Roots to Fruit on BBC1's Inside Out

On Monday Inside Out featured a fascinating piece on London's orchards and our orchard made a brief appearance!

You can watch it on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01nr50q/Inside_Out_London_05_11_2012/

Apples galore!

Today was the London Apple Festival at Camley Street Natural Park and what a fun-filled apple-fest it was, with apple bobbing, apple tasting, apple pressing, apple peeling and much else apple-related! 

Just a few of the (over 100) apple varieties available to taste:

A very noisy machine pulps the apples.  The pulp is then pressed to make the most delicious apple juice I have ever tasted.

With just a little help my talented five-year-old won a competition to see who could produce the longest single peeling - using an ingenious machine that peels and cores the apple whilst simultaneously carving the flesh into a yummy apple spiral.  His peeling was 139 inches long - more that 3 times his own height!

Some of the longer peelings on display:

The peeling machine in action:

Your chance to name a new apple variety

This autumn the London Orchard Project are launching a new variety of apple, specially developed for London.

What's more they're going to be planting 100 of the new trees in orchards in public spaces, parks and schools across London - including one in our orchard on the Jack Dunning Estate!

Working closely Trees for Life the new variety was carefully nurtured from a single seed and has taken ten years to develop.  It looks like this:

Feeling inspired?  Can you think of a name for this new London apple variety?  Tweet your suggestions to @LondonOrchard and then follow them on Twitter, for the announcement of the winning name.

Not on Twitter? You can email your suggestion to orchard@thelondonorchardproject.org – a chance to make your mark on Britain’s apple history!

Meadow and wildflowers coming soon...

Wild flowers are rapidly disappearing from cities - and that means bees, butterflies and other pollinators are suffering. But just imagine if, instead of grass, wildflowers and meadows were planted in all those redundant green spaces we see everywhere around us.  Step up River of Flowers, an exciting project that's right up our street. 

River of Flowers is a not-for-profit company that supports the creation of wildflower meadows.  They are trying to create a real river of (wild)flowers in our capital.  And guess what?  They want to help us create our own wildflower oasis on the Jack Dunning Estate beneath our orchard trees.

Watch this space for more news...

Picture from here

Goodbye Hannah, goodbye Anna ... welcome Wendy!

The trees in our orchard rely on the hard work of a small band of carers for their very survival - with a little help from Mother Nature!  For the past seven months dedicated tree-huggers have tended and watered them.  Huge thanks and a round of applause to: Liz, Karl, Alix, Rosa, Luis, Tim, Anna, Hannah, Glyn and Nicky. We can hold off on the watering until Spring now whilst the trees sleep over the winter.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/princesstheater/3530252342/

In the last few weeks two tree-huggers have moved away.  

Without Hannah there would be no orchard on our estate - she approached the London Orchard Project back in 2011 and badgered Hackney Homes, managing to get us a grant of £1,000. 

Anna watered "her" pear tree on Halidon Close diligently and was an enthusiastic member of the team.  I hope they go on to find other projects and will spread the word about urban food-growing.

Now we welcome Wendy to our merry band.  She will be tending two new(ish) pear trees on Dean Close.  I've just discovered that she is a qualified agriculturalist - a great addition to the crew!

More tree-huggers needed!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ayol/6198545366/sizes/l/in/photostream/

If you'd like to get in touch please contact me!

Pruning ... and fruit?

In mid-August Lewis and Amber from The London Orchard Project made a follow-up visit to the Roots to Fruit mini-orchard to inspect our trees, see how we were doing and show us how to prune the plum trees for the first time.  Tree-hugger Nicky came along, keen to expand his tree knowledge and we were both interviewed for a short film about the LOP.  I'll share the link when/if it gets onto their website.

Guess what we spotted whilst pruning...... plums!  Four ripe plums on the Blue Tit - a beautiful dark blue (just like the one in the photo) and a couple of unripe ones on the Victoria.  Quite unexpected as our trees are young and we were not expecting to see any fruit on any of them for a year or so. 

Jolly delicious they were too - a taste of many future harvests to come.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brankomaster/3788465557/sizes/n/in/photostream/

Mulch, mulch, glorious mulch...

Doesn't look very exciting, does it? But, do read on, our trees have finally been mulched!

What is mulch?
Mulch is a glorious substance!  Put simply, it is a layer of organic material spread around the tree to retain moisture in the soil, suppress weeds, and keep the soil cool.  Over time the mulch breaks down and provides nutrients for the tree. 


Once we had planted our beautiful trees the next step was to be watering and mulch.  The watering was the easy bit; at least the mechanics of it was easy.  In reality, it meant carrying large watering cans and other receptacles full of water over to the trees at least twice a week.  Thanks to our tree-huggers (trumpet role!) Anna, Hannah, Nicky, Liz, Tim, Glyn, Alix, Luis and Rosa (with assistance from Jim, George, Thomas & Joe) the trees are thriving.

Mulch proved more difficult.  Hackney Homes kept promising to deliver a load of mulch and then let us down more than once.  Luckily, the heavy rain this summer meant that the mulch was less of an issue than it would be in a very hot summer.  After much prompting from Lewis, our tree guru, we finally got our act together and purchased some Strulch from Crocus.  Strulch is made from organic wheat straw and is used by the RHS and the Eden Project - no other recommendation needed!

On a beautiful morning in August some of our wonderful tree-huggers got together and spread the mulch around all the trees.  Result: trees as happy as hippos wallowing....