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.

Winter Fruit Tree Pruning - Year 5

Last week, whilst the boy took a long nap I managed to get down into the orchard to prune some of my trees. They're really putting on some growth now so it's important that they grow how I want them to, to make fruit ripen and to make picking easy! 

The orchard

The first job before tackling any tree to look for diseased or damaged wood and remove it. Even if the branch is int he right place if it has canker then it's not going to grow strong. 

I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn't much canker and I only had to cut out a couple of branches with it. Unfortunately this did make one tree really lob sided but another branch will grow to fill the void in time. 

Canker

I then set about each tree in turn, standing back and taking a look at it from all sides. I want my trees to be goblet shaped, clear of branches in the middle with branches not any higher than my head. I try not too take too many branches off in one year, no more than a quarter, I tend to remove the middle upright ones first and then look again at the tree, picking branches to form a frame work. 

Before

After

 Quite often I'll leave branches on that I can see have lots of fruit buds on, to remove a following year, I want a good frame work but I also want some fruit! You'll soon develop a keen eye for spotting the difference between fruit buds and leaf buds, it also pays to be careful as you remove branches not to knock fruit buds off from elsewhere on the tree. Remember you're shaping the tree but it still needs to be productive. 

When pruning trees it's important to remember that not everything has to be done that year, if you take too much off you'll encourage the tree to put on lots of woody growth at the expense of your fruit. Pruning fruit trees is an on going project that takes years, there's no rush! 

Before

After

I've included a few before and after pictures of trees that I did and these are by no means perfect, but they are starting to form the frame work I want. Some of the lower branches on the first tree are being left as a temporary measure to give me more fruit now and gradually I'll lift the canopy to the height I want as branches form in the right place, the second tree has the goblet shape formed now but still too much upright growth that needs to be removed in coming years. 

I know that fruit tree pruning is a daunting prospect for some so I hope this post helps, remember that you're better to have a go than not and trees soon grow branches again! 

Who else has been pruning fruit trees this winter?

Abundance Of Fruit

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?

Winter Fruit Tree Pruning - Year Three

Over the weekend I managed to get out and prune my orchard. 

It didn't take very long as the trees haven't put on much growth. Trees seem to take a while to establish in our clay soil and then when they do they grow like crazy.

Bramley apple tree before

I mainly removed lower branches to shape the tree and removed or reduced the upright growth. I also found a tree that had been killed by my neighbour when he mowed the grass for me in the summer. Not a big deal but I'll need to replace it fairly soon, I've a good sized tree called a winter banana growing in my nursery that might go in it's place.

Bramley apple tree after

My little orchard growing

Sorting scion wood to go in the fridge to store until the sap starts to rise

I also collected up a lot of these prunings to use as scion wood when I graft my trees in the spring. Yesterday me and my daughters start in front of the fire and wrapped up the scion wood with damp newspaper and then covered in cling film, each batch marked up with the variety. If anyone is going to try grafting this year let me know by email and I might have some scion wood spare for you.

Have you pruned your fruit trees yet (although not stone fruit!)?

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?

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?

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?

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?

Pears in syrup

This is just an experiment from something I read on the Internet (I say that far too often) so don't try this until I find out if it works or not. 

On Tuesday I preserved some of our "less nice" eating pears from a tree that I planted at my parents farm some years ago. I did this in a sugar syrup and it was relatively easy, but so much so I'm not sure if it will preserve them or not.

Picked the pears

 

Help picking

Peeled, quartered them and removed the core

Boiled them in a sugar syrup made up of 2 cups sugar to one water (American measure but it was an easy way).

Once they were poached I put them in some hot kilner jars (out of the oven) and then rested them upside down to check they were sealed and to sterilise the tops

Trying the goods - they tasted pretty good!

Bottled up ready to go in the cupboard - I hope they last as I made up three jars!

So that was simple but quite time consuming. I know it's not "proper" bottling but I think they should last and the website I found it on (which I can't seem to find now!) said they should last for six months like this.

Discovery

This week I've been building a large green oak frame at mum and dads farm so I could use one of their barns to build it in. Everyday I've walked over to the orchard I planted 8 years ago and helped myself to a discovery apple.

Planted 8 years ago at mum and dads

A lot of people slate the discovery apple, but fresh off the tree it takes some beating, espally when there is very little else ripe this early in the season. I think that the reason people have a bad opion of this apple is because it doesn't keep, like all early apples, and so when you buy it in the supermarket it's already on its decline.
It's a good tasting, crisp apple and after 6 months of eating imports or ones that have been in cold storage it make a refreshing change.
What other early apple does everyone else recommend?

Grafting Course

Today My mother and I went on a tree grafting course.

I've been struggling what to write about the course as, to be honest, it wasn't much good and I'm not really into writing negative reviews.

I just felt that it wasn't very well run or thought out. Although the instructor knew how to graft apple trees he didn't know huge amounts on the subject of apples and the course had a very steady pace to it. Also we were only shown how to do one method of grafting an apple tree and it would have been nice to see how to do things like cleft grafting or an example of budding so we could try that in the summer.

That said the course wasn't expensive and we did go home with two apple trees each and I now know how to graft.

The one year old nursery bed

 I found how they propagated these apples really interesting and how they used a new bed each year to produce more stock to sell. The trees in the nursery beds were spaced about 1ft apart.

A two/three year old nursery bed

 Making a graft:

Cutting the scion

A photo showing the cut and the thin "wispy" end

Cutting the root stock to accept the scion

Holding the two together so that the cambium layers on each piece are touching

beginning to tape up the graft. We just used insulation tape for this

My two grafts completed

Mum still doing hers

I did learn a few key things, like the selection of the scion where and how to make the cuts and the aftercare of the tree.

When I got home I showed my brother how to do it (we had a couple of extra root stocks as he was meant to come along but couldn't) and I taught him in about 10 minutes, by the end we had another two trees ready to go into the ground.

I'm definitely planing to do some more grafting and I might even go and buy some root stocks to graft some more this year, using scions from trees of friends of varieties that I haven't got.

I think the thing I should have done before with grafting was to go out and try it, it's fairly simple and it's not the end of the world if you get it wrong. Not sure I recommend the course but I recommend going out and trying some grafting.

Digging In the Dark

It's a good job we haven't got many neighbours. There would have been some twiching of curtains tonight if we had, as I trapes down the pitch black garden carrying a spade. I then proceeded to dig a hole in the dark.

Some Damsons from my fathers farm - It was better than a picture of me digging in the dark!

On Monday I collected the last of my trees I've ordered. A couple for my mother - a mulberry and a humbug pear, and a couple of damson trees for our little homestead here. The hole was to heal them in as unfortunatly I haven't managed to plant a single tree yet, the ground is just too wet.

When added to the other order I've three damsons to be planted in total and three different varities: King of the Damsons, Langley Bullace and Merryweather.

My parents farm (where I grew up) had a little old damson orchard and I've always loved the fruit. When I was younger my sister and I would pick and sell carrier bags full of them making extra pocket money. I still love making rock hard damson jam as well (easily my favourite jam) so I'm hoping in a few years we'll be able to make our own and maybe my daughter will be able to sell bags of damsons as well.