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| Index- Wildflower Gardening Web Index |
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Wild
Orchard Gardens
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Wildlife in your orchard |
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Wildflower Ecotype Seed Mixture Code EC02 - Wild Flora & Forbes for Sapling Trees and Orchards
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Orchard Mix |
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| When
planting orchard trees, it
is best to suppress grasses from growing in the early years. |
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| DBN's
Orchard and Sapling mixture contains species that suppress grasses and attract wildlife.
All that is required is that you sow
it on clean ground and cut twice per year, remove the cuttings as a mulch
to the base of the young orchard tree to feed the tree, retain moisture
and suppress grass growth. |
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Tips: |
| Wildlife
orchards are by their nature very wild places. Instead of neat
ordered rows of fruit bushes the wildlife gardener chooses the nature
friendly route to achieve a fruit filled space. Be tidy but not
sterile.
The wild
orchard should be properly designed,
planted to attract beneficial wildlife
and sheltered.
Plant
many more trees and bushes than you think you will need to
allow for culling and providing an excess to feed the wildlife, and fill
it with ground cover plants and flowers. |
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Grow raspberries
especially wild raspberry under apple trees as they benefit each
other Walnuts should not be grown near other trees as they
tend to restrict the growth of other trees, if you are limited in space
plant mulberries between the Walnuts and other trees as mulberry can
withstand the chemical root secretions of Walnut.
Working
with and without Bullfinches. Bull finches eat buds and
can damage trees but also prune them, Plant fruit trees at least 20 feet
away from hedgerow and shrubbery or the bullfinches will disbud all your
apple and pear buds, but don't plant further than 60 feet out of the
finches will not visit the tree at all, causing work by us having to
disbud the over produced fruit. The finches use the cover of shrubs
to escape sparrow hawks and will not go to far out into an orchard. |
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| Fallen
fruit hosts disease and bugs, thrushes should be encouraged to
eat these over winter, create a grassy path down the centre of the orchard
to attract thrush. |
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| Hedgehogs
hibernate under brush (deadwood) heaps. Avoid burning these in
winter or check underneath for hedgehogs. Pruning are best chipped
and composted. |
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| Some
beneficial plant species to encourage in an orchard are mint,
borage, comfrey, yarrow, clover, dandelion, sage, rosemary, wild
strawberry, mosses and tansy |
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