Numbers one to ninety seven...

Tom's carefully made numbers and the planting plan

Tom and John have numbered the tree stakes in the orchard. The numbering system should help us find each fruit variety in years to come; we've grouped the different types of fruit and the taller and shorter trees. Making sure we had enough posts in each section at the correct spacing has been a challenge!

 

The team!

Community Orchard Management Course; Tom and the secateurs!

Tom and I have just returned from a great training day in Edinburgh run by the Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust. A group of enthusiastic representatives from several community groups met to find out more about orchards. 

We spent quite a time pruning two apple trees, as discussing the merits of each cut with 25 people makes a slow job. I don’t think a commercial grower would get very far if he had a supervising committee watching his efforts. Tom proved overly enthusiastic to lop bits off and eventually had the clippers confiscated! When we get to the stage of pruning our orchard – watch out for Tom and his secateurs... we may not have any trees left!

We also planted 4 apple trees – to make sure we knew how to do it. Tom redeemed himself with his farmer’s digging skills : )

Many thanks to John Hancox of Scottish Orchards for his help and advice!

The Hedge

On the 22^nd March we began planting the orchard hedge. The soil is really hard next to the car parking area – so I hope the plants grow! It’s a mixed hedge – full of fruiting shrubs; wild cherry, wild plum, blackthorn, hazel, blackberry etc.

We’ve planted about a 20^th of the hedge so far and it’s going to take a long time to finish. If anyone has a spare evening and would like to help – we’d be delighted : ) Just let us know!

Planting Delayed :(

Tom mapping tree stakes

Unfortunately, due to a lot of rain and very heavy, squelchy ground, we have had to cancel our tree planting afternoons of the 19^th, 20^th and 24^th of March.


The nursery have kindly agreed to keep our trees until planting conditions improve. A new date for the orchard planting event will be organised once everything has dried out a bit.

We've staked all the tree positions. This has been very complicated as we had to allow for differing tree sizes and fruit varieties. We kept changing our minds and probably took out more stakes than we put in! In this photo Tom is mapping the positions of the trees. He's going to number every stake - so we can find each variety once it's been planted.

Please contact us at Hunting Hall if you would like to help us plant our Community Orchard - your support will be really appreciated!