Unfortunately it's not here but at my parents farm. I went for the first time in two months on Friday (I know I'm a bad son!) and the little orchard I planted years ago is doing brilliantly. Plenty of early fruit.
My mum, the girls and me walked round eating different apples (discoveries and Worcesters) plums and greengages. I had to slow the girls down at one point or they'd get bad bellies!
The early fruit seems to be doing the best in there this year although there is plenty of fruit for later in the season. I need to get the food drier out and start drying some again, and maybe think about attempting to can some!
Has everyone else got a heavy crop of early apples?
Heavy crop of everything! Honest I have never seen so many plums on a tree. The hedges and trees here are full of berries. Seriously over the top amounts. Maybe the spring wasnt so cold and they all got to set well. But wowzers. Raspberries have also been heavy croppers. Blueberries not so much but they need new soil in their containers so that is my fault not theres.
ReplyDeleteEven my hot boxes in the green house have given lots this summer.
Are you going to try what I call hot boxing? My dad has done it all my life with his orchids in his unheated green house. Old shopping baskets wire ones, or you could make them from old pallets. Will them just over 3/4s of the depth you can either plant into them, or as my dad does with wire racks over the top and orchids on that.
My ginger and tumeric have done really well. I tried some garlic as an experiment. that was a dud. maybe too hot?
Every year I say I'm going to try hot beds and every year I don't. Maybe next year I will! It's finding the muck at the right time! Garlic loves a cold spell so maybe it was too hot.
DeleteOur Raspberries are going mental as well, loads on there so far and the birds seem to leave them alone this time of year which is a bonus.
that should say fill them with horse dung just over 3/4s. early no drink yet! lol
ReplyDeletetime to make applesauce!
ReplyDeleteI think you could be right!
DeleteSame here. I have two pear trees I planted about eight years ago. They never did much and have never got more than a half dozen pears from them, but this year I counted over 150 pears between the two of them. I have had to prop them up as individual branches are bending over to the point of breaking from the load. I attribute the abundance of fruit to a relatively cool dry summer that really did not get going and show any warmth until late June. Got lots of flowers on them early on and there were hardly any bugs around to eat the blossoms off early, and no diseases at all. Japanese beetles tend to make a mess of the blossoms but we had none this year. Over all it has actually been a great growing year. All my tomatoes are doing great as well, where usually they get ravaged by horn-worms and blights like anthracnose tomato.
ReplyDeleteMy tomatoes on the otherhand have been the worst I've ever had! I'm ashamed of them this year. Normally by now we're fed up of them but this year it's been hard to even get enough for a meal. I think the weeds growing around the greenhouse are blocking too much light.
DeleteNo pears here but lately it seems to be either apples or pears that are heavy - this year it's apples.
Pretty good year here too Kev. apart from pears which are non-exhistant
ReplyDeleteI wish we had bought our second lot of pigs we could be feeding them windfalls and berries .