Dealing with bountiful produce

mulch, a manure or a perfectly balanced high-heat compost, it doesn’t matter – it is all feeding the soil life which feeds the tree. After that, look at your trace minerals. Boron and magnesium are two elements New Zealand soils are lacking in that are essential for tree health. Seaweed and Epsom salts supply these respectively. After that, if all nutrimental needs are being met and there is adequate pollination and you are still not getting a crop, try chainsaw therapy. Year one: you start the chainsaw up beside the tree and tell it how it is. This year’s poor performance may have just been climaterelated – give it one more chance – but if you have room, get a replacement tree going just in case. Year two: if there’s still no fruit make good your threat and prune it at ground level. Honestly, a new tree (with compost) will produce something in two years and a crop in three, and you may be waiting that long for your loser to perform. will have it forever.

PLANT A STONE

So you ate a really nice peach/ nectarine/ apricot off your grandma’s/neighbours’/friend’s tree. Did you keep the stone? Stonefruit grow pretty much true to parent, unlike pipfruit (apples, pears, etc) which are more like humans where a cross of Mum and Dad produces a teenager so alien you think it came from another planet.

I have also had old-timers (a term meant with full respect) inform me that seed-grown trees are a lot more resistant to disease – particularly leaf curl and brown rot. My experience is backing up these anecdotes. I am planting out seedlings wherever I can find room, with the view that inferior ones will be eliminated at ground level.

So far, four out of five peaches and nectarines have passed muster, with stones from 2013 fruit planted out in 2015 producing a few fruit in 2017 and a decent crop in 2018. That may sound a long time to you, but trust me, it went really quickly! When you eat a stone fruit you really like (especially if it is one grown locally) spit the stone (several are better) into a pot of free-draining soil, push it down to the depth of your first finger joint, label it and then put it outside to catch the winter chill and rain. Keep it moist but not wet. And if it grows to produce the most fantastic fruit you’ve ever tasted, feel free to name it Prunus sherynii.

PICK YOUR PEARS

The perfect pear is a fruit to be cherished – but the perfect pear is a fickle fruit with a short lifespan. Pick your pears when you can lift them to the horizontal and the stem snaps. Most fruit’s ripeness can be judged on their ease of picking, but pears can still be quite hard at this stem-snapping stage. Pears ripen from the inside out, so if you leave them on the tree

GET GROWING

This column is adapted from the weekly e-zine, get growing, from New Zealand Gardener magazine. For gardening advice delivered to your inbox every Friday, sign up for Get Growing at: getgrowing.co.nz until they feel soft to the touch on the outside, the inside will be overripe – squishy and mealy.

If you are planning on storing your pears, do so as soon as they’ve been picked. Keep them as cool as possible. At -1oC they can last for months. Cold storage stimulates the pear to produce ethylene, which is the gas that ripens fruit. Putting pears through a period in cold-storage, then bringing them back to room temperature ripens them perfectly. The length of time required varies according to season, maturity and variety – anything from 4–60 days in cold storage, then 2–10 days ripening. The longer you store your pears, the shorter the time period they will take to ripen. If you want to ripen a pear straight away, bag it up with a fruit that produces ethylene (an apple or banana). You’ll be able to tell that it’s perfect for eating when it yields slightly when pressed lightly at the base of the stem.