Project Outline

SOUTH COAST ENVIRONMENT SOCIETY

OPEN ORCHARD PROJECT

Background: The first orchards were planted by our early settlers, possibly from the 1850’s. Captain Howell, the first settler in Southland, had orchards planted in each of his stations. There were hundreds of orchards around Southland by 1910. Some were acres in size. There were apples, pears, quince, apricots and berries. The Drummond Store was reported as not stocking fruit, at is was growing so plentifully in the area in the early 1900’s. Every corner of Southland has remnants of these orchards and some are still standing complete but near the end of their natural life. Our colonial ancestors brought the best from their homelands and these had origins sometimes centuries back from all over Europe. There were once thousands of varieties of apples available world wide, and as many as 600 varieties of gooseberries! Elderly Southlanders recall the fun of raiding local orchards when they were young and remember with pleasure tasting the varieties of the fruit found in them. This diversity has been greatly diminished throughout the world during the last century with changing land use, the advent of supermarkets and the ready availability of imported fruit. The few varieties of each fruit available now in the supermarket are a poor reflection of the potential, bred as they are for colour, storage ability and commercial scale management. These varieties do poorly in a home garden and most can’t be managed organically. Heritage varieties have been found to be better for you. One heritage apple a day keeps the doctor away! This old adage is not true for commercial apples, you need to eat more than just the one, to get the same amount of antioxidant and if they have been sprayed they’d not be healthy either! Heritage apple varieties grow healthily and fruitfully with little or no care in Southland.

Project Origins: When we, the Guyton’s, started our orchard in Riverton with commonly available, modern fruit trees, they did poorly. We were advised that fruit trees don’t grow well in Southland. However speaking to older people in our community, we found out that they certainly used to do well here and they suggested we should try heritage varieties. One of them, the local sawmiller had a 120 year- old orchard that he said we could get cuttings from. Once grafted and growing, they thrived and on learning there were other very old orchards, often in danger of removal or dying of old age, around Southland, we took on the mission to save the old Southland heritage varieties of fruit and reproduce the best to spread back around Southland once again. We expected there may have been a few dozen varieties out there. An article in the Southland Times and Southern Express in 2007 launching this ‘Open Orchard’ project began the Southland-wide interest. The name ‘Open Orchard’ means that the resources we discover will be available to all Southlanders, the skills of grafting, pruning and tree care will be widely dispersed and orchards will be grown everywhere, many of them on community land so the fruit can be gathered by the public. Potentially Southland could be not only be self sufficient in fruit but able to supply much of NZ’s needs on a commercial basis. The response from Southlanders was overwhelming and since then not a week has gone by without someone letting us know where and old orchard or tree is. We had bitten-off more than we could chew, as old 19th Century Orchards were everywhere and full of the most diverse and interesting fruit, more than we ever imagined.

Project development: In 2008 we applied to the Sustainable Farming Fund and received $7,000 a year over three years to pay for our petrol and time to visit all the orchards, record their data and promote heritage fruit growing in Southland. We also had funds to buy root stock and graft onto them. This first year we began grafting one of each apple or pear tree from the first batch of orchards we had learnt about, with no idea what the fruit were like or if they were all the same variety. Our first batch of over 400 grafts did poorly as the rootstock we were sent were sparsely rooted and only 40% of the apples took and 10% of the pears. As it takes 3 to 4 years for grafted apples to bear fruit, we realized that it would be some time before we could identify what we had grown. We needed to visit the orchards in full fruit. By then our list of trees and orchards to visit had more than doubled!

Over the autumn 2009 have visited and gathered fruit from 35 old Southland orchards and have been sent fruit from a further 10 orchards. We think we have Southland covered! Most of the orchards were planted between 1850 and 1910! Several orchards we had collected grafting material from in 2008 no longer exist. We hope the trees we weren’t able to save are represented in other orchards. We have mapped them, photographed them in natural and ‘ID standard’ forms and sampled them (cooked, baked and boiled) so we can select the best ones to reproduce and spread back around Southland. Amongst apples there are early, mid and late cookers and eaters with a wide range of colour, size, shape and taste. They grow healthily in abandoned orchards year after year. For example there is a dark red, white fleshed, eating apple that can be harvested in July, thriving without care on a Blackmount farm, a completely white apple growing on a farm behind Ohai and a small golden apple that has the richest smell and taste you can imagine, flourishing on a family farm at Browns. Some can be stored for 6 months and their taste just gets better. Some cooking apples go mushy without needing sugar. Others stay together for baking. Some are tart for sauce or cider. Some will be very rare ones that may no longer exist anywhere else in the world so this project will be of international interest. We have the photos linked to our website and will add information as we can. We focused on apples this year (2009) and gathered 4 apples from each of 310 trees. There are a few double ups but not as many as we expected.

Research funding sought: To research the origins and identify the varieties will be a big job. Our data base for the apples alone is 310 x 45 characteristics! We are looking at ways to attract funding from a sponsor for this time consuming but important part of the project. It takes 3-4 hours to correctly identify just one of them through books and the internet! (One year’s full-time research project!) When they can be identified the name and origins of the variety are known, the value and usefulness of the variety is markedly improved. Many came from Captain Howell via Australia, others are the best of the homeland for our early settlers- so we host the best of Scotland, Ireland or Europe. We have people all over Southland wanting to replant these trees; the Southland District Council’s township gardener for Central Southland, is buying some of the varieties we have sourced locally and is putting them back in the parks and reserves nearby to where they were found, e.g. Minnie Dean’s Crab apple in the Winton gardens etc. More and more schools are buying heritage trees from us at near-cost to establish school orchards. It is very encouraging to have such positive interest already.

In Winter we returned to the orchards and gathered scion wood, labeled and cool-stored them. Our project, mainly through our website, has attracted interest from all over NZ. We have had many requests for scion wood from all over Southland and NZ, for others to graft their own heritage trees. Some provinces have none of their own left. We sent 450 scions around Southland and a further 350 scions all over NZ. The biggest order was from the Canterbury ‘Men of the Trees’ who had been operating for 20 years and were ashamed that they had let most of their own heritage fruit trees die out.

In spring we held grafting ‘working bees’ and grafted 620 apple trees (two of each variety). We sourced some excellent quality root stock this time, so we would give our project the best chance. In spite of our atrocious spring weather, 290 varieties were saved and only 20 trees will have to be revisited next year. These baby apple trees will need a temporary base for 3 to 5 years until we have selected the best 50 heritage apples for Southland.

In Summer we will gather samples of early apples along with the nectarine, pears and plums for Stage Two! Stone fruit was also common throughout Southland orchards but unfortunately these trees have a much shorter life span so they have been largely lost. We have only found one old nectarine in all of the orchards we have visited.

We are advertising throughout Southland that we have a wonderful slide show presentation of this project. The romance surrounding those early settlers and the orchards they planted is a special part of our heritage and history. The more we get into it the more we feel it is worthwhile. The special stories and personalities that go with the orchards are as much a treasure as the trees. We are now collecting as many photos and stories as we can while the old buildings and orchards still stand. We think to write a book on this topic would be of great interest to Southlanders and a way to record this part of Southland life.

Need for more land 2010 We have outgrown our backyard and need some land to host the collection of 500 apple trees for 3-4 years. By that time they will all have fruited and we would have completed the identification and selection of the top 50 varieties. We would need a very sheltered area with good soil, protected from animals, two metres square for each tree ( 1 acre?) If it was away from the Riverton area we would need someone nearer the trees to help water and weed them when needed. Our team will plant and prune and help with weed management.

Future Plan By 2014 we will have organized a place for a living apple museum and scion bank, where the 50 best apple trees can be grown, along with the best plums and pears, perhaps a further 20 trees. The remainder of the trees will be sold cheaply back to the Southland community as will any doubles of the best 50.

We need help with:

In 2010: · Sponsorship to complete and publish our Open Orchard Handbook( Our Guide for New Fruit Growers)

· A lease of 1 acre of very sheltered fertile land for 2010-2014 (Free or sponsored if possible)

· Funds to employ a researcher to identify the trees – Estimated 1,000 hours

· Sponsorship or funding for researching, writing or publishing the book:

‘The Heritage Orchards of Southland”- the illustrated history of Southlands Heritage Orchards, the people who planted them and the fruit they chose.

2014 onwards · 1-2 acre of land available permanently for Southland Heritage Orchard Living Museum (and scion bank). The 4-5 year old trees will be transplanted and will be already bearing fruit.

THE FUTURE: Southland the Fruit bowl of NZ

By 2020, orchards and fruit trees will be abundant once again through out Southland. These will contain the diverse range of healthy heritage fruit that suits Southland conditions. It will be widely known how to plant, prune, graft and care for fruit trees. Southland will be self reliant in pip fruit and several commercial operations will export our fruit elsewhere. The Southland Heritage Orchard Living Museum would have tours and open days, sell its fruit and scion wood to pay for its upkeep. Workshops on pruning and grafting will be held annually and proceeds of orchard handbooks and ‘The Heritage Orchards of Southland’ book will also bring in funds.

Each tree would be labeled and a brochure would give more details of its origins and its original Southland location. The reserve will be a publically or trust-owned park to be protected so the next generations have access to the diversity that our forebears thought worthy of preserving. There should be room too, for heritage fruit trees from other provinces and new varieties to be trialed so the park will always keep the best of the old and include the best of the new. Our Southland Heritage Orchard Park will be attracting both NZ and international visitors and Southland will be even more famous than it is now!