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We built the large orchard in
two stages. Initially it measured 21m x 9m but we extended it by another
two rows in April 2007. It is our main area for fruit production. The
orchard is facing South but receives very good sun from September to
April. The ground falls about two and a half metres across the 14m width
of the orchard. The rows of raised beds are built along the contour lines.
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Left: December 2007. The final size of the orchard
is now 21m x 14m. We planted fruit trees (in 2006 and 2007), nuts and
berries.
Right: December 2008. The orchard is now fully
netted. The trees are well established. Lavender attracts bees. Herbs and
edible flowers are planted as ground cover. They keep the soil moist in
summer. The chook shed in the background provides shelter for the Faverolles
chickens who free range in the orchard from June to November. They loosen
the soil and get rid of pests such as coddling moth grubs.
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Design of the orchard beds:
we used hardwood off-cuts from the local timber mill to build
the raised beds. The boards are only 12mm thick and won't last longer than a
few years, but once the trees are established and the beds have settled, we
will hopefully end up with gentle raised mounds that don't require any
timber any more. All we hope to achieve, is to keep the trees a bit above
the natural ground level, so that the roots stay drier in Tasmania's wet
winters. The beds are built up with horse manure, mulch and topsoil. When we planted the first section of the orchard, we
did not add any fertilizer to the holes. We read so many different opinions
about the best way to prepare a hole for planting, that we added a handful
of lime to each hole, when we planted the 18 trees a year later. It didn't
really seem to make any difference. |
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Fencing is a big issue in our part of the world. We don't
live alone on our property. The woods behind the house are ideal hideouts
for possums and wallabies. In the evening ten or more wallabies come down
to our paddocks to graze. While they eat a lot of our grass, they aren't a
big problem for the garden. A normal chicken wire fence will easily keep
them away from the plantings. The possums are a very different matter.
They love to climb fences and trees and can jump a couple of metres from
one tree to the next. The photo on the left shows the kind of fence we put
up around all our gardens and orchards. It is made from 1800mm wide
chicken wire. The top 600mm are folded outwards and left as floppy as
possible. The bottom 600mm are also folded outwards and pegged to the
ground. Possums don't like to climb up wobbly fences, we were told, and it
seems to be true. One strand of electric wire gives the orchard extra
protection. So far the fences have worked. But we also don't encourage the
possums to come to the house or garden. We don't feed them and we don't
leave any food scraps outside.
Netting: Birds are another problem. Once the fruit trees were old
enough to produce we covered the whole orchard in structural bird netting
with 15mm openings. Bees are able to get through the netting and we do not
need to open the nets to give them access.
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The small orchard now contains four twenty metre long raised beds,
enough room for 32 fruit trees. It's also facing
South and has the same exposure to sunlight as the large orchard. We
planted the first ten trees in July 2007. In July 2008 we also planted red currants and
black currants in the small orchard. |
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| June 2007: terraces for the
first ten apple trees |
October 2007: the young trees |
May 2009: the small orchard in
its final size with full bird netting and an attached chicken run.
The trees planted almost two years ago are now well established |
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August 2008: we built a dedicated berry orchard because we had lost too
many berries to the birds! We transplanted the blueberries from the
kitchen garden into the new berry orchard. We used runners from the
existing rasperry Williamettes in the large orchard for the new row. The
plants in the two new rows of strawberries came also from established
beds. The other raspberries, the youngberries and the boysenberries are
new plants. We used 100mm treated pine poles for the framework. All poles
are painted so that no chemicals can leach. They are set in concrete and
can't leach at their bases either. The birdmesh is commercial netting,
15mm hex openings. We could buy it in a 15m width and could use a single
piece for the whole project. Because of the many possums in our area we
decided to use our standard "wobbely chicken wire" fence
additionally. Possums don't like wobbely fences and we hope they won't try
to climb them. It worked very well so far! But we don't use an electric
wire around the berry orchard.
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