The First Orchard

When we arrived we brought with us many fruit trees which we’d refused to sell with our Sydney home.  Sadly we had to leave the wonderfully productive Packham Pear, prolific persimmon, grown from seed by our friend, Peter Schubert and of course, lemons, limes and olives.  All the smaller trees were potted up before the house was put on the market and made the trip to Wingham with us.

Despite being in pots, the Sherman Early Peach gave us a crop while we were living in town.

When we finally moved to Wherrol Flat, the trees had been potted up for almost 2 years so we needed to get them planted fast.  No time to slowly improve the soil, we needed to work fast.  We employed Craig Miggins from Wingham Hardware to come and dig us some swales.  Les mapped out the levels and Craig dug 3 swales, mounding up what he’d dug to form the bunds to allow better drainage

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then it rained

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It worked!

Then we had a working bee with a couple of local permies, Scott and Cal.  We heavily mulched added compost to each hole, watered well, mulched some more

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Annette Owen-Mulder

Annette Owen-Mulder

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