An embarrassment of riches …

We are now into the last week of our six month stay and as you can imagine we are trying to finish up a host of projects and ensure we leave the property in the best possible position to withstand the remaining part of the dry season. The next few days are going to be hectic and charged with emotion.There are lists of things to do and then revised lists with items above the line (essential) and below the line (desired). Slowly but surely items are being ticked off - such as ensuring that number 24 is prominently displayed on Cracroft St at the entrance to the farm. 

A major (above the line) item on our consolidated list was the preparation of the site for our domestic orchard. I am happy to report that it is now fully prepared and all that remains is to wait for late winter to plant bare-rooted fruit trees. The trees have to be ordered by April and are delivered in July for planting in July/August. It took a fair amount of planning and manual labour to get the site to this stage. After much thought we chose a gentle slope with a north-easterly aspect. This choice maximises the sunshine but also offers some protection from the fierce south-westerly winds that blow here for much of the spring and early summer. Having chosen the position we then debated the layout. We wanted the orchard to feel quite spacious so we eventually settled on a square grid of 16 trees situated 4 metres apart. The plan is to start with 10 apple trees, 3 pear trees and 3 plum trees and there is space to expand if we want to increase the variety of fruit which we grow. 

So much for the planning, but what of the manual labour? Well the slope we chose is absolutely perfect in terms of location, but suffers from an abundance of rocks. Indeed much of Cracroft Farm is on a rocky ridge (hence the rock retaining walls that have received numerous mentions in these posts) and digging holes on a square grid would be impossible. We decided instead to construct 16 boxes and mound up organic matter for planting so that no digging is required. Those of you that have had the fortitude to read the blog will recall from a very early post (“Lugging logs …”, 12 August 2020) that we inherited a very large number of pine veneer logs. To build the boxes for the trees, we hatched the plan of drilling a couple of holes in the logs and then stacking 3 logs on top of each other with a metal pin slipped through the holes and fixed into the ground – we had in mind steel reinforcing rods but settled on 300mm tent pegs instead. To give you an idea of the quantities, the boxing used up 192 logs, required 384 drilled holes and needed 128 tent pegs! Construction was only the first part of the job. Once the boxes were in place the organic matter required to fill them amounted to 80 bags of horse manure, 16 bags of mushroom compost and 32 carts of wattle chip mulch.

Looking down the orchard towards the Huon River

We are now thinking about the varieties of apples, pears and plums to plant. In making the choice we want to be guided by two key principles. First, we don’t want to grow common varieties that are found in most supermarkets. Instead, we want to try and grow heritage varieties that have interesting stories. Second, we want to spread the ripening dates of the fruit to span the whole season from late January to early July (although plums and pears tend to have a shorter season). As well as staging the availability of fruit, tasting the differences as the summer progresses will provide added intellectual pleasure.

 

Once we started to research this aspect of the planting we were astonished by how may varietals are out there, a definite embarrass de richesse. Moreover, we discovered that it is not only the variety that needs to be chosen but also the rootstock. It transpires that dwarfing and semi-dwarfing rootstocks are quite popular as they facilitate picking the fruit.  At the moment we are favouring semi-dwarf rootstock for apples, dwarf rootstock for pears (the semi-dwarf option doesn’t seem to be available)  and traditional rootstock for plums. Specifically, our tentative choices are as follows: 

 

Apples (semi-dwarf rootstock)

Gravenstein (Jan – Feb)

Lord Lambourne (March – April)

Bramley (March – April)

Geeveston Fanny (March – April)

Court Pendu Plat (May – June)

Freyberg (May – June)

Mutsu (May – June)

Jonagold (May – June) 

Calville Blanc d’Hiver (May – June) 

Sturmer (June – July)

 

Pears (dwarf rootstock)

Durondeau (Feb – March)

Buerre Superfin (March)  

Doyenne du Commice (April)  

 

Plums (non-dwarf rootstock)

Angelina (Feb)  

Coe’s Golden Drop  (Feb – March)

President (March)  

 

If you are interested in giving us some advice, please check out

 https://www.woodbridgefruittrees.com.au/25-fruit-trees

It is worth a visit just to see the incredible variety available and understand the paucity of choice on offer at large supermarkets! Of course we would also be delighted to hear your views on our selections and also to get your suggestions, so please feel free to leave a comment …