We have to prune our apple trees twice a year to maintain the health of the trees and encourage crops and growth. This time we were under the expert eye of one of our members, who lead a masterclass in pruning techniques for our other members. Despite the hard efforts there is still plenty of pruning left to do if you want to help at our next work session.
Everyone wrapped up warm and arrived with chairs, blankets and warm drinks to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Windbreaks, a fire pit and some mulled cider helped ward off the chilly night!
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A five star bug hotel is now open for use by all our creepy crawly inhabitants in the orchard. The Junior Wildlife Group spent the day creating an amazing bug hotel. A big thank you to everyone who took part.
Our community orchard is part of a growing movement across the country. You can find out more in this article from the BBC website.
If you would like to become a member of the Lanchester Community Orchard, please get in touch via our ‘contact’ page. New members are always warmly welcomed!
This year we have had a bumper apple crop. With so many apples to pick from our productive trees we needed lots of members to help! We spent a busy day harvesting the apples. Some were packed for members to collect to eat and some were turned into delicious apple juice. We now have a new apple press which came in very handy.
Once again we have been celebrating Mid Summer in the Orchard with our members, families and friends. We all had a lovely evening and shared some amazing food and drinks. The children enjoyed roasting marshmallows on the fire!
To increase the diversity of wildlife in our forest garden area we have created a pond. With the creative use of an old wheelbarrow, we hope to encourage lots of aquatic visitors to our orchard!
It has been three years since we celebrated Earth Hour together in the orchard. Earth Hour is an international movement originating in Australia in 2007 in collaboration with the World Wide Fund for Nature. Every year at the end of March, people are encouraged to turn off their lights between 8.30 and 9.30 pm to highlight the impact that climate change is having on the world.
This year members of the orchard and allotments turned off their lights and headed up to the orchard with coffee and cakes to share. It was a beautiful clear night and Simon Johnson, an orchard member, lead a tour of the night skies. Every time we celebrate Earth Hour in the orchard we see a shooting star. This year we spotted a spectacular meteor blaze across the sky leaving a bright trail behind it. Well done to the Martin family for spotting it!
Now that Spring is approaching there is still lots of work and maintenance to be done. Chris Davis led our session. First he pointed out that some of our apple trees have a disease called canker. This is very damaging to our apple trees and can easily spread. Chris pointed out examples and explained how to deal with it. This involves cutting away the affected parts of the tree. If any members visiting the orchard see canker on the trees, please let Chris know.
Chris also lead a quick demonstration on pruning before the orchard members began pruning our apple trees.
And finally… our soft fruit bed received a well needed prune.
Lanchester Community Orchard 