In 1916, housewives were urged by the Red Cross to make damson cheese, plum sauce and peach chutney for the war effort.
HOW TO GROW
As a general rule, if you can grow plums, you can grow damsons. These easy-going trees fruit reliably in a wide range of soils and climates but do best in a warm, open, sunny position. The sunnier the spot, the deeper their colour and richer the flavour the fruit will have once ripe. Avoid planting in hollows and dips where frosts settle and can damage the fruit buds and dainty blossoms.
Grafted damsons are not overly large. With annual pruning, they can be kept to a manageable size of 3-4m. They thrust their branches upwards, rather than outwards, making them suitable fruit trees for smaller gardens. One tree is all you need.
Fertile free-draining loam is the best soil type but, provided damson trees aren’t planted in solid clay, pure sand, gravel or soggy soil that turns into a winter swamp, they’ll be just dandy. In heavy clay, incorporate plenty of compost prior to planting, or mound up slightly.
All deciduous fruit trees, including damsons, are best planted during their winter dormancy. That’s when the bare-root trees are made available to garden centres and nurseries. These trees are usually sold with their roots bundled up in potting mix or mulch.
When buying bare-root trees, it’s vital not to let the roots dry out before planting. If there’s going to be a delay between purchasing and planting, you can temporarily heel your tree into a pile of compost but bed it into its permanent home before bud burst.
Drought-stress can be a killer for all fruit trees in the first year or two after planting, but mollycoddling leads to weakness in adult trees.
My father’s dating advice to his teenage daughters – “treat them mean to keep them keen” – applies equally to fruit trees. On our farm, I don’t water, feed or pamper my orchard aside from mulching to conserve soil moisture. Give young trees a deep weekly soak if their first summer is very dry but, in their second year, roll up your garden hose.
Irrigation systems and frequent hand-watering promote lush foliage and a proliferation of shallow feeder roots, both of which make trees more susceptible to drought stress. Force them to dig deep; they’ll thank you for it in the long run.