Great summer weather and the water tank.

Wow, we are having some glorious 2018 summer weather here in Derbyshire! It is sunny and 28 C most days. The downside for the orchard is there has been little rain and the soil is beginning to dry out. For the first time since the original planting, the fruit trees have a good crop of young fruit this year. To prevent the trees from suffering from drought stress we are watering them every 3 days. Hopefully this will prevent fruit drop from stress. Depending on the size of the tree we are delivering between 40 - 60 litres to the roots of each tree at each watering.  We are going to increase the amount of carpet laid around the roots to help water retention and to keep the weeds away.

The orchard does not have a mains water supply, but we do have a river at one end. The process has been to chuck in a bucket attached to a rope and haul out a bucket of water and tip it into a builder's trough. The volunteers doing the watering take water from the trough.

As the riparian land owner we are permitted to take up to 20 cubic metres (20,000 litres) of water every day without a licence, but we are only using a tiny fraction of that amount. Hauling water this way is hard work, so we've invested in a portable petrol powered water pump. 

This can pump up to 900 litres a minute, so we soon learned to run it at only the lowest throttle setting once the water flow has been established in the pipes. It now delivers water to a builder's trough in the centre of the orchard where we can distribute it to the trees.

We've also installed a 1000 litre water tank (IBC) which we'll keep topped up from the river and use that to water the trees when the pump is not available. 

We keep the pump off-site for obvious reasons. The water in the tank is chemically treated to prevent algae growth.

We are also keeping the section of new hedge watered to keep that growing. We have lost a few of the saplings but over all it is growing well. In a few years we can have it turned into a proper hedge to replace the wire stock fence.

There was a minor irritation on the orchard today. Yesterday when I visited, the cherry tree was laden with fruit, but it was not quite ready for picking. Today, I found almost all of the fruit has gone. I suspect we were raided by pigeons! 

Building a fruit tree cage

Last weekend I'd scheduled work to build a fruit tree cage for the cherry tree on the orchard. Last year we lost all of the fruit overnight to birds. I'd taken delivery of a length of suitable fish net material - 19mm holes constructed from braided polypropylene twine in the previous week.  However when I measured the size of the tree last weekend, my dreams of it being a quick job evaporated,  To enclose the tree I need a cage 10ft x 10ft x 11ft high (3M x 3M x 3.3M). Fortunately I had ordered sufficient netting in advance from Collins Nets.

I calculated the timber need to build the cage. I had a bit of a shock when I realised how much was required, allowing for off-cut wastage. It was time to go to the local timber yard to buy some pressure treated two by one battens. The supplier is a lot less expensive than the major DIY chains, but it is cash only and prices are not marked on the shelves.  Five metres is the minimum length they sell in this thickness of wood (25 x 50 mm). I needed ten lengths to build the cage, each length weighing about four Kg. Fortunately I had invested in a roof rack for my Audi A6 and the car body is long enough to legally carry five metre lengths.

I'm busy with my business and other project work at the moment, but managed to find the time in my basement workshop to build the components of the frame. The work was complicated by the long length of the component struts. I had to move some of the machines around to cater for the lengths. I've designed it so there are push fit joints with galvanised coach bolts to secure the joints. It will have to be assembled and "netted" on site. I want something reasonably robust so we can move the (40 Kg) cage for grass mowing and fruit picking, but capable of disassembly at the end of season for storage.

I was ready to go to the orchard this morning to set it up, but we woke to a poorly dog with diarrhoea, so I can't come out to "play".  The Gods conspire. Ah well, I'll do the work during the week.

Some new apple trees in Turnditch Orchard

We've just planted three new apple trees in the orchard. They are bare root trees. We've put them in the gaps between the existing fruit trees.

D'Arcy Spice -  This is a cooking apple.

Genet Moyle - A cider apple tree, it can also be used for cooking.

Tom Putt - A cider apple tree.

We have been a bit disappointed with the progress of the trees we planted a couple of years ago. The problem is probably the soil in the orchard. In places there's heavy clay soil on top of the floodplain alluvial soil. This arises from dumping on the site by previous owners, possibly with the waste from building sites.  So this time we've taken some extra care with these new trees. 

We bought some bags of top soil from an agricultural supplier. We added approximately 30% of well rotted farm manure and some bone meal into the top soil and then mixed it thoroughly. We dug holes large enough to comfortably accommodate the root of the new trees. In the base of the holes we added a 4 cm layer of sand and aggregate to improve drainage. We covered  the sand with a couple of cms of the soil manure mix. Next, we poured in water to the depth of approximately 5 cms deep. and let it soak away. On the side of the prevailing wind we drove in a treated 7cm tree stake to the base of the hole ready to help support the new trees.

Meanwhile we'd been pre-soaking the apple tree roots for about 30 minutes in a bucket of water. We lifted the tree into the hole and then coated the roots with Mycorrhizal fungi treatment powder. Next we lifted the tree into place in the hole, then we carefully added the soil mix around the roots to plant the tree. Once we had filled the hole we gently pressed down on the soil to firm it in place before added some water to soak the soil around the roots. A tree stake tie was used to secure the tree from wind damage, then finally we added a plastic spiral tree guard to prevent damage by rodents such as rabbits, rats, squirrels. We checked the other trees in the orchard to ensure they all had spiral plastic tree guards.

The Mycorrhizal fungi forms a symbiotic bond with the tree roots and helps the tree to absorb nutrients from the soil. The bone meal also provides nutrients which encourage root growth.

Grease Bands on the fruit trees

I was over at the Turnditch orchard this afternoon applying  Vitax fruit tree grease to the trunks of the fruit trees. The stuff is spread in a 100 cm band around the trunk at a height of approximately 40 cm. It helps to keep wingless parasites from climbing up the trunk to lay their eggs in the Winter. Notably the main such parasite is the Winter Moth, whose caterpillars can cause a lot of leaf damage in the Spring. In the summer the grease also keeps ants away from the trees. The ants "farm" aphids in the trees and protect them from predators such as Ladybirds. Once the ant pathways up the tree trunk are blocked the parasites such as aphids tend to disappear as the flying predators operate unhindered.

The grease is black and very sticky. It is made from Rapeseed Oil (canola).

Talking of parasites, I found the "missing" quince fruit in the orchard. It was laying in the grass about 30 metres from the quince tree.  A bite had been taken out from one side of the fruit, it looks like the bite of a juvenile human. An education for them perhaps?  Quince grown in this country are generally hard, very tart, and almost inedible until cooked.