crispin (10)
Downham Pippin D
All the above are cordon trees
Ashmeads Kernel D
Bee Bench ?
Eccleston Pippin ?
Laxton‘s Superb D
Lord Suffield B
Plot 52 ? This is a tree on our site (on plot 52) yet to be identified.
Tydeman’s Early Worcester D
Withington Welter C
And we purchased and planted:
Duke of Devonshire B
Fillingham Pippin B (grafted by Peter Nichol locally)
Flower of the Town B
Grandpa Buxton B (grafted by Peter Nichol locally)
Greenup's Pippin B
Keswick Codling B
Ladies Finger of Lancaster C
Ribston Pippin D
Tydeman's Late Orange D
Grafting Workshop
On Sunday 13th March OTAGS hosted a grafting workshop. This is how new fruit trees are made. You use 'rootstock' supplied from a specialist grower (so its disease free), with the rootstock chosen based on how small or large you want the tree to be. Then join material pruned from the tree you want to reproduce on to that rootstock - with a graft.
Peter Nichol from the Northern Fruit Group came to show us how and a very productive time was had by all. After spending an hour or so practising how to join the two pieces together, we set about the task of making trees for the orchard. By 3 pm we had grafted 40 trees.
It will take a few months before we will know if all of these have taken, but Peter re-assured us by saying that if any don't work he will show us how to bud - using the same rootstock.
For our orchard it was important to learn how to do this. Buying local heritage trees is expensive, and often they are not available. The idea is that a group of us will be able to continue to practice this skill, pass it on to others and make more trees for the orchard and to sell during our events, raising money to develop the allotment site.
We grafted: Allington Pippen, Ashmeads Kernel, Bee Bench, Bossom, Burr Knot, Crispin, D'Arcy Spice, Downton Pippin, Eccleston Pippen, Lemon Pippin, Laxton's Superb, Lord Derby, Lord Lambourne. Lord Suffield, Minshull Crab, Queen Cox, Stripped Beefing, Tydeman's Early Worcester, Withington Welter and Yorkshire Cockpit. All of these are apples which we grafted on to MM106 rootstock.
We also grafted some unknown apple and unknown plums, damsons and greengages varieties growing on our site. Later in the year we will host an apple identification workshop, where some of these varieties can be identified.
Peter Nichol from the Northern Fruit Group came to show us how and a very productive time was had by all. After spending an hour or so practising how to join the two pieces together, we set about the task of making trees for the orchard. By 3 pm we had grafted 40 trees.
It will take a few months before we will know if all of these have taken, but Peter re-assured us by saying that if any don't work he will show us how to bud - using the same rootstock.
For our orchard it was important to learn how to do this. Buying local heritage trees is expensive, and often they are not available. The idea is that a group of us will be able to continue to practice this skill, pass it on to others and make more trees for the orchard and to sell during our events, raising money to develop the allotment site.
We grafted: Allington Pippen, Ashmeads Kernel, Bee Bench, Bossom, Burr Knot, Crispin, D'Arcy Spice, Downton Pippin, Eccleston Pippen, Lemon Pippin, Laxton's Superb, Lord Derby, Lord Lambourne. Lord Suffield, Minshull Crab, Queen Cox, Stripped Beefing, Tydeman's Early Worcester, Withington Welter and Yorkshire Cockpit. All of these are apples which we grafted on to MM106 rootstock.
We also grafted some unknown apple and unknown plums, damsons and greengages varieties growing on our site. Later in the year we will host an apple identification workshop, where some of these varieties can be identified.
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