Tree project Anniversary

This wekend sees the 15th anniversary of a project began by two of us for the promotion of traditional British trees and orchards varieties of fruits which were being decimated to extinction by professional growers for profits.

This worked as a friend owned many acres of farmland and part of that was three woods, one with significant historical importance and when we researched them they were originally orchards or had traditional orchards along side them which grew many traditional apple varieties, pear varieties, damsons, cherries and plums and our goal was to reinstate some of them and save some of the traditional varieties of fruit.

This worked simply as I mixed some home made compost and put this into a small bucket with a lid on, I also carried a plastic tupe rolled up and a small plastic welder and I simply cut a length of tube off and welded across one end and took a cutting and dipped it in hormone rooting powder and put it into the compost in the tube and added water and put an elastic band over it and stood it in the back of the car until we could take it to our growing station where it was left until it was sufficiently large for planting out.

How did we prepare them? a stem of new growth was taken from the top of the tree around 24" long and once on the ground the lower 12" was stripped of its leaves by cutting the stalk halfway between the leaf and stem and stripping the bottom 1" of bark and splitting this out into a fibrous ball before dipping it into hormone rooting powder and putting it into potting mixture of compost inside the plastic tube.

Once home they went to my mates and he stood them in a light but frost free barn with gentle heat for their first year through the winter and after that they were allowed to stand in the barn for the next 2 years and then outside to harden them off until they were planted.

Originally they were planted in the existing woods to fill spaces left by rotten trees collapsing, trees felled by the wind and other weather conditions, once planted they became established and grew well and filled these spaces and the earliest trees now spawn fruit, not a lot, but fruit never the less and the yields will improve as the trees mature. On two of the woods the orchards were originally alongside the woods according to historical maps, drawings and data and over the years these have been reinstated and there are now two full orchards filled with apples, pears, cherries, damsons and plums and all clasical British varieties.
Unfortunately my mate died in 2022 in a freak accident and his wife and son have carried on this project as a legacy to him and to help promote British fruit and traditional varieties.

Excellent work Assassin, thank you on behalf of the ultimately many, many beneficiaries!