Introductions:

[whitesidehasdoneitagain]

Good morning. I have just joined the forum and would like to intoduce myself. My name is Phil Birley and I live on the North Yorkshire coast near Redcar. My wife and I along with her mother and husband work a double plotted allotment in Salburn. We each have our own departments. I'm Fruit and salad, the mother in law is flowers and greenhouse and my wife and her mothers husband are veg and chickens.

My fruit department is totally caged and the floor mulshed with bark. Been going for 2 years now and get a lot of pleasure from it. List of fruits in my section are:
Polka Raspberries
Other Raspberry (cant remember the name)
3 types of strawberry (mae, alice and another)
James grieves apple
Discovery apple
Red, yellow and green gooseberries (yellow and green new this year)
Blackcurrant
Redcurrant
Blackberry
Loganberry (new this year)
Jostaberry (new this year)
Tayberry (new this year)
Merton Cherry tree

Success stories are:
Polka Raspberries are fantastic, massive firm fruits and lots of them.
Blackcurrant Ben Lomand, lots of fruit.
Redcurrant, again lots of fruit.
Strawberries have been good this year.

Both apple trees are only 2 years old and i am training them as espaliers. A few apples this year but a bit early to pick yet.

Red gooseberry bush was ok but the weight of the fruit grounded the plant, learning all the time i now know to tie up the plant to raise it from the ground.

Nothing from the cherry tree, i need to sort out a pollinator.

Green and yellow gooseberry. jostaberry, tayberry and loganberry were all introduced this year. All look good and are very healthy, a couple of Tayberries. Look forward to next year with these.

I make jams with most of my fruit (22 jars of strawberry yesterday), I enjoy that alot, the taste is unbelievable.

Well thanks for reading. look forward to using the forum. I have already read the thread about 'Cherry tree polinators', excellent advice.
Phil.


I developed a website for our allotments : http://www.saltburnallotmentassociation.com/

[Stacey Steve]

Welcome Phil, I've got a fruit cage that is about coming up to the 200 sq mt size.

I bought off of EBay thornless blackberry, tayberry and logan berries. However these were all bare root stock and had not been labeled up properly. So although it was easy to identify the tayberries (vicious things), both the loganberry and blackberry were thornless but looking carefully at the stems I indentified them and planted them straight into beds. Wrong

I now have two beds that are a mix.

We found that the logans were sharper than the tays but are great in jam, the tays are good for eating direct from the stem and also make a lovely jam.

So now I will have to start propagating from these plants to sort out the mix up.

[dinah gale]

I've just dug up my Polka raspberries.....

I keep seeing hymns of praise for Polka raspberry but I have just started digging mine up!

Is it just my particular growing conditions, I wonder or has anyone else had a problem with this variety?

I had a fairly good crop last year (their first season) but the plants have succumbed badly to what I think is rust this year - the fruits have been very sparse and pretty sour. Autumn Bliss, growing beside them have fruited wonderfully and with their usual lovely flavour.

I'm thinking of planting Joan instead - that has had a good press (but then, so does Polka).

Hey ho. You win some, you lose some.

Dinah

[Flummery]

Hi and welcome. I think each person having a section to deal with is a great idea. Must try that when Himself retires. He tends just to ask what I need doing. It's usually a brew!

[beetie]

Welcome Phil

It's sounds like you'll have a wealth of knowledge to share on the fruit forum! I can see me asking you a few questions when I expand my fruit section (which at the moment only contains a few raspberry canes and a blackcurrant bush!!!!!

Hope you have many happy hours on the grapevine. I've only dibbed in and out of it since joining (a year?) ago as I'm a busy mum of a 4 month old son (Max). He's a great incentive to get in the garden more though so that he can be fed solely on our produce. Our veg plot is quite small, about 360 sq feet, and is at the bottom of our garden. It's only about 18 months old and was created by my partner, Steve. He's done most of the work whilst I was pregnant, and this year we've enjoyed runner beans, spuds, carrots, broccoli and tomatoes.
This year we're getting a greenhouse from my uncle, so we will be able to grow more exotic stuff!

Take care, happy grapevining

Sharon, Steve and Max

[djhs196]

Sounds like a great set up - I'm envious.

I'm in the middle of expanding a nascent fruiting area currently - it currently consists of a few canes of autumn fruiting raspberries, standard apple tree (on it's way out), 1 blackcurrent, 2 grapes and 1 gooseberry - but with various veg beds increasing in number over the last couple of years the existing area is no longer the best place for it.

A new area is being started - garden rather than allotment - with new fruit canes, bushes etc going in this year once I finish shifting a few of the flower beds to cope with the expansion! There'll also be some cuttings of the existing plants to bolster numbers.

Best of luck with it all - and welcome to the board.

Douglas

[shirlthegirl43]

Hi and welcome to the vine. Sounds like a great setup with everyone doing a certain bit rather than all doing everything.

[kate&rob]

welcome Phil, lovely part of the world, had a trip to saltburn and redcar last year.
i wish we were as orgainsed as you seem to be.
we're only just recoverin fully from last years floods, it was great for spreading weeds around.

[Duronal]

Hey Phil

Could you tell me what the discovery apple is like to eat and use? I'm planning to buy one shortly and i'm pretty intrigued.

Many Thanks

d.