Fruity News - Blossoming on the plot!

The blossom of the plot is beautiful at the moment - I just hope that much of it converts to fruit. 

One fruit that I really really look forward to is the cherry. The cherry tree - Summer Sun is loaded with blossom. It develops up the branches of the tree like a sleeve. The very ends of the branches are devoid of flower so I'm guessing that flowers don't form on new wood - this should mean that we can snip off the ends of the branches - if we dare - this has to be done during the growing season to avoid disease. We don't want the tree to grow too high as we need to cover it with netting once the fruits start to turn. As the birds love cherries as much as we do failure to do this will result in disappointment! If only every single flower developed into a fruit!

We have three fairly new pear trees. 

The one that is in full flower is Delsanne. This is fortunately partially self fertile but will set more fruit if one of the other pears will oblige and help with pollination.

It's immediate neighbour Red William's has flowers still just in bud but a few have opened - they look remarkably like apple blossom buds. 

And the third Invincible is somewhere between the two others having more flowers open than the Williams but still having buds too. Hopefully this variety will bridge the gap and cross pollinate with both of the two other trees. That's what must have happened last year as we had fruit on all three trees.

We're not expecting much from our plum and gages as last year we had a bumper harvest - so much so that one of the plum trees - Marjorie's Seedling buckled under the weight of fruit and lost its leading branch. It is this tree, however that has the most blossom. Oullins Gage and Victoria only seem to have a sparse spattering of blossom. Maybe Marjorie is in panic mode and thinks it needs to reproduce quickly. (By the way we have tidied up the grass since this photo was taken - well that's the royal we - Martyn has)

One of the greengages - Reine Claude - has more blossom than the Mannings gage too.

It would suit us if the varieties of gages and plums decide to produce good crops in different years as this way we can avoid one year of plenty and the next of only a few fruits.


The most the apple trees are managing are some tightly closed buds. These are the early varieties others have no sign of buds yet. Sensible fruit!

As for the quince - so far only unfurling leaves. I hope this has fruit again this year as we really developed a taste for quince last year in spite of only having about eight fruits. Don't look too closely at the photo as the bed needs weeding!

Not a tree but I am including the blueberries in this post. We have four but can't remember the varieties. I do know that they all flower at a slightly different time. The first one is flowering at the moment. 

I'm afraid the quality of some of these photos is a bit 'off' but they were taken in the gloom so hopefully we'll do better next time!


The blossom is beautiful but I can't wait to see how much fruit sets!