Sunny Saturday Grafting Session

On Saturday 7th March we hosted a grafting workshop. Its the third one that we've organised and we were very pleased to welcome some new faces to learn this skill. Tom Adams ran the session beginning by explaining how grafting works. After that everyone had a chance to practise using willow and then apple wood before taking the plunge and making new trees with the rootstock that Tom had brought for us.

By the end of the day the group 37 trees had been created and 21 of these were planted in a nursery bed on Orchard49. Those that are successful will be sold to raise funds for upkeep of the Orchard. Everyone who participated could also take a tree (or two!) away with them.

We also grafted 2 new varieties for the orchard with cuttings (called scions) Tom brought along. Those two varieties are Pitmaston Pineapple and Golden Noble. We will post more about how the trees are doing later in the year.  Here are some photos of the day.

Firstly we have a table of cuttings - these get grafted (joined) to rootstock and bound together to make a tree using a whip and tongue graft.

The next photos show the process to create a new tree.

Beginning the process - exposing the cambium layer

Making a cut into the wood

Each side of the graft with whip and tongue cut in to allow the pieces to join together

Two pieces joined and bound to protect the graft.

The next series of pictures show the participants hard at work.

From the left: Tom, Georgina, Lorna, Laura, Anuraag, Nikki, Suzy, Alan

From the left: Tom, Georgina and Rupa

From the left: Alan and Robert (Tom, Georgina and Rupa)

Finally the first two trees waiting to go to Orchard49.

Many thanks to Unicorn Grocery for funding the session, it wouldn't have been possible without you. Thanks also to Tom for sharing his skills and to everyone who worked so hard to make new trees on the day. And those trees you took away with you, hope they live many a long year.

Tom can be reached on:  01691 777512 or 07776 498936
Email: tomtheappleman@yahoo.co.uk

Trees planted March 4th 2012!

Despite the weather we planted more trees at the community orchard today.  It stopped raining long enough for us to press on with the work.

Big thanks to everyone who helped: Lorna, Claire, Pete, Richard and Debbie.

We planted:

Apple Acklam Russet
Apple Balsam
Apple Golden Spire
Apple Hunt's House
Apple Merlin's apple
Apple New Bess Pool
Apple Newton Wonder
Apple Rosemary Russet
Apple Sisson's Worksop Newton

Pear Beth
Pear Onward

Cherry Stella
Cherry Morello

Quince Portugal

These were all purchased with the grant from Local Food which is part of the Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme to help communities enjoy and improve their local environments.

Some of the apple and pear trees were planted beside arches and will be trained to grow up and over the arches. The idea for this came from the Garden Organic orchard at Ryton Gardens.  It will take many years for them to reach this size, but the picture shows what we have in mind.

Apple Arch at Garden Organic's orchard

An added bonus today was a surprise visit from Peter Nichol from the Northern Fruit Group. Peter came to drop off some scions for our grafting workshop next weekend, but we asked him to help us prune the trees,  many thanks!