Are you planting trees?

[Millymollymandy]

Arrrggggh I have pruned and pruned and fed and fed and weeded and hoed and sprayed blooming Bordeaux Mix!!!!!!! They are all manky and cankerous but I'm doing the best I can to rejuvenate them!

[hedgewizard]

Well then, give it some time! You've seen how hard I have pruned mine back... there's another one two years further on than that, and it has another three years left before I decide if it stays or goes... I'm hoping in that time I can tempt some hoary old green-fingered son of the soil into my garden to tell me if I'm wasting my time!

[Millymollymandy]

I am giving it time! Blimey I've only been here 18 months. There are, however, varieties of apple (and other fruit, particularly cherry) which tend to bear every other year. Also climactic conditions can cause that too. So I guess after last year's drought, there's every possibility we may get few or no apples this year either.

P.S. There were no apples in my hamlet last year - either the same varieties or suffering the same problems!

[hedgewizard]

Sorry - I thought you'd been there ages!

Disease, climate, drought, too limiting a rootstock - it all makes for an unhappy scion. We had poor yields last year too (although you've seen my pruning regime...) so this year I'm taking no chances. 7cm rough compost mulches, buried leaky pipe, and fish bone and blood meal. Plus summer pruning (a first for me) to encourage spur formation!

[Millymollymandy]

I've been in France for ages, just not in this house!

So I've only winter pruned the apples twice so far and missed the summer pruning last year cos I was too busy elsewhere in the garden! There are far too many fruit trees here and a good job most of them are not producing much or else we'd be rather inundated!

I do wonder with summer pruning though - how can you SEE what you are doing? There are leaves everywhere! OK on young specimens, but mature trees?

So I go for the prune nearly everything in winter/spring because I can't see what I am doing in summer. And then in winter I am faced with all that whippy growth that should've been pruned in summer. Oh well I never claimed to be an expert!

[alcina]

Yay! I've finally managed to get a sour cherry! A "Nabella" morello-type cherry, 10 quid from Homebase. It's a bit late to be planting a bare root plant, but it seems to have been well cared for in a plastic bag pot thing and had already put out new roots and healthy buds so I figure it's ok.

I wanted a sour cherry as opposed to a sweet cherry as it's one of the few fruits that will grow and produce fruit in shady areas - this one is now in a pot on my Northern shade patio. Yum..yum...cherry pie!

Alcina

[glenniedragon]

I've just been given a young 5ft sapling of a cox's that a friend has tended from seed, so I'll be planting that over the weekend...very pleased I must make sure to take special care as Jan's raised it so well!

take care
Deb