TIME TO HARVEST THE APPLES

  TIME TO HARVEST THE APPLES

Every person I speak to about their apples, plums and pears seem to have a story to tell, and none of them are positive. The keen gardener can dig, drain, manure and cultivate his soil to improve it as necessary. We can buy strong healthy plants of good varieties. We can provide shelter and irrigation (in a dry year) but we can’t do a thing about the weather. I am very conscious that this year almost every article has had a reference to how the weather has adversely affected most flowers, fruit and vegetables. Now it is time to assess how the top fruit has fared in this unusual climate.

I grow six varieties of apples though next year it will be nine once my new grafts start to fruit. I also have a huge thirty year old plum tree, a pear tree with four varieties grafted onto it and of course my peach tree. I am sure my experience this year will sound familiar with many others all over UK.

That wonderful sunny March

The growing year started with great promise when the summer arrived in early March and stayed the whole month. It was very warm and sunny and got many trees off to a great start.

My peaches were the first to flower and although I hand pollinate with a fine sable brush, there were a few early bees around to assist with the pollination. I got an excellent fruit set.

The plum tree was also laden with blossom and bee activity was in evidence. I have a Berberis darwinii planted underneath it which flowers at the same time. Bees absolutely adore it so they go for the berberis then fly up to the plum for a wee change of diet. Everything looked great.

If this is the effect of global warming in Scotland, fantastic!!!

Into April, but winter’s not yet finished

We all got fooled. Winter came back, temperatures dropped and the rain came on, and never went off. In fact it is now October and it is still raining!!! The pear tree varieties Conference and Comice came into flower in early April brought forward by the brilliant March, but the bees had disappeared so pollination never happened. However some people have had good pear tree pollination with good crops. Results are very variable.

The plum tree flowers never had a chance. Instead of my normal one hundred plus plums I only found two that survived. It did not take long to bring in that harvest and this year there was no risk of me falling out of the tree trying to reach that gorgeous Victoria plum hanging at the end of a long branch at the top of the tree.

Apple trees were a beautiful sight on a few sunny days towards the end of April and did manage to get pollinated. The pollen has to grow down the flower pistil to the ovaries to fertilise the embryo and needs mild conditions. It did not get this so a successful fruit set was very patchy.

Dessert apples were quite good except for Fiesta a biennial bearer in its off year so no surprise there. Though to be fair getting about twenty large apples in its off year was quite pleasing.

Bramley was the big disappointment with only about a 20% fruit set, and the fruit is small and misshapen. Apple seed produce growth hormones to swell the fruit. If some of the seed is infertile because it never got fertilised then that part of the fruit does not develop and results in a lumpy misshapen fruit.

A cold and wet summer

Good crops of Oslin, Discovery, Red Falstaff and Red Devil gave a lot of early promise, but constant rainfall together with cool weather allowed brown rot to attack the fruit and take out a lot of fruit, especially the Oslin. Then fruit cracking affected a lot of the Discovery. Cracking can start with very small fruit affected by a late frost, or too much water. This causes the fruit to swell faster than the skin can grow so a small crack appears. Discovery is quite resistant to scab, but in this very wet year scab gained a hold and the scabs can cause cracks to form often allowing brown rot fungus to enter. In a normal year Discovery is one of the best early apples for our area. The poor fruit harvest in 2012 has affected growers all over the UK as well as Europe and the USA.

However Red Devil and Red Falstaff are the success stories as neither has been troubled too much, though sweetness and flavour are not at their best.

My good crop of peaches slowly succumbed to the wet weather and one by one the fruit rotted and fell off, though we did get a few sweet juicy survivors.

Plant of the week

 Nerine bowdenii commonly known as the Guernsey Lily provides a very welcome splash of bright pink flowers from September to the end of October. They come from South Africa so prefer to grow in full sun. They need good drainage and are quite happy in poor to normal garden soils that can retain moisture. Good soil only encourages foliage at the expense of flowers. Once planted leave them undisturbed for many years as they flower best when overcrowded. Bulbs planted in autumn should be mulched for winter protection in the first couple of years, or plant them in spring. The foliage appears in spring and grows through summer, then dies down just before flowering.

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LAST OF THE SUMMER FLOWERS

 LAST OF THE SUMMER FLOWERS

The prospect of an Indian summer was always high in our hopes to make up for an otherwise mediocre summer to put it mildly. However gales and floods were on the menu, so the sun lounger has now been stored away till 2013 which I am sure is bound to be a good year.

Garden plants however, do not give up so easily and will continue to push out some flowers at every opportunity. It is very pleasant to wander around the garden when that elusive sun nips out for the occasional half hour and just see what nature provides.

Confused plants

The weird weather has confused the garden plants just as much as humans. However we have papers and television to inform us what is going on. They get no guidance so expect the unusual.

Just like last year, my brilliant white Hellebores, (Christmas Rose) started to flower in September with green flowers, so looks like I have lost another year with this little beauty which normally sits outside my patio windows in full flower in the middle of winter.

Purple Delospermas are still in full flower even as we are now well beyond summer, when this succulent ground cover plant is at its best in a dry hot climate.

Oriental poppies and even my Delphiniums are having a second go at flowering, though both put on magnificent displays in early to mid summer.

Anemone Honorine Jobert just keeps on flowering, though the early flush at the end of summer was brilliant. They just keep going.

Fuchsia Mrs Popple can always be relied upon to flower till the first frosts appear. This year it has given us a lot of very tasty fruit to eat. If you have not tried it, give it a go. They are quite edible and different from other sweeter summer fruits.

Back on the allotment, one lady had a few onions run to seed. These were left to develop into huge purple balls of colour which Helen had cut to take to school to show her pupils how plants grow.

Normal late flowering plants.

Roses gave a far better second flush than the first one which suffered the worst of the cold wet weather. They are now continuing to flower quite profusely, though black spot disease has decimated the foliage. Spraying this year has been impossible as frequent rain showers washes the spray off before it gets a chance to work. You really need to work with forecasted weather and hope that they have got it right if they indicated two or three dry days in a row.

Sweet peas on my allotment were ok, but the variety I chose for being highly scented did not have a good colour range. However my next door neighbour Lynn had an excellent show which I managed to get a good picture from. Sweet peas have been good this year.

Early flowering chrysanthemums are only now beginning to flower. They should have started in August. I bought in a batch of spray varieties from Harold Walker Nurseries from Chester. They do not need disbudding so are quite labour saving, but it has taken them a long time to make some decent growth. The range was topped up with some lovely pink and purple sprays bought from a chrysanthemum grower at Gardening Scotland in June. His Regal Mist is a cracker. He had a huge display on his stand, but one, Barca Red was outstanding. It was the deepest rich purple I had ever seen, but when I tried to buy some plants there was none available. He imported the new variety from China and it is not to be marketed for another four years. However he didn’t like to see me so disappointed so he offered me a spare flowering spike. It was a gorgeous colour so I looked after it very carefully. The stem had been disbudded, but there was still some leaves on the stem that had not yet grown buds. Always keen to try my hand at propagating, so I took about ten leaf bud cuttings about two inches long and dropped them around some pots in compost. Every one rooted and most produced growth from the dormant buds. I am now waiting on them to give me some flowers, but I really do need that Indian summer.

Plant of the week

 Houttuynia is a brightly coloured foliage plant growing about a foot tall. It is a herbaceous perennial that loves moist, even boggy soil and well placed around the edge of a pond. It will thrive in shade to full sun preferring clay soils which hold moisture. The species, H. cordata can become invasive but the variety Chameleon is less vigorous and makes a bright splash of colour.

It is easy to propagate by division.

It comes from Japan, Korea and China where it grows in moist shade.

In Vietnam the leaves are used as a vegetable, the Chinese cook and eat the roots and the Japanese use the foliage for a herbal tea tonic. The plant has featured for years in traditional Chinese medicine and now it extracts from the plant are being studied by scientists for use against numerous ailments.

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AUTUMN IS ARRIVING

I THINK AUTUMN IS ARRIVING

The sweet corn has been harvested, the onions are drying off and the pumpkins are beginning to colour up so all the signs are in place that autumn is just round the corner. Just like everyone else I am still waiting on summer to arrive, but it is getting a bit late now. I should never have joked to a guest from Italy way back in March while enjoying an unbelievable warm sunny spell lasting the whole month. I said I hoped they enjoyed the early Scottish summer, as that would probably be it, reasoning that by tradition, any period of three or more days of constant sunshine constituted a Scottish summer. I was just joking, but fate kicked in to make my humour come true.

We won’t forget this year. Everyone has a tale to tell and most of them concern water logging and the year of the slug and snail.

Harvesting of crops is well under way, the freezer is bulging, and our healthy lifestyle with fresh supplies of fruit and veg. every day has become routine.

Vegetables

Cabbage, kale, lettuce, radish, spring onions and Swiss chard continue to give us plenty of fresh produce, but French beans have been miserable this year. However courgettes just love the moist weather so we have had ample supplies to ensure we have plenty courgette soup.

Beetroot have been brilliant though we have many reports of other folk with very poor beetroot crops.

The wet weather has given clubroot a field day and a double row of January King cabbages got devastated, reducing the plants to four miserable specimens.

I have just purchased some Perlka which contains calcium cyanamide. It is a nitrogenous slow release fertiliser with a 50% lime content and claimed to help to strengthen cell walls in the roots making it less likely to attack from clubroot disease. All my brassicas, turnips, Swedes, wallflower and radish will now get a dressing to see if I can get my clubroot under control.

Sweet corn has now been harvested with a good crop of cobs though a wee bit smaller than previous years.

Fruit

Autumn Bliss raspberries are giving good crops, but lack of sunshine reduces sweetness in the berries. Cape gooseberries are growing strongly on a south facing fence protected with some double glazed window frames. Figs are plentiful, but will need some sunshine and warmth to ripen up outdoors. We keep trying these exotics. My peach tree gave me six fruits, but had a great potential early on, only to be reduced by rotting due to the wet weather. However those few fruits made the effort very worth while.

Blueberries continue to ripen up and give us good crops.

Under glass the first Black Hamburg grapes are now ready and Perlette, my white seedless grapes only need a few more days of decent sunshine and we will be sampling them. Poor summer weather with cool temperatures and too much rain means we have to be vigilant of botrytis rots in the bunches and immediately remove any berries showing signs of rotting before it spreads.

Green manures

Broad beans, onions and spring cabbage have been harvested and cleared so the land can be dug over and sown with a green manure. I am using clover as this does not get affected with clubroot disease. Previously mustard was my choice as it is excellent as a green manure crop having bulky foliage and good roots. It is also easy to kill for digging in and does not regrow. Clover also grows thickly but not so tall as mustard and the fibrous roots have nitrogen fixing nodules so improve fertility. It is easier to bury than mustard and also dies out when dug in.

Let it grow strong till it begins to flower then trample it down and dig it in.

Plant of the week

Eucryphia rostrevor has been in flower for a few weeks now. It is a small columner shaped evergreen tree growing to about 20 to 30 feet tall. It grows naturally in the temperate rain forests of Australia, Chile and Argentina. As it prefers mild winters, cool summers and plenty rainfall it is perfect in our climate, and you can see a fine specimen in Camperdown Park at the side of the first fairway to the west of the big house. My tree is about six years old and only six foot tall, but gets covered in large white scented flowers.

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A SUNNY DAY AT KEW GARDENS

A SUNNY DAY AT KEW GARDENS

The last time I visited Kew I was studying horticulture for my National Diploma way back in the sixties. I was very impressed and knew that I would go back again another time, but to enjoy the gardens rather than study plants. Anna had never been there before and as she loves gardening as much as me it was a memorable visit. I think we got the last of the summer weather as we enjoyed three glorious days with cloudless skies and temperatures of 27 degrees C. Kew was at its best.

The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew started over 250 years ago as wealthy people liked to show their status with large gardens furnished with the latest exotic plant discoveries from around the world. Plant collections grew in time and buildings and garden structures were created. The tall Chinese pagoda was built in 1761, then a palm house, temperate house, an arboretum and as the gardens expanded they were adopted as a National Botanical Garden in 1840.

It now has a massive plant collection for botanical interest and research, a massive library and a herbarium with 7 million specimens. It participates in the Millennium Seed bank project. Billions of seed from plants all over the world are preserved in nuclear bomb proof underground vaults in case of natural disasters.

Back at ground level it is reputed to have Europe’s largest compost heap created from plant material from its garden maintenance. And I thought I had a big compost heap on my allotment!!!

A museum shows how humans depend on plants for food, tools, clothes, medicines and ornaments.

Two galleries are dedicated to botanical paintings.

The gardens receive about 2 million visitors annually, maintained by about 700 staff. Botanical research is carried out by 650 scientists on projects of a world wide scale, as well as maintaining accuracy on the botanical naming of plants from DNA sampling.

Kew lost hundreds of trees in the Great Storm of 1987, though there is now little evidence of the devastation.

Glasshouses

The huge palm house was completed in 1848 but more recently the Princess of Wales Conservatory was opened by Princess Diana in 1987. It has ten computer controlled micro climates for wet tropical plants to dry tropical plants. Excellent displays of tropical water lilies, orchids and carnivorous plants in the middle sections with cactus on the outer areas needing hot dry conditions.

The water lily house is very hot and humid to accommodate tropical water lilies including the large leaved Victoria Amazonica.

The Davies Alpine House was opened in 2006 to house a collection of alpine plants. The construction has an arched roof to allow maximum light penetration, and cool air is circulated for ventilation with automatic blinds to prevent overheating in mid summer. It is glazed with special glass which allows 90% of the ultraviolet light to pass through. All the plants looked very happy.

The Orangery constructed in 1761 never really worked, so it has been converted into a restaurant.

There is so much to see you can wander around for days and always find something new. I was very impressed with some excellent mature sweet chestnuts with huge crops of nuts, but not yet ripe. However we did find a large fruiting Mulberry tree full of red berries. They were delicious and a new experience for both of us.

We found an Italian grotto surrounded with olive trees and white fruiting grape vines. However there was not an olive in sight, and surprisingly the grapes were far from ripe, I was told.

A perfect hot day was finished off with a round of very tasty ice cream.

Plant of the week

Cyclamen hederifolium is perfect for giving a bright splash of colour (pink, mauve and white) at the end of summer in rock gardens and woodland fringe with dappled sunlight. This perennial grows about six inches high and the leaves emerge in autumn after flowering remaining green till spring. They go dormant all summer. Seed is produced in autumn protected as the old flower stem coils around the maturing seed pod. Allow the seed to fall, or scatter it to form a natural drift.

 

Painting for September

Happy Thoughts is an acrylic painting on canvas. This study is one of many figurative images being prepared for my exhibition at the Dundee Botanical Gardens in October where I will show studies of my “Artist’s Models” Figure painting presents the artist with a huge challenge combining an attractive model in a modern setting but retaining artistic values of good composition, variety of tones and good use of colour and texture.

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