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23 apple trees with old varieties have been replanted in Seligenstadt to reactivate orchards. The trees are said to provide a breeding ground for the little owl too.
More and more building land, more and more intensive land management, plus climate change: orchards in Hesse are at great risk. It is precisely for this reason that the Working Group for Bat and Amphibian Protection in Seligenstadt and Mainhausen (AgFA), with the support of the City of Seligenstadt, reactivated old orchards in the outdoor area on Wednesday. On the one hand, old apple varieties were honored again, on the other hand, new habitat was created for the little owl.
Members of the AgFA and the Naturschutzbund (NABU) planted a total of 23 fruit trees on the 6000 square meter orchard meadow on Dudenhöfer Strasse and the Eichwald. The trees there were already very old and partly aged because they had not been cared for. Seven old trees were also cut back and equipped with brood tubes for the little owl, so-called owl tubes.
“On Wednesday we mainly planted old local Hessian varieties”, reports AgFA chairman Hartmut Müller. The Hessian pomologists association propagated a tree of the year every year and with the help of this list the apple trees were selected. He lists a few varieties as examples: Anhalter, Gacksapfel, Kloppenheimer Streifling, Jakob Lebel, Schöner von Boskoop, Weilburger, Heuchelheimer Schneeapfel.
The city paid half of the planting costs, the Offenbach district the other half. “We press apple juice ourselves and want to work with the city to find a way of marketing the juice,” says Müller. That creates acceptance in the population.
The bat and amphibian protectors also care about the little owl, which is on the red list in many federal states and is only very rarely found in the Offenbach district. According to Müller, the little owl can mainly be found in old cave trees in the orchards. But since it takes 35 to 40 years for the newly planted apple trees to naturally form caves, the members help out: They set up the gallows on which they place the 1.20 meter long owl tubes. “This simulates an old cave for the little owls,” says Müller. He himself set up such a gallows on his private field, which a little owl promptly occupied.
In the previous year, the AgFA members planted fruit trees for the first time – on an urban meadow on the amphibious nature trail, which is particularly instructive for primary school students.
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