New Fruit Plants Question

[Runtpuppy]

They look pretty well OK to me. Be a bit odd to have an aphid problem this time of year - that's generally a June or later thing.

My best guess is that the new leaves came out earlier than they would outside because of the warmth where they were kept, then at some point the temperature dropped and so they got a bit of cold damage. Shouldn't be any problem for them to grow on now.

BTW keep an eye on the weather forecast and if night time frosts are predicted they either need protection or bringing on.

Oh, whew! Maybe I'm just being like a first-time mom and panicking over nothing.

That theory does make a lot of sense. The plants arrived pretty much as sticks in a pot. The leaves started while they were in the kitchen where it was fairly warm. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the apples even grew flowers. Even though I took them out after weather kinda-sorta stabilised, it makes sense that it would be too cold for the new foliage.

Thanks, I'll do that! Have a couple rolls of horticultural fleece handy.

[nickdub]

No problem - always interesting to have a gander at what others are up to - good excuse to be nosy. :-)

BTW I don't think you mentioned what varieties of fruit you have - that might be an issue in future years from the POV of pollination, depending on what other trees there are near you.

[Runtpuppy]

No problem - always interesting to have a gander at what others are up to - good excuse to be nosy. :-)

BTW I don't think you mentioned what varieties of fruit you have - that might be an issue in future years from the POV of pollination, depending on what other trees there are near you.

Yeah, proly why I lurk here. It's interesting to learn from other people's experiences.

The varieties of fruit are:

Apple Gala: https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/ap...-tree/t10394TM

Apple Golden Delicious: https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/ap...-tree/t10395TM

Cherry Sylvia: https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/ch...-tree/t10442TM

Plum Black Amber: https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/pl...-tree/t10632TM

Pear Doyenné du Comice: https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/pe...omice/t10617TM

I was hoping the 2 varieties of apple would be enough to keep each other productive. The cherry, as per the description, is self-fertile.

The plum and the pear were the only issues, even though it does say that the plum is self-fertile (but yields better with another variety around).

I have a neighbour with a pear tree a few houses down, and was hoping the bees would visit us after they'd bee'n ( ) there.

[nickdub]

Looks like a very good selection - I reckon you're about right with your thoughts too, and as you say the likeliest problem is the Comice. To be honest my history with growing pears is not the greatest and Comice is one of the trickier ones because it likes warmer weather than we generally get. On the other hand its got an undeniable pedigree, so if you can get it to crop you'll have some top quality fruit.

[Runtpuppy]

Looks like a very good selection - I reckon you're about right with your thoughts too, and as you say the likeliest problem is the Comice. To be honest my history with growing pears is not the greatest and Comice is one of the trickier ones because it likes warmer weather than we generally get. On the other hand its got an undeniable pedigree, so if you can get it to crop you'll have some top quality fruit.

To be honest, I'm not even all that fussed about productivity right now. I just want to keep them alive long enough for productivity to be an issue

Much as I love the idea of growing my own stuff, I'm not very good at keeping plants alive. I experimented last year with a few veggies, and managed to grow *some*. We had some lovely potatoes (which my husband thought tasted much better than store-bought ones), lots of spinach, coriander, beans (I got some dwarf bean seeds, and we ate whatever the snails spared), and some tomatoes.

I also got some strawberry plants from a friendly neighbour. Don't know what variety, but we enjoyed a couple of fruit every week! Also bought a couple of blueberry bushes, which obviously didn't produce much in their first year.

Since things went so well with these few things, I got a little over-ambitious this year. Got me some raspberries, gooseberry, and blackcurrant, in addition to those fruit trees. We don't have a lot of space, so trying container gardening. Fingers crossed!

[nickdub]

Plants are a bit like people, some respond well to one sort of treatment well others need different handling. So a lot of gardening is learning about what are the best ways of growing a sort of plant and then getting as near to them as you reasonably can.

Take the 3 soft fruits you mentioned as examples :-

1) raspberries - these are shallow rooted, dislike being waterlogged but need plenty of moisture and feed at the roots when they are growing - so they grow very well in the Scottish borders where the long hours if daylight at the time when the plants are growing fastest , high average rainfall and generally free-draining soil give them close to ideal conditions. The taller kinds need support to hold up the heavy canes and because they usually grow canes which fruit once and then die back, pruning is just a matter of taking out the fruited canes at some time during their dormant stage.

2) gooseberries are completely different , more like mini-Apple trees. They fruit mostly on the older wood, so the aim to start with is to get a strong and open framework of branches which will fruit in future years.You don't want to give them too much food early on as you will get lots of soft growth. They just need ordinary amounts of watering and will cope with quite a lot of shade as long as there is good free moment of air and the sky over head is visible. So in Victorian times they were frequently grown against a north facing wall to give a late crop. You can let the fruit hang a long time on the bushes to develop the best flavour, as long as you keep the birds off :-)

3) blackcurrants fruit most on new wood, indeed some growers cut out all the old wood after it has fruited each year - this only works if the bushes are growing really strongly. They respond well to being fed plenty of nitrogenous material so stable manure used to be the order of the day when that was easily obtainable. Oddly they will also tolerate a certain amount of shade, though not as much as gooseberries will and you probably get less fruit in shady places. With currants its easy to grow new bushes from cuttings, which is just as well since they tend to come down with virus diseases and "run out of steam", so need replacing every 5 or 6 years. They need plenty of water at the roots when the fruit is beginning to swell.

[Runtpuppy]

Plants are a bit like people, some respond well to one sort of treatment well others need different handling. So a lot of gardening is learning about what are the best ways of growing a sort of plant and then getting as near to them as you reasonably can.

Take the 3 soft fruits you mentioned as examples :-

1) raspberries - these are shallow rooted, dislike being waterlogged but need plenty of moisture and feed at the roots when they are growing - so they grow very well in the Scottish borders where the long hours if daylight at the time when the plants are growing fastest , high average rainfall and generally free-draining soil give them close to ideal conditions. The taller kinds need support to hold up the heavy canes and because they usually grow canes which fruit once and then die back, pruning is just a matter of taking out the fruited canes at some time during their dormant stage.

2) gooseberries are completely different , more like mini-Apple trees. They fruit mostly on the older wood, so the aim to start with is to get a strong and open framework of branches which will fruit in future years.You don't want to give them too much food early on as you will get lots of soft growth. They just need ordinary amounts of watering and will cope with quite a lot of shade as long as there is good free moment of air and the sky over head is visible. So in Victorian times they were frequently grown against a north facing wall to give a late crop. You can let the fruit hang a long time on the bushes to develop the best flavour, as long as you keep the birds off :-)

3) blackcurrants fruit most on new wood, indeed some growers cut out all the old wood after it has fruited each year - this only works if the bushes are growing really strongly. They respond well to being fed plenty of nitrogenous material so stable manure used to be the order of the day when that was easily obtainable. Oddly they will also tolerate a certain amount of shade, though not as much as gooseberries will and you probably get less fruit in shady places. With currants its easy to grow new bushes from cuttings, which is just as well since they tend to come down with virus diseases and "run out of steam", so need replacing every 5 or 6 years. They need plenty of water at the roots when the fruit is beginning to swell.

Oh wow, that's really good to know! Thanks a lot!

I wasn't planning to get raspberries because, from whatever I'd read about them, they seemed to require a lot of space. I thought I'd just get a dwarf variety (which is a summer-fruiting type).

Then, I saw a post on Freecycle where someone wanted to give away a bunch of fruit plants. Rasps were offered, but I was interested in the rhubarb and the gooseberry. It turns out they had just got that bit of allotment, and the previous owner had grown a bunch of fruits. The new owners, however, didn't want ANY fruit.

Because they were so keen to get rid of stuff, they kinda pressed me to take the blackcurrant as well. I can't say no to plants :-\ so I took it.

Then they started showing me the rasps These were autumn-bearing (not sure which variety) and they didn't look too tall. I figured, might as well try. It's not like I'm spending any money on them. I was going to take 3-5 canes (coz space!), but they insisted on giving me more. I think we came home with 10!

The gooseberry bush I got from them is quite mature. It's got thick branches... some of the older ones are almost 1" thick. It's got some flower buds as well, now. The blackcurrant is nice and fairly bushy as well, although I haven't been paying it much attention.

As a result, right now, I have quite a few soft fruit plants/bushes. Some I collected on a whim coz they were cheap... others I bought because I really wanted to grow them. I try to learn as I go along. This bit of info you've just given me is going to be saved for reference!

Thanks again!

[nickdub]

You're very welcome - enjoy your gardening and your lovely fresh fruit. :-)

( I always accept free plants -even if I can't use them I just pass them on to someone who can)

[Runtpuppy]

You're very welcome - enjoy your gardening and your lovely fresh fruit. :-)

( I always accept free plants -even if I can't use them I just pass them on to someone who can)

Thanks!

[Runtpuppy]

An Update!

A year ago, I was panicking about my newly-bought fruits trees. I wasn't even sure if they'd survive (I am a bit of a pessimist... it helps me manage disappointments better :P ).

However, they have!







The cherry tree is a tall branchless thing that is taller than me (not that that's a great feat... I'm 5'nothing).

The two apple trees have almost doubled in size.

The plum and pear have seen a 50% increase in height.

But the most important thing is that they are still alive!

[nickdub]

Well done and congrats

If you want to fan train the trees or anything similar then it would be best to cut the top bit off above a bud to the height where you'd like the branches to come out from - the apple and the pear can be pruned now, whereas it would be safe to do the cherry and the plum in May or June because of disease problems.

Generally people prune fruit trees to much when the trees are older, but not enough when they are young.

[Runtpuppy]

Thanks Nick

Yes, I had lopped off the tops of the apple trees last year so they would branch out a bit. The Gala has 4 branches coming out pretty much perfectly in a goblet shape. The Golden Delicious has only one but I'll see how it does this year.

The cherry will need to be trimmed to make it a little shorter than it is, but I was waiting for summer to do that.

The plum and pear both haven't grown much in height, so I'm waiting to see how they develop. They were the ones I was most worried about, since they didn't do much at all last year and were also the most affected by aphids.

I also got a pollinating partner for the Doyenne du Comice, by the way.



Got it as a bare root tree last year. It flowered almost immediately. And while I chopped off all the blossoms so it could focus on regrowing its roots, I couldn't help letting one little fruitlet get on with it.

Got the sweetest, juiciest, butteriest pear from it! Really looking forward to more of those now!

[nickdub]

Looking very good as I said - for the trees which aren't making much growth a mulch of farmyard manure now would be the best bet - if that's not possible any reasonably long lasting fertiliser should do the trick - once they get a bit bigger and their roots extend down further then they find their own food more easily.

PS I am assuming you've planted them in the ground now, and not kept them in pots obviously .

[B Porcupine]

Looking good! It can be a steep learning curve but it is surprising how soon it all starts to make sense. Those fruit will taste doubly sweet!

I had a lot to learn when I moved into my house. I tried summer raspberries - lots of netting and cursing at birds (who were just doing what they do): after two years I ripped them out and put in autumn fruiting ones. They are not netted or caged;the blackbirds eat a couple of the early ones, but then leave them alone (no fledglings to feed, I am guessing). I have tonnes of raspberries every year and am chuffed that I cut my losses and learned the lesson.

Every fruit I pick makes me smile (even the prickly gooseberries) - I grew this!

[Snadger]

I bought a similar patio pack of dwarf fruit trees a month ago.I have Pear, Plum ,Cherry and Mulberry.
I had hoped that by this time next year they would be bigger and have more branches than yours appear to have. Still, its interesting to see yours and realise I am maybe expecting too much of mine.