Constant Orchard Maintenance

 Having fruit trees, for me, is something that I work  at every year. 

Each year I try to make sure I plant a few new trees, that way I always have some young trees coming on, some medium age trees coming into bearing and some older trees that are cropping. In buying a few trees each year it also keeps me really interested, I can hunt for new varieties or types of fruit. 

I planted three new plums on Saturday and filmed myself putting them in the ground. 

I don't do anything fancy when planting, just dig a hole and bung them in, I've planted thousands of trees in this way, treat them mean and keep them keen! 

Give the video a watch and let me know what you think, this is nothing fancy, no great editing, just 7 minutes of me planting fruit trees while I talk about it. 

Victoria Plum

When we moved here a decade ago I planted fruit trees straight away, I wanted an orchard as soon as possible. 10 years on some of these trees have thrived and some haven't. I've added many more since that first planting and I'd say we have well over 100 apple trees dotted around the place, plums I was a bit slower to put in. I have only one that is ten years old as the other (a early transparent gage) died last year unfortunately.  

I have tried to fill the gaps in my plum crop where I can, adding many more trees over the years. We now have a young cherry plum hedge that is slowly growing, dotted with more Victoria plums, and I have added the widest selection of plums in the orchard that I could find to try to spread the season.  I have also planted as many damson and bullaces as I can as well to do the same. 

 Alas, most are yet to fruit. My old Victoria has given us a few this year though. I think it's a plum that takes some beating, like a Conference pear, it really is the best of the lot. 

This tree is grown above the bantam pen, and is netted so quite hard to get at the fruit, but it is worth it. Few things compare to a freshly picked plum straight from the tree, the taste of summer in a fruit. 

Do you have a fruit that you have planted a number of varieties to spread the harvest? What's one fruit you wish you could grow year round, or that grows in a climate different to your own?

Grafting Success and Failures

I grafted more fruit trees this year than the year before and I had a fair few more failures.

This years tree nursery - a little weedy maybe...

 The apples did relatively well although I only had a success rate of around 75%, I think this is down to a number of factors: I used some "grafting pliers" for some for the grafts and the majority of these ones failed compared to the ones I did traditionally with a knife. I also stored the scion wood differently, some in the fridge (this all took well) and some in the shed, as it was much more mild than the year before, I don't think the shed was cold enough and so some of the wood wasn't alive enough to be grafted.

One of the many failed cherry grafts

 Some for the other fruit didn't do so well. Only two cherry grafts took and much the same with the plums and pears, although the two apricots I did as an experiment are both doing well. 

A successful graft with apricot wood

In total I've still got over a hundred fruit trees growing in the nursery with successful grafts and the root stocks that had failed grafts on can be used this next spring so no money lost. Next year I will trying budding some trees in the summer (although there never seems time in August) as I think stone fruit like the cherries and plums do better that way.

Has anyone else been propagating fruit trees or tried their hand at grafting?

Fruit Tree Nursery 2014

Last weekend I finally managed to finish grafting and planting all of my fruit trees.

 I planted them in two separate beds quite close together to try to encourage them to grow straight and true. I 've also experimented a little bit as one lot was planted through some old weed suppressant matting I had left from ages ago and the other will be mulched with straw

In these two little beds is hopefully my future cider orchard, some apricots and nectarines to see if I can get them to grow in our cold spot, cherries so we can have delicious stone fruit in the summer, plums and pears to grow around the veg garden and some more apple trees to grow and sell.

140 in total this year, should be interesting to see how they do.

Did anyone else get round to doing any grafting this year?

Stone Fruit & Pear Grafted

I feel much better now I've started to do this years grafting.

Today I managed to graft all my cherry, plum and pear rootstock's.

Some of the completed grafts

The cherries have been grafted with a few older varieties  like "Van" and "morrollo" then some more modern ones like "Summers Sun" and "penny". I only did ten trees as the dwarfing rootstock's I wanted weer quite expensive. I plan to plant all of these, when they've left the nursery bed, in the orchard, quite close together so they can be netted easily.

The 15 pears were a good selection of what I could find locally, from the basic but lovely "Conference" to the more unusual "Court du Lame" (I've just googled this one and found nothing so maybe I've written it down wrong) and I also grafted a medlar on one as well.

The plum rootstock's were used for 4 different varieties of plum and also an apricot "Novi Sad" and nectarine "Lord Napier". These more warm climate fruit should give me a bit of a challenge in years to come (anyone have any luck with apricots over here or am I just dreaming?)!

I set myself up in the greenhouse just in case it rains...

Turned out to be a good plan - shame I put the washing out to dry first thing!

All the grafted trees waiting for their nursery bed to be dug over ready.

For the grafts I used the whip and tongue graft (Have a look in my blog here, here and here for more information on grafting) but I must confess to using insulation tape to secure them together, as the ones I did with it last year seem to work just as well as the ones done using proper grafting tape and wax, I guess time will tell on that one.

So that's 40 grafts down just 100 apple tree grafts to go! Anyone else grafting this year?

Rootstocks Have Arrived

My "big" order of fruit tree rootstocks has arrived.

A big bundle of rootstocks

 For me this is quite a big order of 100 MM106 apple rootstocks, 15 Quince A rootstocks, 10 "gisela 5" cherry rootstocks and 15 plum root stocks. I have heeled them into the veg garden to leave until the end of winter when I'll graft them.

I was pleased with the qualitity of the stock as I took a gamble and ordered online from a supplier I hadn't used before. The plants all have good roots on them and look healthy which is a good sign

All heeled in

The only trouble is I ordered a little scion wood to go with the order (Apricot and a couple of different plums) and I'm not sure the best way to store this until March. Some research needed unless you guys have some advice?