Planting a Gooseberry Hedge

I'm always walking around my plot looking at where I could squeeze in some more plants and increase the productive areas. 

One area is the orchard. I have one half planted up quite traditionally, but I also have one area where the trees are much closer together. In there is about 16 plum trees, plus a n area where I tried an experiment with soft fruit. The experiment worked, but not enough to make me think it was any better than any other way. 

I decided to change it over. the fence near the top needed a hedge (to my mind) and I had been thinking hard about putting in more gooseberries. A gooseberry hedge could be an interesting addition. I went and purchased around 15 different varieties and put them all in 3.5ft apart. 

This should give us plenty of fruit and enough different types to see which ones do really well here. Gooseberry is always going to be one of my favourite fruits, so it's nice to increase the amount we can grow here (I also put in a lot of rooted cuttings from the 14 bushes I already have here). 

A good Apple Tree Book

I'm quite often asked about recommending a good apple tree book. Especially about training and grafting.

There are hundreds out there, some great, some not. One I often recommend is form the 1940's, Fruit Tree Growing by Raymond Bush (if there was ever a name for a fruit tree book). Not everything in there is gold (they're just getting into sprays and stuff), but the chapter on grafting is good. 

Although it's old it written in quite a light and humorous way, with instructions that are easy to follow. There are of course many other techniques out there, but this has a good handle on the basics. Also it shouldn't cost more than about £3 so I'm not recommending to someone to spend a fortune. 

 One thing I will say is that with fruit tree growing, grafting and training, it's just to have a go. You can pick up a cheap supermarket fruit tree for £5 most springs so it's worth buying one and just seeing how you can implement the knowledge in these book. Stuff normally grows back and they're surprisingly hard to kill (so long as you keep watering them). It's worth getting a few and having them in pots on the patio, make a framework of bamboo (hazel even better) and then just train them over a few summers into different shapes. 

The same with grafting, make some family trees, try budding in late summer, cut a branch off an older tree and try to cleft graft. Invest a few pounds and buy some rootstocks on the internet and create your own trees, if they take you can sell them easily and cover your costs and you will have learnt far more than if you just read about it. 

In fact after writing this I think I will get a few cheap apple trees and train them in pots on the patio to show how to do this. Should be fun. 

Do you have  fruit tree book you recommend or turn to?

Apple Diversity

I'm late in "summer" pruning my cordon apples this year. But as I trimmed them back I was amazed by the variety and quality of fruit in this trained hedge. 

It's a great year for apples and for the first time my main orchard is loaded with fruit, as are my cordon trees in the veg garden.

Reverend W Wilkes

We're starting to get some apples and other fruit ready in the orchard and cordons.

Mum brought over a big bag of discovery apples but a few cookers are ready as well. Warmers King is normally the first we eat but this year we've also got some Reverend W Wilkes from my line of cordons. 

IIt's a slightly acidic cooking apple that is ready to use when it's slightly premature.  This one lifted off the tree with only the slightest bit of weight behind it. Like all early apples it won't keep,  but I've got plenty for that purpose, having an apple ready at the same time as the blackberries has it's advantages.

Its a spur bearer and slow grower, so perfect for a cordon if you're limited on space.

What early cooking apples do you have growing?

Fruit Tree Pruning Talk

I had a phone call from my mum on Monday inviting me to a talk at her gardening club. It was on fruit trees by a very knowledgeable nursery man so I decided to drive the thirty or so miles and go to the talk, my brother met me there as well.

I've not been to many gardening clubs before, but lets just say that if you added the age of my brother and me together we'd still be younger than most there! We were given a warm welcome though and the speaker was excellent.

His name is Nick Dunn and he runs the nursery that I visited the year before last and he is also the author of the book "Trees for your garden" which is excellent.

His talk was brilliant (no photos sorry) he brought in many trees with him and cut them all up into how he's start different forms and shapes. Although I've been on many fruit tree pruning courses and talks before I still learnt a lot from this. He was truly passionate about it and seemed very happy to be talking to my brother and me at the end as he could see we were a younger generation interested in it.

A few random tips I wrote down are:

• Prune hard when you plant - This si something I never do but he was taking quite a bit of growth off, by half on the one tree. He says to be brave and the tree will grow a lot stronger because of it. It seems counter-intuitive but I'm going to adopt this practice and see how I get on. 

• Tie cherry tree branches downwards or break them slightly - any growth going upwards produces vegetative buds but downwards will produce fruit buds. Break them when the spa is rising.

• Bend and tie the trees into an S bend to slow the spa rising and to produce more fruit. Also some orchards are planting closer and closer together to increase competition. 

• Try to pick out branches that are a wide angle from the main trunk. they use toothpick like things to space them on some orchards now as it will mean a much stronger branch in the future. remove narrow angle branches as they tend to want to grow upwards.

• Summer pruning - I thought it was tricky to work out when but he says after the longest day you're good to go, although you might have to prune twice if they put on lots of growth.

• Figs - Prune in early autumn or summer, not in winter like I would have assumed. 

• To prevent peach leaf curl you need to stop the rain falling on the leaves until the end of may. Give the tree a cover until then that is open to the sides.

My mother keeps on to me to do some talks for gardening clubs? What do you think I could do them on? Could you do a talk to a club and what would it be on?

Cordons - Summer pruning Year 2

A follow on from my post around this time last year.

My cordon apple trees have put on loads of growth again this year so last week I went back through them.

 I tied in the leader and cut back any growth to a couple of inches from the cut last year. This should encourage it to branch out and form fruiting spurs. the fruit will always be close to the tree with cordons. I've had some lovely and perfect apples off a few of the trees so I'm expecting great things!

They look nice and tidy again now they've been pruned. In years to come this is going to make a great divide between the field and the garden. I think there's 24 varieties of apple down this stretch so far with space to plant a few more.

Nibbled

I was a little disappointed to find that at the base of a few of the trees they were showing chew marks. Some little creature has been chewing them. I think it's mice as the garden is rabbit proof, but I've done myself no favours by letting it get so weedy under the trees, giving the little critters perfect protection from predators. Next year I must stay on top of weeding them better and mulch around the trees early on, I might also put a few traps down.    

Anyone else got mice problems in the garden? And has anyone else got cordon apple trees in?

Tying In Cordons

My Cordons (see here, here and here for how I planted them) are looking good this year. They've already put on quite a bit of growth and many have apples on so I'm quite please for their second year.

 They haven't taken much work to look after, so far, weeding around them takes a bit of time (I've been mulching with straw as well which helps) but you only have to prune them once, in the summer, and thin the fruit if they crop to heavy.

The other job is to tie them back in. I just use string to tie them in so that it rots away and doesn't strangle the trees as they grow. These means that I have to tie them back in to the bamboo canes every year. It doesn't take long, even with 27 trees, and gives me a good opportunity to make sure each tree is doing alright.

Anyone else have cordon fruit trees growing?

Cordons - Summer Pruning Year 1

My apple trees have all grown well this year putting on loads of growth.

Today I managed to do a job I've been meaning to do for the last couple of weeks and thats to summer prune my cordon apple trees.

The apple trees ave put on lots of growth this year

 They're meant to be summer pruned around two weeks before the apples are harvested off that tree, but as none of mine have got any apples on I decided to try to do it just late enough that they won't put any secondary growth on that will get killed by the frost.

Cordons looking a little messy

 The first year of pruning these is quite easy. To start with I tied in the leader if it was growing vertrical and slackened off any ties that were getting too tight on the rest of the tree.
I then cut any branch growth back to the lenght of about 1 1/2". These should for my fruiting spurs in years to come. Although I did this for every tree, a couple of trees I left branches long so that I could take a graft off them in the spring to propergate from them.

Apple tree all tied in and looking tidy

They all looked neat and tidy by the time I was finished. I am going to move one tree in the winter as it has far too many bare patches to be a good cordon and since planting it I have discovered it is a tip bearer so not much good as a tree that  I'm trying to create fruiting spurs on.
Anyone else summer prune their fruit trees?

Planting Cordons - Research

Ever since I read a Victorian Kitchen Garden I've had this idea in my head to plant and train cordons and other forms of fruit trees. I don't do anything with out doing a lot of research first (especially if it involves spending money) so I turned to some of my gardening books and the trusty old Internet.

A few of the books I used

The old books were the best on this subject as it seems to be something which has fallen out of fashion in the last twenty or so years. But even then they didn't really come up with the same information so for everything I did I took an "average" of the information I had and I'll just have to hope for the best!

The only true dwarf tree I planted

Trees to plant - Cordons and other heavily trained fruit trees need to be spur bearing to produce fruit (as the tips will be cut off). This sounds simple to find out until you start looking. Take an example of the George Cave apple tree- In the RHS book "Apples" it states that it "produces spurs freely" whereas the Readers Digest book "New Illustrated Guide To Gardening" states it a tip bearer. I took a risk with this one but hopefully my research into the other trees proves right!

Root stocks - Most books here recommend a heavily dwarfing root stock like a M9 or M26 for trained trees but some say you can use the semi vigorous MM106. From what I can understand it's also a little dependant on what your soil is like. Our is quite heavy clay so trees take a while to get established, for this reason I went with the MM106 and only used one M9 tree where it finishes the row and will need to be shorter.

The graft needs to be on the upper side to help prevent it breaking in later life.

Spacing - This was where the information varied the most. Ranging from 18" through to over 3ft between trees. I opted for 2ft as I wanted it to form a hedge like screen as well to separate the garden from the field. It looks close but these trees are going to be heavily pruned through their life.
As for the support wire spacing I did this at around 20" centres with one near the top for extra support.

Angle - One book said to start the trees more upright and lower them over the years but most said to plant them in at a 45 degrees and, if you really want to, lower them as they get bigger so you have more growing area for the apples. One good piece of advice was not to plant them below 35 degrees or they will struggle to grow. I went for the 45 degrees and I doubt I'll change this as it looks right.

The graft - When planting for cordons on an angle you need to make sure that the graft is on the top side of the tree (see the picture above). This will help to prevent it breaking in the future as if it's the other way up the weight can make it snap and split down it's length as the tree gets bigger.

Pollination groups - If I talk about apple trees people always get worried about pollination groups. I don't even bother to look any more as with over 30 varieties of trees in my smallholding and probably a few thousand trees in the orchards surrounding us we haven't got anything to worry about. Normally someone is going to have an apple tree planted near by if you live in a town or village but if your worried then it's easy to use the number each tree has and make sure they all work out.

Pruning at planting time - Well this is one I'm still not sure about. Some say prune them right back as soon as you've planted them, so then all the available budds break and you're left with no bear patches of wood, others say leave them alone. So far I haven't touched ours as they're all fairly small trees and I can't help thinking it will stunt their growth even more. Maybe I should cut one back and compare it to the others over it's first year (I'll take advice on this please).

Well that's all I've learnt about the subject so far. I'm sure I'll learn a lot more through growing them in this way - if anyone else has got any advice or tips please let me know!

Planting Cordons - Part Two

Today I finally managed to plant the 22 apple trees I had waiting to go in.
Planting these trees as cordons has been more work than I thought it would be as there was so much preparation work to be done.

Bamboo canes all wired in ready

Before I planted anything I had to make sure that I'd prepared the trench by adding grit and compost to the bottom. This seems to have worked as the only water that was holding was at the very bottom of the slope (and I haven't got enough trees yet for that far down).

I then had to wire all the bamboo canes to the 4 horizontal wires at a 45 degree angle. This took longer than I thought it would, but the fence looked quite good when they were on!

 

The grit added to the bottom of the trench to help water drain away

 I then started planting trees. The fun bit. I had a rough planting plan, so the latest to ripen were at the top and the earliest at the bottom, but as I need more trees it's not really going to matter where they go.

Planting trees and fixing to the canes

I tied the trees to the canes using a ordinary string as I figure this will rot off before it strangles them. The only downside is I'll have to tie them back in every few years, but this method of growing is quite labour intensive anyway and this will give a good opportunity to inspect them up close.

Line of trees planted

Hopefully some interesting varieties planted

A big job but worth it

It's been a hard few days getting these trees in but I'm glad I've done it. In a relatively small space I've managed to plant 22 different varieties of apple, from claygate pearman to Crawley Beauty, with room for another 7 or 8 trees.

I'm hoping this will provide a nice barrier from the veg garden to the field as well as giving us lots of apples to try over the years!

(In my next post I'll give all the information I've managed to gleam from books and the internet about growing fruit trees as cordons - a lot of the information out there clashes!)

Planting Cordons - Part One

Planting my cordon apple trees has turned out to be a bit of an undertaking. The dry weather this weekend has let me make a start, although really its still too wet.

The  muddy strip where my cordons are going to grow

A bit of extra treatment for the bottom of the posts

 To start with I dug in my three large (4"x4") posts. These I concreted in about two foot deep, then I added another smaller post around three feet in front of it and braced diagonally off this one.

I just mixed my concrete dry as there was enough water in the holes!

 Once these posts were in I dug a trench from one side to the other (it was not easy digging I can tell you). The reason I decided to dig a trench rather than individual holes was due to the ground being so wet. I figured that if I did it like this and added some grit to the bottom it might act as a mini french drain and save the roots sitting in water, only time will tell on this one! At the end of the day there was a lot of water sat in the bottom section of the trench (it's all on a gentle slope) and not so much a the top so I guess it's working.

Adding the wire between the posts

 I added four wires between my posts to tie my bamboo canes to, although I haven't tightened them yet, I just hope the posts aren't too far apart!

Hooking eyes brought from eBay

The bottom section of trench is holding a bit of water

The next set of jobs should be more fun. I've got to add grit and compost to the trench, tie in my bamboo canes and then plant my trees - watch this space!