Regular evening work sessions resume

The evenings are light enough for the regular evening work sessions to resume. We've changed the date from a Monday to Thursday, so hope to see some people who weren't able to make Mondays.

During the first session last Thursday Debbie and Lorna were busy tying in the raspberry canes, tidying up the grape vines and thornless blackberry plants that climb up the pergola. We also weeded amongst the trees grafted in March and put some bamboo canes and string around the nursery bed to alert people to the tiny trees.  The majority of the trees grafted have taken, so next May we will be able to sell these to raise some money for Orchard maintenance.

One of the grafted trees

These sessions run from 6.30 - 8 pm.  Do come and lend a hand, even if  you only have half an hour to spare.  Aside from anything else, given how healthy the raspberry canes look, we're going to need plenty of people to pick and eat the fruit so none is wasted.

Some other orchard images to entice you down to lend a hand....

Baby pears

The fruit arch - the trees are growing well

Pergola and bench

Sunny volunteering day, April 2015

On Thursday 23rd April Orchard 49 hosted 10 volunteers from Vodafone.  We'd been approached by Sharon Browne at Community Service Volunteers last year about having a group come and lend a hand on the orchard, and we were lucky that on the day the sun shone!

The volunteers worked really hard - from 10 am til 3.30 pm with a little break for lunch. Having so many people on the Orchard for a whole day makes such a difference at this time of the year. We will be starting our regular Monday evening sessions very soon, and this year we won't feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work, because the Vodafone crew did so much!

Team back row left to right: Matt, Amelia, Lee, Cliff, Carl, Simon, Kevin. Front row: Chris, Dan, Emma

 (photo Debbie)

In the course of the day the shed was re-felted. The felt had come off in one of the winter gales and a team tackled sorting that out before lunch.

Shed re-roofing in progress, Lee and Dan busy at work (photo Chris)

 Another team studiously weeded and mulched all the trees along the path fenceline.

The weeded and mulched fence line trees (photo Debbie)

Amelia (left) and Emma super weeders!  (Photo Debbie)

Bees will be arriving on the Orchard soon, and another task was to prepare the apiary area - which involved digging quite a large area of ground and levelling it. Because it has been so dry the ground (clay) was baked hard, so this was quite a task.

The heavy digging team at work: Pete, Cliff, Lee, Simon and Kevin (photo Chris).

 A donated shed was also re-located - it will be used to store the beekeeping equipment.

Matt and Chris working with Rob re-locating a shed for apiary equipment.

We also weeded and mulched the raspberries and the gooseberries and gave all the trees a welcome water. We use land drainage pipe, put in place when the trees are planted, so that we can be sure that the water is reaching the roots.  As the trees were coming into blossom, this was another really important job.

Finally, some of the crew made some bee boxes, which will be sold to raise funds for the Orchard at one of OTAGS' events.

Emma, Carl and Lee making bee boxes (photo Debbie)

Carl working with Pete on bee boxes (photo Chris).

Completed bee boxes (photo Chris).

It was a lovely time to be on the orchard, as many of the trees were starting to blossom. Here are some images taken on the day.

Apple blossom

Cherries - Stella and Morello

Pear - inherited possibly conference

Grandpa Buxton

One of the pears we grafted in 2012.

A big thank you to everyone for working so hard. Thanks also to Sharon at CSV for putting Orchard49 in touch with the group.

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

Grafting workshop 7th March 2015

This Saturday we will be holding another grafting session in the pavillion at Seymour Grove allotments.  This will be the third grating session we've run and this time, we're hoping to nuture some of the grafted trees and sell them at future plant sales to help with maintaining the orchard.

It doesn't take a lot of money to do this, but by regualrly mulching the trees with compost and/or manure they stay healthy and the organic matter costs! We sometimes need to buy replacement tools, if the ones we have get broken, or identify something new we need.  The roofing felt on the shed has perished, so this needs replacing... that is the kind of thing we will use the money for.

We will post some pics later...

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