New Fruit Plants Question

[Runtpuppy]

No, unfortunately, they are going to have to stay in pots for now. I do, however, want to move them to bigger pots later this year.

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!

You're right! They do taste better when I've grown them!

I was so pleased with my first crop of gooseberries last year that I didn't even wait for them to ripen before I started sampling them. Not many made it inside the house. *blush*

I don't think I'll be getting any fruit from these trees this year. The branches don't look sturdy enough to support much, so will be removing the fruitlets, if they appear at all. Let the trees develop a bit.

However, next year, I am hoping to start getting a few sweet fruit of my labour!

[Snadger]

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.

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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!

The plant above is how I would hope mine would look this time next year.

[Runtpuppy]

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.

Nah, you might do better than me. I put them out too early last year which might have shocked them a bit. They didn't start recovering until it was too late for them to do much. They did start showing some growth then (some of them more than the others).

Also, if you're going to put them in the ground, they might do better than mine.

I've given them some chicken manure pellets. Also getting some horse manure this evening so will mulch them if it is properly rotted. We'll see how they get on this year.

Also, dwarf mulberry tree sounds very tempting!

[Runtpuppy]

The plant above is how I would hope mine would look this time next year.

And the tree you have 'quoted' was the bare root pear I bought from another source I think it was a 2- or 3-year old tree while the others were 1-year old trees when I got them.

[Brack]

I bought a dwarf mulberry Charlotte Russe, ordered it as soon as they announced it. As a houseplant for the first 5 months it was very pretty and produced a little crop of berries, which didn't taste of much. I then put it in the ground. 2 years later it's not grown much, and didn't really bother fruiting last year either. A lot of people seem to be unhappy with them.
Last year I bought a bare root morus Nigra in a sale for a fiver. Even though it'll be 8-10 years I figured I'd rather get something that tasted like a mulberry.

[Runtpuppy]

Ah, that's a shame! I always wanted a mulberry tree but the size put me off. But if the dwarf is not good enough taste-wise, then it's not worth it, is it?

Maybe you could use it to cultivate silkworms and get some silk out of it! :P

[Brack]

I've heard a few saying that 'normal' (ie. black/red/white) mulberries improve in flavour as they age, so maybe in a few years it might be worth it, but currently it isn't looking like it.