2026 Begins at Māngere Bridge Community Orchard Working Bee

2026 Begins at Māngere Bridge Community Orchard Working Bee

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Friends of the Farm Frequent Facilitator Caroline was delighted with our first bee of the year. Let’s hear her recollection…

It was lovely to see those of you who were able to make it for our first working bee of the year.  The sun truly shone, showing us that NZ’s summer hasn’t given itself up entirely to rain.

However, that rain has meant that the greenery exploded.  I’ve never seen such tall coreopsis (the orange flowers)!  The dahlias planted following the seedling swap have produced beautiful purple pompom flowers. The sunflowers were almost over but their cousins the Jerusalem artichokes are growing enthusiastically.  The kumara has truly escaped its original position but, learning from last year, we disentangled it from the ever-present bindweed and lifted the tendrils onto cardboard to prevent it rooting.  We hope that by doing this the plant will focus its energy into its tuber (which we eat) rather than into spreading far and wide.

We tackled bindweed again – not so bad this time as last – and Peter will blast it with weedkiller twice again before we cardboard and mulch ready for the winter.

Over summer, we’ve stopped collecting cardboard, but we’ll be back into mulching again from next month onwards.  Thanks to Carol and Bill for agreeing to collect cardboard from The Gaff on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and to Maddie for checking if she and family can cover the other four days.

Best find of all was that our peach seedlings have grown up to about a metre high.  We finally have something which we can use for our t-budding workshop and keep to grow at the orchard.  The date for the t-budding workshop has been revised to suit Richard’s schedule.  It will now take place on Sat 28 Feb 2-4pm next to the peach seedlings in the newer side of the orchard.  We look forward to seeing lots of you there.  Please bring (or send with someone else if you can’t make it) new growth from your successful Māngere Bridge peach and plum trees, and we’ll do what we can to replicate those plants using the t-budding system rather than grafting which we have done before.  We’ll do another grafting workshop later in the year.  Peach seed reminder below….

Reminder the pumpkin competition finale and harvest swap is now on Sat 21 Feb 10am-12noon at Ambury.

Don’t forget to take one for the greater good and eat peaches: to help us with growing rootstock for our grafting workshops, please eat lots of peaches over summer, encourage your friends to do the same, and look after the stones like this:

How to store peach stones so they can be planted in June and used to create rootstock for our heritage tree programme 1. Eat many peaches, preferably Golden Queen 2. Clean the seed 3. Keep damp (not wet) in the fridge in a sealed plastic container (bag or box) by mixing seeds with damp sawdust, mulch or sphagnum moss 4. Check occasionally that seeds are moist and not mouldy. If mouldy, remove the mouldy ones and replace the surrounding medium 5. Keep in fridge for six to eight weeks “>I have about a million ice cream tubs, so sing out if you’d like one or several in which to keep your peach stones.

Friends of the Farm’s website can be found here https://aboutmangerebridge.nz/ where you’ll see other events that we’ve been involved with or which are upcoming.  We also have a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FriendsoftheFarmMangereBridge

Here’s the current plan for 2026, with working bees on the first Saturday of each month (except Jan):

Sat 21 Feb – pumpkin competition finale and harvest swap at Ambury Farm

Sat 28 Feb – t-budding workshop with Richard

Sat 7 Mar – orchard working bee

Sat 4 Apr – orchard working bee (Easter Saturday)

Sat 2 May – orchard working bee

Sat 6 Jun – orchard working bee and peach seed planting with Richard

Sat 4 July – orchard working bee (Caroline not available)

Sat 1 Aug – orchard working bee and grafting workshop with Richard

Sat 5 Sept – orchard working bee

Sat 3 Oct – seedling swap and pumpkin competition launch at Ambury

Sat 3 Oct – orchard working bee

Sat 7 Nov – orchard working bee

Sat 28 Nov – volunteer end-of-year celebration

Sat 5 Dec – orchard working bee

Please let me know if you’d like to be removed from this mailing list.

So much to do; we hope to see you there.

Revised mantra:

Weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch, weed, mulch…

Ngā mihi,
Caroline

Keep an eye out for workshops throughout the year: composting, grafting, pruning.  We will also consider requests for topics for workshops.

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