My Tiny Plot

Peaches are a lot of work – there’s no argument there. But sooooo worth it.

Now that my Peach tree has reached its full size and is covering most of the allotted space on the south-facing wall it’s time to start thinking about earmarking replacement branches for next year.

I know it sounds ridiculously early (since the poor thing has only just started to set fruit) but it’s essential work if you want some nice straight fruiting branches for next year.

Peaches fruit on last year’s wood (a little bit like Summer Raspberries) but this is unusual for large fruit trees. So much so that it takes a bit of planning.

Firstly, I nipped off all the leaf clusters that were pointing towards the wall. Since this is a fan-trained wall tree, anything pointing towards the wall is pretty useless to me (Peach-lets included).

Once I had done that I pin-pointed one leaf cluster at the base of each branch of the fan as the replacement branch for next year. Then I tied it in to the existing branch to make sure that it grows in the same direction as the branch that is there already – we don’t want any nasty snapping incidents come Autumn!

And that’s it. Each branch now has a replacement branch tied in, with maybe one in reserve too.

This is the blossom on my Comice Pear. Strangely, it has a red tinge and almost looks like tiny roses about to flower. But when it’s fully out it looks like this, and is totally white. I’ve never noticed this before. I just love the way that if I look hard enough, I see something different every Spring. Even with vegetables and fruit that I have been growing for years.

I harvested the last of my forced Rhubarb today. It’s time to take the forcer off and let the plant regain its strength. It feels strange to be coming to the end of a crop already when Spring is just beginning but forcing really weakens a plant so I can only do it for a limited period of time.

But wow the Rhubarb has been good. I’ve fallen in love with Rhubarb crumble again. Particularly, Jamie’s Rhubarb and Sticky Stem Ginger Crumble. I’ll be making that this afternoon and serving it hot with creme fraiche tonight. Can’t wait!

This, above, is a flower bud on a Peach tree.

This, is a leaf bud. One will give you a Peach, the other will give you a leaf. Simple really. Ideally your Peach tree should be displaying some of each right now.

If any of your Peach branches do not have flower buds on them, just leaf buds, then it means that when you prune your tree at the end of the Summer you need to replace that branch with a younger one. You could tie a bit of coloured string round it now to remind you.

Peaches flower on last year’s wood. This can be a new whole branch or a spur (a stubby bit of new growth from an old branch). But they need new growth in order to produce flower buds.

My Tayberry is sprouting. The leaves on it are much, much bigger than the leaves on my Blackcurrant, Red currants and White currants. Which surprises me as my Raspberries have yet to show.

Tayberries fruit on last year’s growth so I’m hoping that the stems that were left behind when I pruned it are the right ones. This year I think I will prune it as I harvest the fruit so as not to confuse the stems. I also forgot how very, very prickly my Tayberry is. It’s almost viscous!

But it’s nice to see it coming to life again. The fruit we had from it last year were so… gorgeous, they didn’t even make it to the kitchen. They were eaten on the spot. They’re that kind of fruit. Others are cherry Tomatoes, Peas, Raspberries and Strawberries. They all seldom make it inside the house too :)

Give Raspberries a few years and they will start to take over. You’ll find their runners popping up all over the place. I found one last year on the ‘other side’ of the path to where my Raspberry patch was. With a small garden such as mine I have to keep them under control or run the risk of them taking vital nutrients from other plants.

In the Summer I was inundated by Raspberries. I tried everything to get rid of them. While I agree that Raspberries are indeed yummy and yes I can freeze them, I feel forced to cull them this Winter, if only in an effort to claw back some precious growing space.

So as part of my annual pruning of Autumn Raspberries I also dug up every other plant. I dug up any runners that had strayed too far from the patch, tightened the wires and straightened the supports.

Hopefully this Summer we’ll be back to more normal Raspberry production. But I’m sure in a few years I’ll be doing the same thing all over again.

Finally! I have tamed my Tayberry. It now looks all prim and proper like it should do after under gardener kindly attached my wire support system to the wall, I promptly pruned my Tayberry and rescued it from the floor!

I’m not sure of the variety but it can’t be a thornless type since pruning it was like wrestling with a very spiky, spiked thing. I had to wear my leather gardening gloves for protection and even then it still got its hooks into me.

Anyway, tis’ done now. I cut out the old fruiting branches at ground level and was left with three newer branches to tie in to the wire. These should fruit next year and give us more amazingly, plump Tayberries than we had this year (I’m thinking we had about 15 on it this year).

Tayberries have an amazing flavour. They really do taste of Blackberry and Raspberry at the same time. Well worth growing if you like both those fruit and now is the time to plant them too!

This one seems to be doing fine in a pot and it’s a great way to brighten up a wall where nothing is growing and turn it into more growing space for edibles. Yum!

Now you see it.

Now you don’t.

I decided to prune my Grape vine early since I may be slightly busy with a newborn baby come the end of November. So I’m trying to get organised and do some of my garden chores now.

It shouldn’t make any difference that I pruned it early as the leaves were starting to fall anyway. The only downside is that I don’t get to enjoy the beautiful Autumn colours of the leaves. Oh well.

I’ve written a longer post on how to prune a Grape vine here. This will tell you what system I’m using and how to do it.

Since I’ve been pruning the Grape vine it’s been producing very well and we had lots of Grapes this year, even though they were only really useful for Grape juice. I might consider planting another Grape vine and training it in a different way just to have experience of a different variety and training method. Now, I just need to magic up the space!

Does anyone have any recommendations on a nice white, seedless, eating Grape I could grow outdoors? I’m thinking about Perlette.

I have to confess I hadn’t much idea what a Perry Pear was before I went to Dyrham Park’s Perry Pear Day yesterday. I was lured in by the promise of a tour around the ‘old orchard’ and turned up with hopes of being let into a secret garden full of perfectly manicured fruit trees.

In reality the trees were a little, erm, larger than I imagined. But hey-ho you can’t have everything.

Having only attended an hour’s talk I won’t pretend I know everything. But there are some great resources (Gloucestershire Orchard Group) online that can tell you everything you need to know about how to choose, plant, and even juice Perry Pears in detail. But I will share some of the facts that I found interesting.

To harvest the Pears someone must climb a ladder next to the tree and shake the fruit out with a very long stick! And be sure to stand clear because Perry Pears are rock hard and totally inedible. You can’t eat them, nope, not even if you cook them for three hours first. Sheesh!

What you can do with them is make Perry, a fruity, and as it turns out very nice, alcoholic drink (it’s alright, I didn’t drink much in my state of impending motherhood). So like Cider Apples, Perry Pears are grown just to be made into Perry. In its hey-day Dryham had a vast Perry Pear orchard and in-house brewery. They produced flagons of the stuff, presumably to keep the servants and estate workers drunk very happy.

And the National Trust guide let us into the old orchard through this wonderful old gate in the orchard wall. It was like stepping into Narnia through the wardrobe.

I’m always amazed at how my childish fascination with walled gardens excites me anew every time I find one. There is something magical about the secret garden, locked away from view, quietly overgrowing itself until someone who cares comes along to reinvent it.

Anyway, if you’re inspired to get out into some secret orchards near you then this handy guide to the UK’s local orchard groups is a good place to start. Many orchards will let you ‘sponsor’ a tree and take home the lion’s share of the fruit each year. Maybe I’ll sponsor a Perry Pear tree and take home the lion’s share of the Perry – no, wait, bad idea.

Nothing says, ‘England’ to me like an early Apple harvest. The fresh taste of cold, sweet but a little tart, Apples is the taste of Autumn in our garden. My espalier Apple tree is now on its fourth tier and this year it has produced 33 good-sized eating Apples (last year we had 17).

It’s a Queen Cox, a self-fertile tree that does well in our damp climate. The taste is sweet, but not too sweet, with just the hint of a tang on the green side of the Apple. It’s perfect. If I had the room I would have a garden full of Apple trees, trained as espaliers, and cordons and over arches (because I like the challenge of training them). But sadly I don’t have the space.

One day (yes one day) I will have an orchard. And just like they do at Granchester I will sit on deck-chairs and have afternoon tea from delicate china. Until then I’m happy with my one Apple tree. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to go to the myriad of Apple Day’s coming up and tasting as many single different varieties as will fit in my mouth.

Here is a brilliant list of Apple Days in the UK
And there are quite a few popping up on the UK Veg Gardeners network too.
Once I’ve eaten all my own fruit I’m tempted to buy a selection box of heritage varieties, just so I can savour the different tastes.

Happy munching!