GROW FRUIT TO IMPRESS

GROW FRUIT TO IMPRESS

The world we live in seems to change at an ever increasing speed and the older generation struggles to keep up with technological improvements. We spend hours trying to understand how to work the tablet, mobile phone, new printers and smart gadgets. The instructions on disc are in English, but not in a language easy to understand unless you have a grasp of symbols. Our kids get round this through education from primary schools onwards, then spending hours in the bedroom free to roam around cyberspace. I visited a friend’s new house and remarked how impressed I was at the ample open space for the kids to play on.

Cherry Cherokee

They all laughed as they told me kids don’t do that any more. Afraid that was my generation. Anyway, back in the world of gardening things are advancing but not at quite the same pace. The need to produce food to save money has gone for most folk, so now our allotments are a social meeting point of like minded souls and a place to chill out with some fresh air and relaxation after a wee bit of strenuous exercise. We grow for healthy food to eat and produce crops to impress our friends. We now grow rocket, mizuna, sweet corn, Swiss chard and now kale and rhubarb are back in fashion as must have healthy foods to eat.

Fig Brown Turkey

Fruit crops are going through the same changes, so now we have raspberries and strawberries fruiting from early summer till autumn, apples suited to the very small gardens and now everyone is having a go at the unusual and exotic crops. Nurseries, plant breeders and scientists are all out to improve plant performance and extend the range of plants available. Our gardens and allotments can be a great source of pleasure as we amaze our fellow gardeners with new, unusual and sometimes exotic fruit plants.

Fig Brown Turkey is quite successful in Scotland outdoors if given the shelter and warmth of a south facing wall and grown in a pit to restrict root growth and encourage fruiting.

Peaches are also successful up north outdoors with the same south facing fence or wall, but because of the peach leaf curl disease use the variety Avalon Pride which gets some disease but not enough to curtail growth and fruiting.

Grape Brant growing outdoors

Cherries are also possible outdoors with varieties like Cherokee especially if grown on the dwarfing rootstock Gisella 5. This keeps the height down to about six feet so nets can be used to keep birds off the fruits.

Saskatoons are easy to grow and are quite similar to blueberries but fruit a few weeks earlier. They produce a far heavier crop than blueberries and also need protection from birds.

Grapes grown outdoors in Scotland are a new venture. At present there are many hardy varieties to choose from. I am having success with Brant, Phoenix and Rondo with Solaris showing promise and Seigerrebe which crops early could be another to watch. It is a very heavy cropper, but grapes are small, though very sweet so can be a problem with wasps.

Strawberries can now fruit for 6 months from mid May by selecting a range of varieties and giving a row of earlies some polythene tunnel protection.

Raspberries can fruit from summer to autumn with a few varieties including Polka and Autumn Treasure for the late crops. Glen Fyne is brilliant in summer with the newer Glen Dee just planted.

Scottish Heritage apple Pearl

Apple and pear trees now come in many different forms to suit both large and very small gardens. Fans, cordons and espaliers were normal for walls but now we have narrow columnar shapes and low stepover plants. Where space is restricted you can buy a family tree with several varieties grown on one tree, or you can graft new varieties, (try Pearl a heritage type) onto your own tree as it is not too difficult. I will show this technique in a March feature for grafting in early spring.

Wee jobs to do this week

Sharpen up the garden shears

If frost or snow prevent outdoor activities take the chance of going through the gardening tools to make sure you are ready for the year ahead. Repair or replace broken or worn out spades, rakes, hoes, shears, garden lines, brushes or hoses that leak. Take a file and sharpen shears and hoes.

As I will be doing some grafting in March my knife will get sharpened with a carborundum stone.

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A WINTER’S DAY IN THE GARDEN

A WINTER’S DAY IN THE GARDEN

The festive season is now well over, the Christmas tree and lights, is packed away for another year, and the bottles of amber nectar have been emptied, but plans for the garden and allotment are well advanced, so once my head clears a wee trip round the garden is on the cards, weather permitting.

Frost and snow and a few gales are most likely at this time of year, but there are always a few bright, but cold days when life in the garden struggles on. The winter of 2010 was our last serious cold snap when I couldn’t even reach the greenhouse as the snow was so deep, but the grape vines and overwintering lettuce still survived.

Snowed up

However outdoors it was a different story as many plants of a more tender nature got wiped out. Agapanthus, Leptospermum and my well established date palm paid the price. Eucalyptus lost a few leaves, but survived and Fuchsia Mrs Popple and my tall palm trees, Cordyline australis got cut down to ground level, but both came back again eventually. We keep a close watch on the weather forecasters, but promises of heatwaves and threats of impending gloom as low pressure systems screaming across the Atlantic head in our direction, but often just miss Tayside. It is this unpredictability that makes success in gardening quite an adventure.

Cornus Westonbirt

However the sun is shining so I have a flower border in need of composting and digging before the snow arrives. While outside adjacent to this border, is my grape vine border sheltered with south facing walls planted up with snowdrops quite happy to be in full flower from December through to February. Even a covering of snow does them no harm as they will just wait till it melts then open up as normal. Looking further afield you will see many other daffodils, crocus, tulips and aconites and other bulbs pushing up into daylight at every opportunity.

 The yellow flowered climbing shrub Jasminum nudiflorum is another plant quite happy in a colder climate but ready to open up its flowers on a sunny day. Viburnum bodnantense Dawn with scented pink flowers is another charmer to brighten up the winter months, and Mahonia Charity can be quite striking as an architectural specimen in a heather garden with its long racemes of yellow flowers.

Snowdrops in December

When you enjoy being in the garden twelve months of the year, not just from spring to autumn, you learn to grow those plants that are at their best in winter. The coloured stemmed Cornus, willow, Salix britzensis, green stemmed Kerrias, grey stemmed Rubus and coral red Maples are brilliant if mass planted in drifts. If you have room add a white stemmed birch, Betula jacquemontii for size and drama, and at ground level plant more drifts of heathers at their best in winter. Erica carnea comes in white, pink and red flowers and Calluna Goldsworth Crimson and Beoley Gold have striking golden and bronze foliage enhanced after a few frosty days.

Up at the allotment we can still harvest fresh kale, a winter cabbage and cauliflower Aalsmeer as well as a few parsnips, leeks,

Winter cauliflower Aalsmeer

Swedes and rocket. However no sprouts for me as I dug them all out after they failed to button up, though I am told blown sprouts are delicious in a stir fry. Too late!!!

Another dry sunny day and I can add some well rotted compost as a mulch around my fruit bushes, especially useful around gooseberries as it seems to stop attacks from sawfly maggot.

Leaves in the garden are now all raked up and added to my new compost heap mixed in with other garden debris from the autumn tidy up, so after a couple of months this will get turned and I hope to have good compost ready for spring planting of potatoes and early summer planting of courgettes and pumpkins that really benefit from plenty of organic matter to grow into and retain moisture.

Water festive pot plants carefully

As cold weather comes and goes keep checking the bird table for food and top up the water dish. If the water is frozen, knock it out and replace with warmer water that will last a few hours before freezing up again. Any apples going off in store are fine for the blackbirds once all the brown bits are cut off and it is sliced in half.

Wee jobs to do this week

Indoors, water and feed orchids, azaleas, amaryllis and poinsettias carefully, but don’t flood them. Give them light and some warmth, but keep well away from radiators and draughts.

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GARDEN PLANS FOR 2017

GARDEN PLANS FOR 2017

Festive holidays may be a time to relax, but getting involved in next year’s garden plans can also be very relaxing. Armed with a few new plant and seed catalogues we can sit back in comfort as we decide what new ventures lie ahead for 2017.  Decision making is always assisted with the help of some festive liquid refreshment, most of which was home grown such as the gooseberry wine, coming out as top favourite but closely followed by the Saskatoon and apple. The currants, black, white and red all make distinctly different wines, and the Chokeberry (Aronia) is in another world altogether. Anyway I usually start plans for each year based on the previous year’s results.
If some crops were outstanding in 2016 I will repeat them again this year.

Ronda grape on trial

Thus tomato Sweet Million, a very productive and sweet cherry type and Sungold, another cherry in yellow, but just as sweet, will both be in the schedule. Potato Amour produced a huge crop of immense sized spuds with a great flavour and Casa Blanca is perfect as a salad potato full of flavour. Charlotte, another salad type was also a winner and Sarpo Mira gave a great crop so will come back for 2017. I was not impressed with Genson, so it will not get a second chance.

Staying with root crops, I was very impressed with my gardening magazine freebie Beetroot Cylindrica, so will get more for 2017. Parsnip Gladiator was very tasty but the long roots were not as thick as other types. Brassicas had a poor year mainly on account of severe clubroot infections. If the variety of cabbage, cauliflower or Brussels sprouts are not resistant to clubroot they will fail on my soil, so I will only use clubroot resistant types, and experiment with different sowing dates.

New raspberry Glen Dee

Brussels sprouts Bedford Fillbasket never filled any basket as every sprout blew wide open, so Sprouts for the festive lunch came from our local supermarket. I will need to go back to that old variety, but very reliable, Wellington.

Another gardening magazine freebie was a packet of mixed salad leaves. Within this mixture of the good the bad and the ugly appeared a fantastic red frilled lettuce, Lollo Rosso, which will definitely be on the list for 2017. It is very attractive and is crisp and full of flavour.

Anna samples strawberry Albion

In the fruit garden, the autumn raspberries Polka and Autumn Treasure were both very impressive with the latter cropping from late august till the frosts. Summer fruiting Glen Fyne gave a huge crop and the newer variety Glen Dee shows a lot of promise for 2017.

Bramble Reuben has had a couple of seasons to sort itself out but failed miserably. Described as a primocane, with huge fruits borne on shoots grown the same year. As mine never flowered till November both last year and this year I have had no crop at all. However I am leaving the canes for another year to see how they perform as a normal floricane. I did that in 2016 but with weak shoots only growing five feet tall the fruits produced were miserable, with an average size of 1.5 cms, hardly the size of a small plum as in the catalogue description.

Euonymous ground cover

New strawberry Albion fruits from mid summer till late autumn, but is a wee bit hard, so will get another year. Strawberry Colossus did not fruit last year so I am hoping to report back with good news of huge berries this coming summer.

My pear tree cropped so poorly that it is scheduled for grafting some Concorde shoots onto the tree to see if this will help with pollination in the future.

Garden flowers improvements to show in 2017 will be more mass planting of tulips, oriental lilies and dwarf azaleas to assist ground cover. Euonymus ground cover is already proving very attractive giving a bright splash of colour all winter.

Completing Lady in Red painting at end of 2016

Wee jobs to do this week

Favourable autumn and winter weather has allowed the garden to get tidied up, and the allotment digging to be completed, and now back indoors in the studio I am finishing off my last painting for 2016 as my “Lady in Red” does some shopping in Dundee High Street, so as I relax into the festive spirit the only wee job left for this week is to wish all my readers a happy New Year.

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LOOKING BACK OVER 2016

LOOKING BACK OVER 2016

The Festive season is a time to relax and enjoy the benefits of our labour over the past year. We have filled the freezer with fruit and vegetables, there is ample fruit and vegetables in storage, and plenty leeks, swedes, cabbages, winter cauliflower, kale, winter lettuce, rocket, Swiss chard and parsnips still quietly growing through the winter months. It is a time to look back and review the year, looking at the successes, failures, varieties we grow, sowing dates and how much we have worked with the climate that can never be relied on as no one knows what is normal any more.

John and Anna wish everybody a very Merry Christmas

However it is the climate more than anything else that determines how plants will grow. The UK climate varies dramatically from north to south and east to west, but looking back my Dundee area hasnae done too bad. Early on we came through a reasonably mild winter which had snowdrops beginning to flower the previous December, just a bit like this winter as mine are all showing white tips as I write. The year will go on record as a mild dry year, with always just enough rain to keep plants growing in between warm dry weather. The south of UK got plenty heatwaves, which we were promised would travel north, but the heat seemed to wither away round about the borders.

Fuchsia Mrs Popple

Spring arrived early and never got too warm so displays of daffodils, crocus and tulips were brilliant and lasted a very long time. Fruit trees flowered abundantly, and there always seemed to be plenty bees around to pollinate them. The apples gave the heaviest crop ever and had to get some serious thinning. Fiesta was my biggest winner as fruit was huge, very flavoursome and is still very fresh in storage. Discovery and Red Devil both cropped heavily. Pears looked great in full blossom, but only produced three fruits, so either a late frost stopped fertilisation or my four varieties on one tree are not compatible. I thought Conference, Comice, The Christie and Beurre hardy would help to pollinate each other, so next March I will graft some Concorde onto the tree to see if that helps.

Figs also had a great year, as did all my currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, saskatoons and brambles. New autumn raspberry Polka was excellent with large fruits and spine free stems. Autumn Treasure was also good, but fruited a fortnight later. My new primocane bramble

Red tuberous begonias

Reuben was a disaster as the new canes never flowered till November, then withered away. I will leave the canes in place and see how it fares as a floricane type.

New perpetual strawberry Albion was cropping right into November, but the flesh is very firm and not as soft as we expect from a summer strawberry. I will retain it another year and review progress.

The dry mild summer brought out the best in flowering plants with geraniums, begonias, fuchsias  and roses all at their best, but petunias were miserable as they really like it to be a wee bit warmer.

Vegetables had a mixed year, as disease was hard to control, so the onions suffered some white rot, brassicas got clubroot and potatoes got blackleg and late blight, though I still got a great crop with Amour producing huge spuds. Broad and French beans, peas, courgettes

Tulip Monte orange

and pumpkins all had a great year, but root crops have not been as big as in previous years.

Indoor and outdoor grapes had a very good year, but the lack of a warm sunny autumn did not help to ripen up the fruits and increase the sugar content, other than with Muscat flavoured Seigerrebe which ripens in August and was this year’s star attraction. Just a pity the fruit is so small.

The dry autumn allowed me to complete all my composting and digging ahead of winter and now raking up leaves will soon be completed so next year’s compost heap will have a good start.

Now I am well ahead of gardening tasks, I can sit back, enjoy the festive season, and with a glass of three year old Saskatoon wine in hand let’s look to 2017 and make new plans. Cheers!!!

Check over fruit and veg in store

Wee jobs to do this week

Rake Check over stored apples onions potatoes beetroot carrots as well as dahlias, begonias and gladioli and remove any with signs of decay in case it spreads to healthy plants.

Check chrysanthemums stools growing in the cold greenhouse for overwintering greenfly on young foliage. Try to keep them frost free and growing away slowly.

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