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.

Sloes

There's not much in the way of free fruit that our little smallholding had in place when we moved here, but the one thing there is an abundance of this year is sloes!

 It's bumper year and they're hanging off the hedges like grapes. My little sister and her boyfriend came round the other day (mainly to see the new baby - not me) and I suggested we went and picked some so they could make sloe gin.

 It didn't take long to pick them, in fact I think we picked a tub full without moving more than 5ft!

I've made plenty of sloe gin and other liquors in the past but I'm not going to bother this year - we're just not very big drinkers any more (I'm not sure we ever were) so it seems daft to make something just for the sake of it (although it does make a good present).
Has anyone else got any other ideas with what to do with sloes? I made some sloe and apple jam a few years ago and that was terrible, so any ideas better than that one please!