Early Promise - Plot Fruit

If you want your plot to provide a good return on your gardening expenses then fruit is indeed the cash cow. Soft fruit is very expensive to buy and generally sold in relatively small amounts, however, rather than saving money I would say that our fruit harvest means that we eat more fruit. There is no way we would buy the amount of soft fruit that we use by growing our own.

Our fruit growing isn't labour intensive, the busiest times being when pruning and in some cases tying in and when picking and preserving the harvests. The trees are given a winter wash to try and cut down on overwintering pests and lures are hung to control egg laying moths. We rarely water although at times we do treat the plants to a foliar feed.

At this time of year it is the pollinating insects that are working hard and to good effect.

So here's the picture on the plot fruit front at the moment - as usual some fruits are performing better than others.

Last year was a relatively poor year for greengages and plums. This year the greengages and at least one of the plum trees - Victoria - look to be showing promise of a reasonable crop.

The apples, pears and quince are also sporting lots of fruitlets but no doubt many will be discarded in the June drop. We inherited what we refer to as our apple hedge when we took on that area of the plot some twelve years ago. The trees were overgrown, ties had cut into the bark, the trunks were gnarled and damaged and advice would have maybe been to remove the trees altogether.

They are still producing a good harvest every year and whilst this is the case they will stay put.

The plot cherry has some fruit but each year the tree is devastated by wood pigeons. They shred the leaves which weakens the tree. Another cherry tree that grows on, what was until last year, an abandoned plot is left untouched. Maybe the leaves don't taste as good as those of our tree. Our tree is difficult to net effectively so we are thinking of reducing it to more of a bush shape.

We also inherited a tayberry (that may be a loganberry). It's a thug and usually we miss most of the fruit which is hiding in the middle of a thicket of viciously spiky canes. Last year I decided to go on the offensive and reduced the number of canes that I allowed to grow to an absolute minimum - two or three canes to each clump. At the moment it is sending up new canes for next year and I am only allowing those that I intend to keep for next year to develop. The rest are being cut out. The bees are busily pollinating the flowers which I hope will produce fruit that is more accessible.

The thornless blackberry is much friendlier and is covered in blossom. Each year it supports a bumper crop and it looks as if this year will be no exception.

More inherited fruit bushes were our redcurrants which also produce a good yearly crop. We took down the netting last year so we could tidy up the area. The blackbirds are hoping that we forget to renew the protection as they are looking forward to swooping in and stripping the plants at the first sign of redness.

Last year was quite a poor year for blackcurrants but this year look more promising. As for the whitecurrant, it rarely produces much fruit and those that it does manage to produce are very small. Maybe this will be the year that it shines.

We have four blueberry bushes which produces another fruit that the blackbird is partial to so will also need netting. At the moment the earliest variety is setting fruit and the latest is producing flowers.

Less tempting to the birds are our two cranberry plants. These grow in tubs outside of the greenhouse. They had become very messy and so this year were treated to haircut and fresh compost. They seem to be happier for it.

We have a grapevine growing alongside the shed. It produces grapes each year but they don't manage to reach maturity. Maybe if we have a good summer things will be different.

Another fruit that we haven't sampled yet is the honeyberry. We have four bushes which flower well but I think that we have a pollination issue. We bought four plants as at the time it was recommended that more than one plant was needed for pollination. There also was no mention of different varieties - our plants were sold as honeyberries. They were from a reputable source but honeyberries were relatively new. It now appears that a different variety is needed to cross pollinate but we don't know which variety ours are. Apparently a honeysuckle will help pollination so maybe an early flowering variety will fit the bill. 

The Japanese wineberry has no pollination problem and produced a good crop last year. It's early days yet to be able to tell whether this will be repeated.

Another pollination issue has been with us for several years. We have two kiwi vines - a male and a female. They were bought as a compatible pair but although the female produces flowers every year,  (this year it has excelled in this department), probably due to desperation and the male has never even tried to flower.

I've no idea how to encourage him as I have already tried everything that has been advised. We could buy another male but would it be a suitable pollinator and how long would it take to reach flowering stage?

The jostaberries and gooseberries have plenty of young fruits but will the wood pigeons leave the jostaberries for us. Usually they rampage amongst the branches many of which break under their weight.

The summer raspberries have plenty of bud. Tulameen is a traditional summer fruiting variety. It has lots of blossom and is attracting plenty of bees,

Glencoe - the purple raspberry is also loaded with flowers and bees. The plants in the newly renovated All Gold autumn fruiting raspberry bed are growing well. Joan J is another autumn fruiting variety. These plants were replanted last year and are sporting some out of season flower buds. I must have left some old canes when I cut them back. I'll leave them now. The newly planted black raspberry is looking a bit weedy so I hope that it is concentrating on building up strong roots.

Finally all the plants on our two strawberry beds have survived winter. As the varieties fruit at different times and so as expected some are full of flower and other are just in leaf. The alpine strawberries have lots of flowers too.

Surprisingly most of the flowers survived the frosts that affected our potatoes and are setting lots of fruit.

So far everything is looking promising - we just need the weather and pests to be kind to our plants.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett