Victoria Plum

When we moved here a decade ago I planted fruit trees straight away, I wanted an orchard as soon as possible. 10 years on some of these trees have thrived and some haven't. I've added many more since that first planting and I'd say we have well over 100 apple trees dotted around the place, plums I was a bit slower to put in. I have only one that is ten years old as the other (a early transparent gage) died last year unfortunately.  

I have tried to fill the gaps in my plum crop where I can, adding many more trees over the years. We now have a young cherry plum hedge that is slowly growing, dotted with more Victoria plums, and I have added the widest selection of plums in the orchard that I could find to try to spread the season.  I have also planted as many damson and bullaces as I can as well to do the same. 

 Alas, most are yet to fruit. My old Victoria has given us a few this year though. I think it's a plum that takes some beating, like a Conference pear, it really is the best of the lot. 

This tree is grown above the bantam pen, and is netted so quite hard to get at the fruit, but it is worth it. Few things compare to a freshly picked plum straight from the tree, the taste of summer in a fruit. 

Do you have a fruit that you have planted a number of varieties to spread the harvest? What's one fruit you wish you could grow year round, or that grows in a climate different to your own?

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.

Fruit Tree Nursery 2014

Last weekend I finally managed to finish grafting and planting all of my fruit trees.

 I planted them in two separate beds quite close together to try to encourage them to grow straight and true. I 've also experimented a little bit as one lot was planted through some old weed suppressant matting I had left from ages ago and the other will be mulched with straw

In these two little beds is hopefully my future cider orchard, some apricots and nectarines to see if I can get them to grow in our cold spot, cherries so we can have delicious stone fruit in the summer, plums and pears to grow around the veg garden and some more apple trees to grow and sell.

140 in total this year, should be interesting to see how they do.

Did anyone else get round to doing any grafting this year?

Trading Skills - Orchard Renovation

My friend Sean who did the plastering when we renovated the living room, didn't want payment when he did the work for me, instead he wanted to have some favours in the bank for work he wanted done at his place. I almost prefer this trading of skills rather than handing over money - the trouble is I assumed he'd want my carpentry skills!

 Sunday morning I went to his to begin to pay him back. In the recent storms he had a plum tree half blown over and caught up in a pine tree next to it. This is in his little 1 acre orchard that's not had any work done to the trees in a long while.

The tree, although not massive, was in a quite a dangerous place as the weight of them was being supported by a few branches of this other tree. It had to come down with my help or fall down sometime soon.

 Although I have a chainsaw I'm no expert, unlike my tree surgeon brother, but luckily I've worked with him enough to know what to do and how to approach the job. I must say that since buying our smallholding my skills with a chainsaw have increased dramatically! 

I slowly worked on the tree making sure I tidied up as I went along, to reduce the number of hazards I was working around, and this way I was just left with the branches that were hung up in the other tree with nothing else obstructing them.

 Then it was a simple matter of a few well placed cuts and letting it fall to the ground. I was quite pleased with myself that it went so well!

 I then logged it up for Sean and left him with a big pile of brash to clean up!

Before I went we set our "tree karma" straight and planted three trees that I had brought with me to replace the one that was cut down. We planted a cherry, pear and apple, the apple. Sean's son Oliver  helped, he seemed to really enjoy digging the holes and getting the trees in - I wonder if he wants to help me plant a couple of hundred willow cuttings?

Storing Grafting Wood

In the fridge, above the yogurts and beside the butter, there is a bag of wood.

Keeping this sort of thing in our fridge is not completely unusual in our house.

The bags contain scion wood of 18 different varieties of apple, cherry, apricot, plum and pear trees that I will use for grafting at the end of this month. Each variety is stored with a wet bit of newspaper around it's base and then wrapped in cling film with a label stating what tree it is. I check these every few weeks to make sure they haven't dried out and they are kept so they won't ever freeze.

I found quite a bit of conflicting information about storing scion wood on a small scale so I hope this is the best way. Anyone else storing scion wood at the moment?