The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The last days of summer
Growth has not been a problem but John Stoa is crossing his fingers and hoping for some sun to deliver the sweetness
Summer has just about gone, or maybe we are still waiting for it to arrive, once that rain goes off. However, it has been warm enough so all plant growth has been luxuriant, but we need sunshine to build up sweetness in our autumn fruits before we pick them. The pollination of most fruits was really good – as we came through a mild winter to be followed by a brilliant spring – so there were plenty of bees around to assist pollen transfer and no late frosts so fruit potential was good.
Only my new peach tree, Avalon Pride, let me down.
Flowers were very late for a peach, but that should have been beneficial as there were plenty pollinators flying around; maybe, with so many flowers to choose from, my peach blossom did not impress them.
Even though I did my daily hand pollination, I still only got one peach – but as it was a cracker, this tree may yet prove to be a winner.
Apples of every kind were a mass of flowers in spring, then branches got laden down with young fruitlets. There was a wee bit of thinning in July, at the natural June drop, but after settling down, all trees were still packed with fruit so I did a massive hand thinning at the end of July.
Trees are still heavy with apples, now a decent size. The Oslin (also known as the Arbroath Pippin) was ready in
Discovery, my next early variety to ripen up by early September, gave a great crop of bright red apples with excellent flavour
August but suffered badly in the wet summer so brown rot took out a lot of apples.
Discovery, my next early variety to ripen up by early September, gave a great crop of bright red apples with excellent flavour, but lack of sunshine held back sweetness.
Red Devil, Fiesta and Red Falstaff will hang on the tree a fair bit longer, hoping that at some point a period of prolonged sunshine will fall upon us and provide us with a sweet crop of apples.
Our pears grew somewhat sporadically, as my tree (Comice and Conference) had also been grafted with the Christie and Beurre Hardy.
It seems either they take a fair time to settle down or there could be a compatibility issue, as some branches have good pears and others are totally barren.
Unfortunately, over time the labels have been weathered beyond recognition so I do not know which is the culprit.
However, to help matters along I
grafted some of these barren branches with Concorde, which are now growing happily but it may be a couple of years before they flower.
The plums seem to be having a good year, with both plenty growth and now heavy crops.
My plum Victoria, planted in the dormant season, failed to grow.
I will put this down to bad choice of supplier, so a new one will be purchased this winter but from a reliable source.
Figs are again cropping very happily and should continue for a few more weeks, despite the wet weather.
My first fig was ready at the beginning of August and so far I have had more than 130 ripe fruits from one bush of Brown Turkey, grown outdoors against a south-facing wall.
Ripeness is easy to determine because the fruit colours up and then droops so it gets picked before it falls off.
It is a great help to have them ripen over a long season, but you still get a glut when Anna needs to cut them in half before a slow roast for an hour, then, once they cool down, they get bagged up and frozen for future use.
Autumn Raspberry Autumn Bliss and Polka continue to fruit, giving us large berries to eat fresh and freeze surplus.
Outdoor grape Brant, Regent and Rondo have all got plenty of bunches of big grapes but really need sunshine to sweeten them up.
In the greenhouse, Black Hamburg also has a great crop desperately looking for more sunshine. However, we still have a few more weeks so fingers crossed.