After being planted in July 2021, Hadlow College’s three-hectare orchard had its first harvest last year (2024), with students playing a key role in the process and the end result is the bottling of the College’s first batch of apple juice which is available at the College’s own events. It is hoped to be able to make it more widely available across the county in the future.
Alan Harvey, Head of Horticulture at Hadlow College, explains more about the involvement of the students: “Our students have been involved in every stage of the production process, starting with the planting and planning of the orchard.”
“The students have played a key role in the orchard’s development, including planting, training the crop, pruning and conducting pest and disease analysis. When the harvesting season arrived, the students gained hands-on experience with the equipment and machinery used for this process, making it one of the first activities they undertake when returning to College.”
The orchard demonstrates the latest technology in production systems including a range of robotic equipment and sensors to remove much of the labour intensive aspects but develop the highly skilled labour requirements of orchard management.
The crops are always grown with sustainability in mind. Drones are used to monitor bud set, predict yields and monitor the growth of the crop allowing precise applications of nutrition, pest and disease control methods to be used.
And Alan Harvey explains he is hoping for an even bigger apple haul this coming year, adding: “The orchard has been in production for about three years and this year marks the first harvest. But it typically takes around four years for the crop to reach its peak harvest. We’re looking forward to an even larger apple yield next year, which will allow us to produce more juice.”