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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 4 August 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall. If the weather seems suitable (unlikely to rain!), attendees will walk to the Orchard. Otherwise, the meeting will stay in the Library Lecture Room.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 7 July 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall. If the weather seems suitable (unlikely to rain!), attendees will walk to the Orchard. Otherwise, the meeting will stay in the Library Lecture Room.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 12 May 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall.  Please note that the AGM will be held before the regular meeting. The regular meeting will include drinks and nibbles and discussion of the possibilities for additional planting sites around town.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 7 April 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 3 February 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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On Saturday 16 January 2011, Carol (one of the NMCO site editors) attended an apple tree pruning workshop organised by Abundance Manchester at Kenworthy Orchard in Chorlton. All the pictures in this post were was taken at Kenworthy during the workshop.

Kenworthy is an older orchard than NMCO; most of our trees were planted in the past five years. Kenworthy was planted in 1997, as part of the Co-operative Bank’s 125th anniversary celebration. Unfortunately, there were inadequate provisions made for maintaining the orchard, and it fell into disuse.

Abundance Manchester hopes to interest people in caring for Kenworthy Orchard and has set up a series of workshops in hopes of developing the skills of those interested in the project.

Saturday’s workshop was led by Rod Everett, a permaculture instructor, from the Middlewood Ecological Trust. Rod demonstrated how to renovate neglected apple trees, emphasising identification and treatment of damaged and diseased trees.

It’s important to open the centre of trees to allow light to penetrate and for air to circulate through the middle of the tree. This means that quite radical pruning was required, as you can see in the accompanying photos.

Unfortunately, some of the Kenworthy trees have canker and extensive rabbit damage, as noted in an assessment Rod did for the group last year. The trees have been weaken by the amount of bark removed by rabbits. You can see the new tree guards that are being installed around the tree trunks in some of the photos.

Trees that had been radically  pruned last year look much healthier now. It is a bit scary to prune in this way, but the benefits are obvious a year later. The orchard site is interesting in part because it is flatter and more enclosed than the NMCO. There are plans to transform some of the scrubby growth on one side of the site into a hedge in hopes of allowing more air to move through the orchard. At one point, Rod said he thought an open, windy site was better than an enclosed one — we certainly have that in New Mills!

Abundance Manchester is sponsoring additional workshops on hedgelaying and soft fruit care in February and March 2011. These workshops are open to the public — the one I attended had participants from the local area who knew the orchard, as well those from as far away as Todmorden (and New Mills!)

Thank you to Rod Everett and Abundance Manchester for a splendid day working on the trees. Despite strong winds, rain, and generally miserable weather, I had a great time, as did the other participants.

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The next meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard will be on Thursday 6th January 2011 at 7.30pm at the Library Lecture Room in the New Mills Town Hall.

Here’s a map if you’re not sure how to find the meeting. The entrance to the Library Lecture Room is to the right of the entrance to the library itself, not the main entrance to the Town Hall.

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Tonight’s meeting of the Friends of the New Mills Community Orchard has been cancelled due to the poor weather.

The next meeting will be on Thursday 6th January 2011 @ 7.30 pm in the Library Lecture Room at the Town Hall.

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Back in July and August, Catherine Barber and a small group of dedicated helpers surveryed the orchard’s invertebrate life. Catherine’s now provided us with her survey report (PDF).

Catherine’s work helps us fulfil the part of our Management Plan (PDF) that requires us to find out how many varieties of living things inhabit the orchard.

There will four more invertebrate surveys in 2011 (May June July and August).

Our thanks to Catherine and all the little bugs that participated.

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