Hand Pollinating Our Peach Tree

A few years ago I put in a peach tree. The first year I thought it had died, but the next year it came back - it seems to still be living through the neglect I give it. 

This is the first year I've seen any blossom on it though. As my middle daughter and I were cleaning the plastic on the polytunnel we couldn't see any bees. 

It's still early in the year and the polytunnel might not look very inviting to something buzzing around. 

Preserving As A Social Activity

 One thing I mention a lot when I give my talks on preserving is how much I think it should be a social activity. It's far nicer to share the tasks and the harvests, it creates community, strengthens friendships and is just a down right productive use of your time. 

I'm lucky as I have a few friends that I can share this passion with. 

This week I did some of the social preserving I preach. My friend Lauren, who farms cherries and apricots, messaged me to say they had lots of fruit in need of preserving and did I fancy an afternoon working through it. 

Duck & Raspberry Pen

 So, thought I'd do a bit more about the new tunnel as there was quite a few questions. 

The 60 raspberry canes turned up early last week and I got them in the ground within an hour of them turning up!

Cherries!

Few fruits I love more than properly ripe cherries 

But few things do I struggle growing more. 

We netted our trees but still struggle to get more than a few berries. Time to go to the professionals. 

Planting 40 Plum Trees!

It's not been ideal conditions for planting trees, really the ground is too wet - but as they say time waits for no man so I decided we'd get them in and see what happened. 

Helpers - my eldest was poorly. 

To start with we planted up a new hedge between us and the neighbours. For this we used cherry plum trees, just little whips, and every 10ft put in a Victoria plum (they were £5) as a standard. Not sure how this will turn out but it should be interesting. I've read lots of people saying it makes a good edible hedge but when asked no one seems to have tried it!

Planting Plums For Self-sufficiency

Thought I'd share a short video I made on the varieties of plum I've settled on this year.

Hopefully by having all these different varieties it should mean that we spread the season out as much as we can where we live. I'm looking for them to crop the whole time from mid July right through to the start of October, but I know this will all depend on frosts and other factors!

Let me know what you think of the video.

What other fruit do you try to have a large selection of to make sure you get a harvest?

Plums For The Whole Season?

The season for plums in the UK is from mid July until The start of October. These are from a variety of plum types, grown under different conditions, they're even growing plums under plastic now to get them even earlier. 

But last year I think we had plums for the grand total of 2 weeks. They were a glorious two weeks, but it left me thinking I've really missed a trick. Time to do something about it.

3 Types Of Damsons

Just a short post showing the three types of damsons I have on my trees in the orchard at the moment.

From left to right -  "Merryweather", "Langley Bullace" and "King of the Damsons"

I have three different types and all three trees have grown like crazy since I planted them about 6 years ago. 

This year I seem to have fruit on all three for the first time, not very much though so I doubt I'll be making any jam unless I get some from mum and dads farm in a few weeks.

Strawberry Beds

Although I've moved the main soft fruit garden into a new place, the area left behind is a great place for growing with full sun. 

So down there I've divided it up into 11 new beds plus a bed for the rhubarb and some herbs (sweet cicely). One thing I was keen to get into the new beds was some strawberries.

Permaculture Soft Fruit?

I've been toying with an idea in my head for a few years now and wanted to experiment.

I garden with many different methods and never really stick to one, but if you're into organic gardening then sooner or later you're going to come across permaculture.

The wikipidia definition of permaculture is:-
"Permaculture is a set of design principles centered around whole systems thinking simulating or directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natural ecosystems. It uses these principles in a growing number of fields from regenerative agriculture, rewilding, community, and organizational design and development."

Balloon Berry

 I'm always trying to find new and exciting things to grow. 

Over the years I've discovered some that we really like growing and eating. We grow Cucamelons every year now, along with Peruvian Black Mint, Quillquina, Electric Daisies, wine berries and more.

New fruit, I think, is something to get excited about. Maybe it's just my sweet tooth but I love to try out anything like that. I remember going to Asia for the first time and being blown away by the choice of tropical fruit, but I love our temperate fruit even more. 

When I stumbled upon a fruit I hadn't heard of, a balloon berry, I just had to buy some and plant them. Latin name Rubus illecebrosus if you want to goggle it. 

When they came they were far smaller than advertised and smashed to pieces, I got some money back and set about trying to keep them alive. 18 months later I've had my first fruits from them.

They're bigger than a raspberry, growing on a tall strawberry like plant. They look beautiful, like three raspberries fused together, but all the little bubbles are somehow finer.

And how do they taste I hear you ask?

INSIPID I think would be the best word to describe it. 

They tasted of very little, even the long wait and anticipation couldn't improve the taste. Don't get me wrong, they didn't taste bad, they just didn't taste of anything really, just sweetness and a little sour. 

I'll keep these two plants growing as a bit of an oddity in my garden, who knows when they crop heavy they might make a great preserve. But if I was short on space I'd rip them out and plant some more Japanese wine berries instead. I might even move them out to the coppice and add them to the forest garden area as they will tolerate shade.

Maybe with some plant breeding these berries could be the next big thing, but they need some work before then!

Have you heard of or grown these berries before? 

What did you think to them?

What unusual fruit, veg or herb do you think i should try to grow next?

New Rhubarb

I'm always on the look out for new things to grow or new varieties.

The rhubarb I grow is from my mums garden and she inherited it from the gardener who lived there before her. It's a great type, keeps it's shape well when cooking and isn't too sharp, we've no idea of the variety but I know I'll certainly keep growing it. 

That said I've always wanted to see how it compares to other types and if there's much difference. 

I saw this "Raspberry Red Rhubarb" at the weekend and I decided to give it a go, it says it's a newly developed strain that doesn't need forcing (I hardly ever force mine any way) and should be slightly sweeter with thinner stalks. 

Anyone else have different varieties of rhubarb? What's your favourite variety?

Food Drying

Last year I dried a few raspberries when we had a glut, every time I've used them in my baking they've tasted amazing so this year I've decided to dry a lot more. My little old food dryer is going flat out to try to dry these juicy berries. 

 A full punnet (about what I'm picking a day at the moment) dries down to about 3/4 of a kilner jar.

 While I was at it I also dried some bananas that had gone past their best (and a few apples on the top layer to fill up space), they make great snacks for the kids and I wouldn't have used them for much else (I didn't fancy banana cake today).

My food drier is very basic, just one setting and it's pretty noisy. I was wondering just how good are the more professional models and are they worth their big price tag?

Kitchen Garden Tour - May

I had intentions to do these videos once a month but it hasn't happened. I'll try to do them over the summer months to give myself a record of what's growing. 

Hopefully the video gives you a good feel for what's going on in my kitchen garden, next time I'll include Long Furrows as well.

Sorry if it's still shaky - it must just be how I am! 

Let me know what you think.

Veg & Fruit Garden Tour - Video

I thought I'd do a little walking tour of my garden so you'll have to excuse my goofy voice and silly hat! 

there's much I've missed off this video but it gives a good feel for the garden. When I say "next year" I mean this year but next growing season, otherwise I just sound stupid! If people like the video I could do more - let me know what you think!

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?

Medlar Harvest

My little medlar tree hasn't produced many fruits this year but the ones it has are huge!

The whole harvest!

I now need to let these blet before eating them. That is to go slightly rotten and soft, you then eat them with a spoon and they taste a little bit like custard. Apparently this fruit was popular in medieval times and was often referred to as " a bull dogs bottom" - no idea why!!

I have got another tree that I planted at my parents house around 10 years ago, we went on Sunday for a roast dinner (and to see my parents) but the tree had been pecked bare. Not a fruit left on it!
I was disappointed as I was looking forward to making some more spicy medlar chutney. The one I'm eating now (dated 2010) is quite possibly the nicest chutney I've ever tasted but blinking labour intensive to make. I think it took a total of four nights to put together as you have to make a jelly first - a true labour of love and then it needs at least a year to mature.

Anyone else got any medlars growing?

Pitmaston Pineapple

Our own apple trees are still too young to give us much of a crop yet so we're still relying on apples from my parents and from our friends in the village who have a good sized orchard.

You'd be forgiven for thinking these apples were crab apples but they're not!

 Our apples of choice at the moment are Pitmaston Pineapple. They are small, crab apple sized fruits that taste amazing, nothing like a pineapple but a beautifully sharp, almost nutty flavour. The trees are laden with fruit every year, covering it in almost grape like amounts, and due to the small size of the fruit they are perfect for little hands. The girls love them, Evalyn has created a fruit course after most meals and I have to fight them off Melissa on a regular basis. I'm eating about four or five in one sitting as well!

If dad won't let you have any more apples, just have a raw potato instead!

I'd recommend this tree to anyone that wants a small tasty apple that keeps until Chirstmas. It also  has one of the most interesting names out there for an apple, who could fail to be impressed if you offered a guest a Pitmastons Pineapple from your fruit bowl?

Strawberry Tree

As you know from previous posts I have somewhat of an obsession with unusual fruit and veg. Normally I have to plant a young tree or plant and wait years before I get to sample the fruits. 

 Luckily I have a friend in the village who lives on an old estate with lots of unusual, mature trees. One of these happens to be the strawberry tree. And when I went round on Thursday last week they had a fruit waiting for me to try. 

 The fruits themselves look gorgeous, exotic even. Like a red lychees dotted all over the tree, picked out against the sun. The tree is beautiful as well, having lovely flowers and white leaves in spring and a great structure to it. 

The tree is quite beautiful though.

And how does it taste?

One word.

Disappointing. 

I don't think I'll ever bother to try one again put it that way. 

Tasteless, but the skin leaves an almost bitter taste in your mouth. Maybe there is some value as a survive food, but at this time of year there is so much else to eat I can't see why you'd choose this.

Bland tasteless flesh and a horrible skin

It does make an attractive tree in the garden and the birds love eating the fruit so I can see why people plant them but I don't think it's going on my grow list any time soon. Good job I didn't have to wait ten years to find that out!

Anyone else ever had to wait years to try something they've been growing and then been really disappointed by it?

Strawberry Growing

I'm pretty good at growing most things but I suck at growing strawberries. I'm not sure what I do wrong but they never seem to do very well. 

Working at a friends house today I think I saw the answer. 

Strawberries in guttering

 I know growing plants in guttering isn't new but I thought this was a great use of space and at "toddler" hight a great way for children to pick their own. 

Great use of space

There were loads of strawberries ready to eat and I imagine it's far easier to control any runners or weeds and watering would be straight forward! 

I might have to try this on our fence at the front of the house next year and see if we can grow a few more berries this way. I've got some old guttering saved from a job back in the winter that would be ideal for it.

Anyone else been growing in this way or similar?