Fruity News - Part 1

I was going to give you an update on how all our fruit bushes and trees were doing in the garden and on the plot but looking through my photos, I decided that would end up as one very long post. So I've decided to split it in two. Starting with the garden and greenhouse as they are nearest to hand.

I'll start outside with our John Downie crab apple tree. I must admit after once making crab apple jelly with the fruits we have treated this as more of an ornamental than a productive tree. It's not that the jelly was unsuccessful but we just don't really eat jams and jellies. At the moment John Downie is as usual producing lots of buds which give a lovely display when they are all open. It's going to be interesting to see what happens this year as the favourite feeding place of the pair of bullfinches that have started to be regular visitors is the old bird table that you can see nestling amongst the branches. These birds are said to cause big problems in apple orchards by stripping the buds so will they leave our buds alone and stick to the seed that we put out?

Quite close to this is the medlar tree again mainly planted for decorative purposes - we once made medlar jelly and did try to eat the fruits after bletting them but they tasted very yeasty. This tree is just leafy and no flower buds are yet visible.

Moving behind the greenhouse we come to first the strawberries in the cold frame. I couldn't resist potting up some runners that the plants on the plot threw out with great determination. I rationalised that I may lose some plants over winter and these could be replacements but it seems most plants on the plot have survived. Can you have too many strawberries?

Moving on to the apples - these are what remains of some apples that we used to have as cordons along the fence. They somehow survived the big chop to grow sneakily into sort of trees. We're glad they did as they produce lovely apples and are now in bud.

Close by right behind the greenhouse is a Conference pear which also was once a cordon. It produces lots of fruit - some of which can cause a problem by falling through the greenhouse roof. Much of the glass under the tree had been replaced with acrylic sheets which can withstand pears dropping onto them better. The pear is in full flower - just hope we don't get a keen frost to spoil the blossom and that there are enough insects braving the cold to pollinate the flowers.

If you look in the top right hand corner of the above photo you can see the peach tree that is planted in a large pot by the greenhouse door. This is also flowering although sadly the flowers look a little sorry for themselves. Again it needs some insect activity. It has lots of flowers but will it have fruit?

Moving inside the greenhouse we have our new nectarine which also has produced lots of flower. I've been tickling the flowers but will I have been as effective as a bee - I doubt it. Now we can compare the blossom to the peach outside I can see why T&M realised that we had the wrong tree. nectarine blossom is much paler.

Across from the nectarine is the fig that 'died' last year and rose from the dead. We've never had any figs yet that have grown to maturity so maybe this year will be a a first.  Don't look at the untidy greenhouse - we would tidy up but there never seems the space to do so without damaging plants! Well that's our excuse!

Moving further into the greenhouse is the Issai kiwi that is now flourishing and producing lots of buds - it did this last year but then gave up. We hope repotting into an ericaceous compost will mean it happily produces fruit this year.

Behind that is the new apricot which has no sign of flower but is looking fairly healthy - no apricots this year then!

Finally the grapevine is bursting into growth - once it gets going there will be no stopping it. The flower clusters are developing at the same time as the leaves. 

Now you can see why I decided not to put all the fruity news on one post!

By the way I've popped some extra tabs at the top of the blog so that if you like you can keep 'tabs' on the things we sow and harvest each month. Martyn is also logging germination times. And don't forget the latest competition - if you don't enter then you definitely won't win will you?