Steyning Community Orchard News: May 2018

You should be reading this in early May in warm dry sunshine, let’s hope so. We deserve it after such a cold, wet and dismal Winter and early Spring.

On the bright side, at least the blossom wasn’t fooled into coming out too early this year as has happened in many recent years. This can result in the flowers not being pollinated properly, or worse, being hit by a frost that kills the flowers. Both these can result in a crop failure.

So how has the Community Orchard fared? We usually plant new trees in February whilst they are still in their winter dormancy. This year we had frost, snow and waterlogged soil in February, so our planting sessions were frequently disrupted. But by mid March everything was in the ground and should be showing new growth by now.
Since the Community Orchard was formed in 2014 we have planted 40 fruit trees in our 3 public Orchards, and a further 32 in various private gardens and orchards in Steyning. Many of these should now be in full blossom. So if you are walking through the Memorial Playing Field (Cricket field) this month, do take a look at the blossom in the Orchard.


Community Orchard on the Memorial Playing Field.

The family of Robin French helped to plant a tree in his memory in the Community Orchard recently. It was a Manningtons Pearmain, our 12th Sussex heritage apple variety.

Downland Orchard on the Steyning Downland Scheme:

5 apple trees were planted here, adding to the 3 planted last year. So it is now officially an ‘Orchard’!   The 5 varieties were Scrumptious, Blenheim Orange, Egremont Russet, Alfriston and Tydeman’s Early Worcester.
The varieties have been carefully chosen to provide blossom and fruit over a long period, also to be useful for all the family to eat and bake for pies and crumbles!
Scrumptious.  Red juicy apple. Honey flavour.
Tydeman’s.   Red juicy apple. Strawberry flavour.
Blenheim.  Dual eater and cooker. Nutty flavour
Egremont.  Sussex variety. Best of the Russets
Alfriston.  Sussex variety. Good cooking apple

Bramber Community Orchard:
The first trees were planted in this new orchard on Bramber Brooks.
3 were Sussex variety apples: First and Last, Alfriston and Egremont Russet.
3 were cider apples: Dabinett, Kingston Black and Yarlington Mill, together with 2 other good eating apples: Allington Pippin and Cornish Aromatic.

An unexpected result of digging holes to plant trees is that you never know what you might find in the hole! We asked local archaeologist Justin Russell to be with us whilst working on the Downland Orchard on the Rifle Range, as he had found several interesting items there previously.  Sure enough we found 7 items in just an hour. Justin identified these as:

Top to bottom, left to right. Blue transfer style Victorian pottery, prehistoric worked flint flake, oyster shell (a common food in medieval times), black medieval pottery sherd, medieval pottery sherd, bone, glazed jar base.

Don’t forget to come and see us at the Opening Day of the Steyning Festival on Saturday May 26th.  We will be on Fletcher’s Croft green next to the Festival Marquee.
 
More information about us and our Orchards:

Email: steyningorchard@gmail.com
Facebook.com/steyningcommunityorchard
Twitter: @StCommOrchard
WebPage: steyningcommunityorchard.org