Cherries in Jerte Valley

May 19, 2017August 28, 2018Andrew Lear Status Berries, Fruit, Fruit Press, Spring Tags: Cherries, horticulture, orchards, Scotland, Spain

On my travels in Spain in April I came across an amazing horticultural enterprise on the border between Castille y Leon and Extremadura.

I took a bus from Avila at !200m elevation, down to Plasencia at 400m, which takes you off the high plains and winds down between the heights of the Gredos Mountains. And it is here that my eyes were astounded by the numbers of flowering cherry trees that line the valley for the next 40 km! Lots of terraces well up the mountainside allow cherry planting almost to the summits on either side! Hundreds of thousands of trees! One website suggests there are 10,000 ha. and as many as 4,000 growers. The orchards spread east and west on terraced land. cherries jerte valley

Further investigation took me back up the valley to a Cherry Museum where I learnt that these trees are part of one big co-operative and make their way into a variety of products. I was very lucky to catch the end of the flowering season, the hot weather shortening this somewhat this year.

So i wonder, has anyone come across Jerte Valley cherries in this country? The variety grown is the Picota though judging by some late flowers, a few others are planted too. The co-op supplies Lidl so look out for the fruits later in the year. One of the production sheds processes 40,000kg per day!

This is horticulture on an industrial scale! Maybe we can learn something here relevant to Scotland? I am passionate about the loss of horticulture in the Glens of Scotland, a result of hundreds of years of depopulation, yet here in rural Spain it has survived and thrived despite a similar history of emigration to the Spanish colonies.

I often get cars stopping at the field to ask what I am growing in one of the Perthshire Glens and always get a surprised look when I say it is apple trees! Just imagine if it was a whole valley of apple trees from Pitlochry and Aberfeldy to Perth!

See: http://cerezadeljerte.org/en/jerte-valley/ for more information….you can even spend a few days picking fruit with the farmers if you want! A great place to see the real Spain, with many mountain biking and hiking trails too. And the Albergue Santa Anna in Plasencia is one of the nicest hostels I have ever stayed in!

Andrew, 2017

Spindlebush Apple Trees

June 5, 2014October 25, 2016Andrew Lear Chat Apple Bytes, Appletree Research, Appletree Training, Blogs, Fruit Press, Resources Tags: Apple Trees, orchards, Spindlebushes

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.

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

More Dock Puddings and some wild onions

April 24, 2009Margaret Lear Berries, Broadleaved Woods, Diary entries, Estuary/Wetlands, Flora, Hedgerow, Mountain, Pudding, Salad, Spring, Teas & Tisanes, Vegetables, Wine Tags: Allium, apples and pears, bilberry, Bistort, blackthorn, bracken shoots, dock pudding, Field garlic, hawthorn shoots, juniper berries, lime leaves in salad, mint teas, orange-tip butterfly, orchards, ramsons, sloes, three cornered leek, wild cherry, wild garlic, wood sorrel 2 Comments

Oddly enough now I don’t have to drink herbal teas, I’m really enjoying some of them! Mints are growing now, so lots of choices – chocolate, basil, apple, eau de cologne… or shall I just have peppermint? All taste so fresh, so green and lively. Mind you I am inundated with orders for mints that are really hard to keep up with given the slow start into growth – must be the herb of the year. Bistort is everywhere just now, and I’ve been making more traditional dock puddings, using oatmeal and a little chopped bacon with the variety of wild leaves around now.

River floodplains throw up some odd edible plants at times – in an old orchard next to the River Tay at its tidal extent Andrew found not only Ramsons (Allium ursinum), but also Three cornered leek (Allium triquetrum) and what we think was Field Garlic growing wild. They went into a salad to go with the first barbecue of the year last weekend. On a field trip with my countryside students this week, we enjoyed snacking on fresh lemony-sharp leaves of Wood Sorrel – a real appetite stimulant. We harvested a few juniper berries from the wild trees near Rumbling Bridge; they add a fantastic aroma and taste to game dishes. It was nice to note the pretty, bell-shaped flowers of the blaeberry or bilberry up in the hills, promising a harvest to come. Had another taste of bracken shoots, but I remain unconvinced. I don’t like the texture and the taste is woolly and bitter. Better wayside snacks are brand-new lime leaves, hawthorn shoots and the first broom buds, tasting of new pea pods, all available now.

Blackthorn, along with cherry blossom, seems to be very floriferous this year – I have noted where to go for sloes, but must find something other than gin to make with them, as we never seem to drink it all! Andrew’s explorations of relict orchards have identified potential pears in the autumn; we are looking forward to apple blossom time – just beginning here with our James Grieve wonder-tree against the shed.

Who else is back? HIRUNDO! the first swallows were spotted in Bankfoot on Sunday……. and an orange-tip butterfly…….. the ospreys are home, to and busy breeding…… St. G’eorges Day tomorrow – look out for St George’s Mushrooms! (and the dragons who got away).