Weeks Community Orchard – Dartington, Devon – October 2022

Week Community Orchard, Dartington

As part of our normal holiday in October time, we always like to include a community orchard.

Dartington, Devon is always a place we have passed through for years. Apart from visiting Martin Crawford at Agroforestry we have never visited any community orchards in the area.

Weeks Community Orchard is actually not far away from Huxhams Cross Community Orchard, a little more difficult to find thou. Car parking is problematic, and the pedestrian way in was trial and error. Prior to our visit we made contact with Anthony Prior who advised us to park near to the garages on ‘Broom Park‘ which was totally the opposite end to the entrance. This proved to be the best place to park, as the roads are very narrow.

We were thrown by the name, as we thought it was Community Orchard Week that is Week as in Day or Month a special event ?? We did not realize that it was a village called Week.

A very nice location map was an excellent sight to see.

An even better sight was a cross reference table with variety names and locations. This is normally very rare with orchards.

 

 

The apples were a bit sparse on the trees. But we found out that if we had visited a week earlier, prior to the harvesting for the cider making, we may have seen a lot of fruit. The photo above shows some of the pressed pulp, being discarded around some of the trees.

Believe it or not, this was the traditional way of getting rootstock. Extract all the seeds from the pulp and grow them on in the spring.

Quite a large area, with trees spaced wide apart. As there is not much competition these should grow very well in the future years.

As a dog owner, we are a strong believer in ‘Clean Up After Your Dog’. As we own farm land, we tend to let our dog have a bit of freedom. But when we are any where near public land or where children have access, we  ‘Clean Up After Your Dog’.

 

One of the first orchards that have come across that has an Albomarginata Sweet Chestnut tree. A vigorous deciduous tree with toothed, lance-shaped leaves to 25cm long, margined with creamy-white, and pale yellow catkins in early summer. But it does not produce very good nuts.