Appletree Research

Blossoming Pears

Lynsey Payne Appletree Happenings, Appletree Research, Cooking Apples, Dessert Apples, Fruit Press, Pears, Uncategorized

Its that time of year again when we all get anxious about whether there will be a fruit crop this year. I love the pear flowers when they are just opening and the anthers are bright red, and wow what a quantity of them on Jargonelle, Beurre Hardy and Christie in my garden!  After a good number of frosts last week, we now have bright sunny bee flying days with warm nights so all is good?  What can go wrong? After all we only need a small quantity of these blossoms to get pollinated in order to get a good crop. Go on, count the flowers and imagine the weight of fruit if they all turned to a full crop. The trees would collapse!

I used to bank on April 23rd as the first apple flower day, but this year again it is early.. my Arbroath Oslin and James Grieve have opened a few flowers a few days early. No need to run around with a rabbit’s tail this year as i have seen many earnestly working bees today. Keep up the good work girls!

Pear Stamens

 

Andalucia and a Million Olive Trees

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Last year I reported on a trip to  the Jerte Valley in Extradamura where I saw many Cherry trees. And in fact upon my return i found them for sale at a farm shop in Angus! Last month ( March)  I was again in Spain and visited both Madrid and Cordoba Botanic Gardens. Both had collections of herbs and fruit trees, but Cordoba also had splendid indoor displays of Olive, Vine and other traditional crops used for making baskets. However my best experience was seeing the extent of Olive growing in the south of Spain as I literally cycled through 200km of Olive Orchards! I am beginning to get the impression that Spain does its horticulture at a big scale. If ever there were a disease to hit these trees, then the economy of the region would collapse overnight.

The last of the trees along the Via Verde del Aceite were being harvested as i cycled by in early March; I scrumped a few, and was surprised to find them bitter and producing a red stain on my fingers. So much for olive green!

20180312_100858

 

Apparently ( according to wiki) they all need to be partially fermented to make them palatable. I saw men using sticks and a Stihl machine with a long vibrating pole to shake off the last fruits, which were then raked up by hand.

Surprisingly few varieties are grown commercially, and the dozen or so countries growing them tend to have their own favourite varieties. It is a growing industry, olives as we know being associated with healthy diets. Spain is by far the biggest producer, followed by Italy, Greece, Turkey and Morocco, with US and China all getting in on the act it seems.

It is suggested that they are not self-fertile, so a mix of varieties is necessary. I couldn’t discern a mix of trees myself, but there were orchards with a slightly greener leaf colour. The pollen can cause considerable irritation and it is windblown to boot. Glad I don’t live next door to an Olive Farm!

My biggest concern was the fact that there was no ground flora beneath these orchards, or very rarely a patch of yellow flowers, and as a consequence the heavy rains have caused a considerable amount of erosion on the hillsides. The area I travelled through was predominantly limestone and I would have expect to see a good number of flowers.

20180314_091007

Pruning was being carried out in many orchards, and seems to be quite brutal with big limbs being cut out of the middle of the trees with chainsaws. Presumably this is to let light in, and to facilitate easier harvesting with many horizontal branches. The spacing between the trees was very wide, well over 8m. Only later from the train window did I see some intensive orchards, with trees planted very close together in lines 3m apart or so. These were quite possibly pruned with hedgetrimmers. I wonder what the productivity is of these trees compared to the more extensive systems? Unfortunately i couldn’t find anyone to ask.

However i’m now back home and enjoying some big Olives Margaret bought at the Deli in Dunkeld. Alas I don’t know where they came from but I will be taking more interest as to where they originated and the variety in future!

 

Andrew March 2018.

 

The Book Of Pears By Joan Morgan

Margaret Lear Status Apple Bytes, Appletree Research, Fruit Press

The Book of Pears by Joan Morgan, Ebury Press 2015. Priced at £45 hardback.

This book has been long awaited by those of us in the fruit world….so here are my initial observations.

Grey Benvie

Its 304 pages long, and takes more or less the same format as her previous book on Apples. There are 182 pages of general information about pears, followed by a directory of pear varieties. This directory is much shorter thean the same section for apples. This reflects the fewer numbers of pear accessions at the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent, from where the information was gleaned. There are one or two varieties listed here however which are not currently held in the collection e.g. Achan om page 194.

The number of Scottish varieties and those varieties very much associated with Scotland are of most interest to me. This includes the aforementioned Achan, and also Ayrshire Lass, Craig’s Favourite, Crawford, Green Pear of Yair, Hessle, Jargonelle, Laird Lang, Maggie, Summer Bergamot, Winter Nelis. The last one was apparently recommended only for under glass in Scotland!

This leaves a big gap as no description of Grey Benvie, Seggieden and many more of the Carse of Gowrie pears receive no treatment here.

There is a brief mention on page 67 of Gold Knaps, and on page 119 a drawing of 5 different varieties grown in the Carse of Gowrie. Unfortunately I have never seen a description of the ‘’Busked Lady of Port Allan’’. It may well still exist!

The early chapters deal with the Monastic connections, and later French influence on our pear culture, equally relevant to the areas with surviving pear trees today in Scotland. I havn’t seen any reference to the Double Fleur, either in the first section or the descriptions., and I know of at least one of these surviving in the Carse of Gowrie.

The pear key at the back seems a bit too large,taking two pages, but is simple enough to comprehend. We do have to take ripening dates with a pinch of salt for Scotland.

Without doubt to my mind, the record of flowering dates and relative vigour of all the varieties is of immense value to me in determining pollination compatibility. The apple directory is a pretty accurate record of successional flowering here in Scotland, and I would expect the pear records to be equally so. This information is reinforced on page 191.

As before , the fruit paintings are superb and painstakingly accurate, it is very enjoyable just turning the pages to view these alone. Use a finger to blank out the names, and you can test yourself!

I have yet to read the whole book, but couldn’t help my excitement to comment here…

Grey Benvie Pears in Dr. Hulbert’s collection, Longforgan

So Joan, when are we going to see the definitive Plum book to complete the trilogy?

Aronias

Lynsey Payne Appletree Research, Fruit Press, Uncategorized

You may have come across Aronia juice, a new superfood full of anti-oxidants, but are you aware we can grow them here in Scotland? Aronias have the common name ,Chokeberries, a name which doesn’t do it any favours!

It is a small deciduous shrub, several of which I have been growing in my field for the black fruits and lovely white flowers in spring.The fruits are  about 7mm wide, similar to blueberries or even blackcurrants, and with no big seed inside like a damson.

There are several species and varieties. The Black Chokeberry is A. melanocarpa, A. arbutifolia is the Red Chokeberry, the hybrid of the two is the Purple Chokeberry, prunifolia. I haven’t tasted the red form, I wonder if there’s one in a botanic garden somewhere?  They are reportedly sweeter.

They are all native to North Eastern United States. though some naturalization has occurred in Europe. They have a long history of use by native American Indians as a food, medicine and a dye plant.

They are very hardy, and equally heat tolerant in the US zones from 3 to 8.

The varieties “Brilliant’ , ‘Nero’, ‘Viking’ and ‘Autumn Magic’ can all be found in Garden Centres and have been selected for their fabulous autumn colouring. They are however all strikingly attractive wee shrubs for the shrubbery or woodland edge. Viking can grow to 6 feet, Nero is shorter, at 4 feet, but has larger fruit.

The leaves are reportedly used to make a tea, but it is the slightly earthy tasting, mildly sweet black berries in summer which are of most interest. My two year old little black chokeberry bushes produced a really nice crop last summer. Eaten straight off the bush I rather liked them ….so many apples and pears these days are too sweet for my taste.

The native black chokeberry is only 1.5m high and spreads by root suckers to about 3m wide, so it forms a nice compact little bush. The red form is a touch taller.

Aronias have been grown in Europe for a long time now, but only recently been considered a commercially viable crop. In Poland, many thousands of hectares have been planted for juicing. They use a selected form, Galicjanka, a tetraploid Nero form specially chosen for planting in rows and for harvesting by machine. It was selected at the Institute of Pomology in Albigowa, South East Poland for its productivity and evenness of ripening.Despite being of the rosaceae family, they are all reported to be relatively pest free and tolerant of a wide range of soil conditions, though preferably not too wet, and definitely not too dry. Not a problem here! Watch out for powdery mildew though.

Varieties are all propagated by root suckers. We have a few to sell here at the nursery ; more varieties will be sourced and trialed in future years!

A.Lear. 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

Heritage Pears

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I have for several years now been propagating some of Scotland’s old pear varieties. Between Perth and Dundee there are still a few very old orchards with big productive old trees, perhaps 200 years old, many hollowed out, and each year more of them blow over. The race to save these varieties has never been more important. One way of doing this is to propagate by grafting. This involves taking a healthy twig off the tree and grafting it onto a specially grown pear rootstock.
I have been working with The Heritage Pear Project nationwide, a group of volunteers attempting to improve their pear dentification skills, and going out into orchards locating and propagating those unknown or rare varieties. Contrary to popular belief, these pear trees produce tonnes of fruit, unlike many of the dwarf modern varieties planted in our back gardens today.
In the Carse of Gowrie, I have been particularly interested to propagate those trees identified as unknown in a DNA survey carried out by the University of Reading for Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust. This survey pulled out some unusual varieties such as Windsor, Chaumontel, and Laxton’s Superb ( yes I thought this was an Apple only!). More predictable was the regular occurence of Hessle, Craig’s Favourite ( a Perth variety ), and Green Pear of Yair from the Borders. The well known Conference was found at Ballendean, together with Buerre D’Amanlis, plus Catillac, a large triploid cooking pear and Swan’s Egg at Megginch Catsle.
All very interesting, but equally so, around a quarter of those tested proved to have no matching trees at the National Collection in Kent. Which means they they could be seedlings bred by local fruit growers such as Patrick Mathew over hundred years ago, or perhaps simply a named variety from Belgium or France not represented in the Kent collection.
So, over the last few years I have been propagating a few of these un-named trees before they collapse and are lost for ever. Occassionally we have some spare to sell, they may not be named, but simply have a number! If you have a big garden and space for a big pear tree do please get in touch and help us save these varieties!

Heritage Pears

Heritage Pears

Anyone for Tea?

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We have a small number of hardy Camelia sinensis for sale in 5 litre pots. They are growing away nicely and already yielding afew leaves for our daily brew! Tea is now being produced in Scotland, proving that they are perfectly hardy! They are calcifuge, so generally prefering a slightly acid soil, some shade or northern facing slopes may suffice, and tolerate a fair amount of rainfall, though a variety of loamy soils and areas of Scotland are proving to be acceptable. See the following information sheet for more details:Appletreeman’s Guide to Growing Tea in Scotland

Apple Scab Control

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The Control of Apple and Pear scab by Sulphur Sprays

My James Grieve has for the past 3 years suffered some scab on the leaves. This wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that it can severely mark the fruit in due course and in wet seasons. By resorting to a regular spray of sulphur, I have managed to prevent it reaching and marking the fruit. Sulphur is a basic chemical, so relatively harmless to the environment. The weather conditions earlier this year in the east were very favourable for scab spores, but luckily this last week’s dryer conditions has improved the situation tremendously. In the west of Scotland it is a problem most years. Powdery mildew has also been prevalent on many apples this year also and sulphur will reduce this also. It attacks the new young leaves and slows down the growth of trees for many months.

I use 5.6 mls in 10 litres of litres water and spray the leaves every 10 to 14 days if I can. I start at the ‘pink bud’ stage and continue until the end of extension growth, around about mid- July. It is essential to achieve good coverage of all parts of the tree, especially the growing points – they will have the appearance of a smattering of snow after spraying!

Certain varieties of fruit trees and bushes may be damaged by sulphur sprays. In the old books they called this ‘sulphur shyness’. The following are reportedly susceptible to leaf damage: Beauty of Bath, Belle de Boskoop, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Lane’s Prince Albert, Lord Derby, Newton Wonder, Rival, Stirling Castle, and Doyenne du Comice.

My Hawthornden seems a touch damaged, and possibly my George Cave, but since the first few applications, I have restricted my sprays to Worcester Pearmain and James Grieve only, the only two in my garden showing any significant scab symptoms.The Boskoop seems to be ok in my garden, and none of the pears show any damage.

I have seen scab on Scrumptious this week, and many new so-called resistant varieties usually succomb after a few years in the field unfortunately. Knowing when spores are in the air is how the professional’s are able to time their spraying; we may rely on regular pruning and good open sunny sites as the best prevention!

 

Hop production in Scotland

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Hop Production in Scotland

For the beer making fraternity the subject of hops and the merits of its various clones are of great importance. To gardeners, more bent towards ornamental plants, the growing practicalities of this climber under Scottish conditions are of more interest.

What is it? Humulus lupulus is a climber related to cannabis, and has twining stems and tiny little hooks to enable it to grip onto to any upright object it can find.  It’s surprising how tough these stems are in mid season, I’m sure John Seymour would have recommended basket weaving with them!

It is a perennial, and would normally die back late in the year and send out new sprouts from a permanent root system every spring. It is a plant with purpose in several ways…the young emerging shoots can be eaten like asparagus. Professionally, four shoots are allowed to twine up from the clump of roots on 4 spaced coir strings to over 6 metres, creating a veritable vertical forest of growth by high summer.

 

Hop weed control

Well cultivated ground between rows of Hops.

I have seen an organic hop farm in Kent, where the plants are grown on a little ‘hillock’ and carefully weeded by rotavator between all the plants. The height and width of a hop wiring structure is a truly impressive structure to see!  I have also seen hop farms in Worcestershire, again on very good soil.  Overall though, the acreage is a lot smaller in the UK than even decades ago. A good deep fertile soil is ideal, perhaps the Tay Valley is the place for a Scottish Crop? Wye college in Kent developed some dwarf varieties, so the risk of wind damage might be reduced.

In late June, on the female plants, side shoots develop from the main stems and subsequently these produce the flowers which are so prized ornamentally. You don’t want male plants or you will get seeds which are undesirable!  Later the flowers form the ‘hops’ and all the stems are cut down to be taken indoors for extraction. The oast houses of Kent were once the drying rooms for the hop industry.

The hop damson aphid can be a big menace, and I’ve seen mildew on the leaves on our plant in wet summers.  Apart from that we have few problems and every year our golden-leaved hop scrambles up against a sheltered shed wall and produces little hops for us.

Propagation can be by division of the whole clump of roots, or fertile seeds can be purchased if you want to have a go of growing your own. To get a particular variety of course you would need cuttings or divisions, or layer a shoot across the ground and slightly bury it to encourage rooting. There are some lovely named clones such as White Knight, Fuggles, Goldings;  the RHS Plantfinder lists about 14 different sorts (page 365 ).

 

Hops - golden

The golden leaved hop, Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’.

Seed grown plants can be supplied from plantswithpurpose, so what’s stopping you covering that horrible shed?

Ref: The RHS Plant Finder 2004-5, pub. By Dorling  Kindersley.

Spindlebush Apple Trees

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The Spindlebush Method of Growing Apple Trees

Some of the small apple and plum trees i left in the field after i moved my nursery two years ago ( I move to a new patch every year), started to fruit this year in earnest. At the moment they have central leaders and i have the option of letting them branch out with 5 or 6 framework branches, and later cut out the leader to form open centred trees. This is an easy method of formative shaping to understand for amateurs and semi-professionals.

However, with the advent of dwarfing rootstocks, in the early 1940’s in Germany, and later in Holland, the growing of high density spindlebushes was becoming of great interest to growers. We in the uk were still growing very large trees on M7 rootstocks at a very wide spacing, and it was only post – war visits to Germany which opened our eyes to developments there.

So here are a few jottings on the subject:

So what are spindlebushes?

Its similar to my cordon grown trees, in that it is all about having fruiting wood in abundance and basically nothing else! Those of you who have attended my workshops will be familiar with the need to identify fruiting wood.

 

Its advantages are as follows:

Very high rates of production per hectare.

Small trees, enabling pruning, spraying and harvesting from the ground.

Very efficient use of land and available sunshine.

 

They are normally grown on very good land, and M9 rootstocks, a very dwarfing one. Basically, there is a central stem and lots of wee laterals to carry the fruiting buds. A tall thin pyramid is required. Thicker pencil sized laterals are cut back to 4 buds, anything thinner to 2 or 3 buds. Cut to downward facing buds always. So horizontal wood is the aim, use spacers if necessary. Unlike some methods I teach, this one requires very severe pruning. The leader is pruned – that is the new growth to 4 or 2 buds on a weak tree.

The common mistakes are to not cutting back the leader hard enough and allowing too much fruit early on leading to stunting of shoots. The aim is to have lateral branches with lots of fruiting spurs and no gaps along the branches.

Red George Cave

Fruit from my 2 year spindlebush tree

In late July, the new growth from the stubs are tied down to form horizontal fruit wood. Be careful not to droop the ends below horizontal if possible. Prune back all sub-laterals in summer

(‘Lorette pruning’), or next winter if you forget! You can allow your laterals to branch to fill the space a little, such as if theres a gap in your tree you want to fill. Tie a higher one down to fill a space if necessary. Keep the pyramidal shape by pruning harder if necessary your top laterals. Each tree should yield 10 lbs of fruit by the 4th year. The original spacing recommended was 10 feet ( 3m) and 435 trees per acre. In you have an acre, you could be producing 4.3 tonnes of fruit by your 4th year! Using an m26 rootstock in most areas of Scotland, and tieing to stakes or wires in North-South lines is probably ideal. A modification is the Tall Spindle, which is allowed to grow to 3m and planted 1m x 3m spacings. It must have up to 10 short feathers ( branches) already from the nursery. Visit your nurseryman and select your trees personally!

If you want to know more about pruning workshops, please see our google calendar on the website http://www.plantsandapples.co.uk.

 

References:

Wertheim, S.J., The Training of the Slender Spindle of Four Apple Varieties. Nov. 1970

Golschmidt and Delap, The Spindle Bush Method of Growing Apple and Pear Trees, The RHS Fruit Yearbook, 1950, pages 54-66.

The RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening , ed C. Brickell, page 380.,1992.

http://fruitgrowersnews.com/index.php/magazine/article/The-Tall-Spindle-System-Apple-Orchard-Design-For-The-Future

Fruit trees and Frost

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Frost protection of Fruit

All gardeners are aware of the dangers of frost on young opening leaves and flowers of many types of fruit in spring. An orchard owner in the Clyde valley told me the story of how his father used to light barrels of oil under his plum trees on frosty nights! And in the late 50’s wind pumps and heaters were being used in some countries. The 2012/13 winter in Scotland was very prolonged, but it turned out to be very beneficial.The apple blossom was almost a month later than usual, missing damaging frosts, and many varieties flowered at the same time. The effective pollination period was thus very short but very effective! The harvest of 2013 was superb! its the more usual erratic springs which cause us the problems.

Our main worry is the early frosts catching Oslins and Scots Dumplings, and the late frosts in mid-May which can destroy the later flowering Worcester and Cambusnethan trees chance of fruit.

 

How do professionals overcome this?

1-The best answer of course is not to plant your trees in risky areas such as frost hollows or the bottom of slopes.

2-Secondly, choose known hardy varieties for your area, i.e. not fruit that is grown widely in the warmest areas of France or the South of England. Hardy varieties have been bred and are grown in places like Poland, Norway and Canada, and some well known British varieties are very hardy: Keswick Codlin, Golden Spire, Emneth Early for example. We are actively propagating a few very hardy Swedish and Norwegian summer apples…so look out for them in our catalogue.

3-Thirdly, you may try to cover your trees on frosty nights with fleece or blankets. I tried this one winter, but realised that a lot of buds get damaged in the process of constant removal – you have to let pollinating insects in to do their work every day!

 

hanginggardens1

Some experiments in the 1950’s proved that covering is ineffective by and large. They tried using an electric heater and running a hose every 15 minutes over the branches. By far the most effective treatment was to provide a fine mist spray over the flowers as the temperatures dropped.  In essence, the water prevents the temperature of the flowers going below freezing by latent heat of evaporation.

These spraying experiments, by JH Jeffree ( RHS, 1950), resulted in achieving a good crop on adjacent sides of two apple trees that were receiving spray. The far sides of each were bare of fruit come the summer! The effectiveness of, and the spray coverage, was improved by using a rotating spray head on a long pole.

If you want to try this next spring, be aware that a lot of ice can form on the twigs and branches so watch they don’t break under the weight! A few props for the weaker branches may help. You may need to be doing a few night shifts from early April to mid May this year!

 

References

Jeffree,J.H., 1950, RHS FRuit Yearbook, 1950.pages 100 -104.

Some notes can also be found on : http://hos.ufl.edu/extension/stonefruit/frost-protection-orchards-0 and http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca1208p4-64660.pdf and also:

http://fruitgrowersnews.com/index.php/magazine/article/protecting-your-fruit-from-frost-and-freeze