Planting our Orchard

Our orchard has trees! 52 people met in a field at Hunting Hall farm yesterday to plant Lowick Community Orchard. It was a tremendous effort! Local people, from the ages of 2 to 80, worked tremendously hard through April showers to plant 82 heritage fruit trees. Each tree had been sponsored by a member of the public, and there were some wonderful old varieties included; an Isaac Newton apple tree, which is said to be propagated from the tree in Isaac Newton’s garden under which 'the notion of gravity came into his mind occasion'd by the fall of an apple,'; Hunt House, a fruit that was enjoyed by Captain Cook’s men to prevent scurvy; Bloody Ploughman, an old apple associated with the story of a poor ploughman who came to a sticky end, and many more fruit varieties. A huge thank you to everyone who helped make this day so successful; your support was wonderful!


A full set of photographs of the day's events may be found on the Hunting Hall Facebook page.

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!

Paths, parking... and a bit of a muddy mess...

Work has begun on the orchard footpaths and car parking.

On the 10^th of February a digger began making the hard standing area for cars. Eventually there will be a new access from the road into the car park– but we must wait for planning permission to be approved before this can be tackled.

Once some of the hard standing was in place, Graham Cross brought his mini digger to create the orchard paths. With help from Tom on the tractor leading sub base, Graham dug out and filled most of the footpaths that will eventually wind between heritage fruit trees. Unfortunately, at the moment, these paths are island walkways through a very muddy field. The heavy machinery was making the area into a quagmire, therefore we have had to abandon the unfinished job until the ground dries up.

Last week Tom sent several cuttings of the Doddington Apple tree to a nursery where they will be grafted on to MM111 rootstock. This autumn 6 young Doddington Apple trees will be returned, ready for planting. We’ve 76 heritage fruit trees ordered from R. V. Roger Ltd. – therefore, altogether, we have over 80 trees for our orchard. Thank you to everyone who has helped us achieve this goal! As several slightly smaller trees have been chosen for the orchard, we will still be able to accommodate a few more. Please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to sponsor a tree this spring; contact details can be found on the website www.lowickcommunityorchard.org

We hope to invite everyone to join us to plant their sponsored trees in the orchard next month (probably the 19th and 20th of March). We're not going to finalize the date until we see how the ground dries - but please watch this space for further news!

A friend kindly gave us some snowdrop bulbs last year. It’s great to see them peeping through the rough, muddy orchard ground – a promise of things to come!

We have a fence!

On the 29th of January, in a quagmire of gooey mud, a fence of 190m was built along the side of the orchard. Only the cost of materials was covered by a grant, therefore Andrew Tumilty made an exceedingly kind offer to help, travelling from Merseyside at 4.30a.m. with our son, Tommy, and our daughter, Meg. He also brought some equipment to make the job a bit easier.
The big strainers went in first. Andrew’s Mechanical post hole borer proved a great labour saving device (I think Tom is going to ask for one for his birthday!).

It’s easier with two! Digging the hole for the uprights (Tommy is supervising)

It's Andrew's turn to watch! "Nod your head when it's straight Tommy... and I'll hit it"
Breakfast fuel stop; tea and bacon sandwiches created by Meg!

Now all Tom needs to do is staple the netting in place and then we’ll be ready to plant the hedge which is to run alongside. Unfortunately, the digger still hasn’t been able to start work on the parking area; it has been stuck up to its engine in a Belford boggy hole for the past week and is rather poorly! Hopefully the Lloyds tractor man will administer first aid and we’ll have it on site next week.

Andrew worked tremendously hard, assisted by Tommy and, on occasion, Meg. We are exceedingly grateful for all their efforts. Labouring in heavy mud and bitter cold, the three went on long after they should have stopped in an attempt to get the fence up before they left. Thank you for all your help Andrew, Meg and Tommy!