Pruning and Grafting workshop

Thanks to Tim Foster we had a very productive day pruning and restoring our mature apple trees. They have been overgrown with thick ivy for year but they have been reinvigorated. The day was about learning and sharing new skills as well as doing some work on the site.

We are managing the rest of the overgrown trees by leaving them to nature. One large apple tree is wrapped in ivy with lots of dead wood in it. This leaves lots of places for bats to roost. The ivy provides lots of different species of birds, insects and bees a source of food from the flowers.

We had a very healthy lunch of seasonal salads, carrots and radishes. The poly tunnel is still very productive with even the lettuce producing well.

In the afternoon we got to work grafting a range of different varieties of apple scions to root stock. The aim is to build up a nursery  area to bring on fruit trees to support the project and other community groups.