Weeding the Web

A Rare Nibble at Apple Varieties

August seems a little early to mention bare-root fruit trees, as these don't go in until November at the very earliest, but here's something that you need to know about now if you're interested. If you think you might be adding a fruit tree to your garden this winter, but aren't sure what to order, then this opportunity from Orange Pippin Fruit Trees (NB 2014: offer now discontinued) might help your decision.

They're offering a range of tasting boxes of fruit grown at Brogdale Fruit Collection or Heritage Orchards, also at Brogdale Farm, in selections such as Cox's Orange Pippin strains and Chef's Apples, as well as boxes of pears, quinces, plums, gages and damsons. If you're interested in a particular variety, it might be possible to include it.

They recommend ordering in advance, as stocks are limited, and will deliver 2.5kg of early-mid or late-season apples in August to October, depending on the varieties.

I've thought for ages that Brogdale was missing out on ways to exploit the fruit it grows, and this looks like a good way to get to know some of our lesser known varieties. Of course, taste varies according to weather conditions and soil, so a variety might not taste quite the same as it does from Brogdale when grown in your garden, but at least you'll have a better idea of the taste it has.  Boxes are priced at £26 and it looks as if that includes delivery.

How to Harvest Rhubarb

One of the features of modern times, in my opinion, is the proliferation of instructions and an accompanying fear in novices of getting things wrong. Perhaps it has always seemed thus, but the media nowadays strikes me as particularly strong on nannying didacticism.

So, as reassurance, I can reveal that a member of my family, well advanced in years (no, not me!) has managed to go through life without ever knowing exactly how to harvest rhubarb. Both she and the rhubarb plants that have endured her cutting, rather than pulling, have survived, so it just goes to show that getting things wrong isn't as disastrous as we are sometimes led to believe.

However, harvesting rhubarb stalks by pulling is, according to Tom Cole in the Videojug production below, beneficial to the plant as it stimulates the roots. For best results in future years, you should also restrict your harvesting to plants three years old or more. Actually, he says you can harvest a couple of sticks from two-year-old plants, but only in the first two weeks, so it barely seems worth it.

So, just to stop you having to carry a sharp blade across the uneven surface of the garden (risk assessment - another feature of modern times), here's how to harvest rhubarb:

 

Codling moths gather early - or do they?

Bright sunshine, glorious warmth. What else to do but relax in the recliner, gaze languidly up into the apple tree, and "What the...?!?"

I counted 15 of them: small, dark moths with extraordinarily long antennae. I'd have thought them cute, but for their intense concentration on a tree that contributes substantially to our food supply. Anything that focussed and that numerous just has to be bad, doesn't it?

But what were they?  Seriously hampered by the fact that they were too high to see properly, and wouldn't stay still long enough for me to snap a close-up, I first plumped for the codling moth as the main apple pest known to me, but they would be rather early. Here we were at the end of April and the RHS tells us that they emerge in late May-June (to lay eggs on or near developing fruits from June to mid-July).

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

In my post Cutting off the Rhubarb's Flower Bud: what are we missing? I included a picture of said flower and pointed out that it wasn't really worth the wait. The other reason you shouldn't let your rhubarb flower is that it could well be the end of the plant.

Which is what happened to mine. The plant pictured died down for winter, never to be seen again. It had always been a weakling anyway, being Glaskins Perpetual grown from seed.

It takes some time for seed-grown rhubarb to bulk up enough to produce a good number of sticks (I'd personally say longer than the two years suggested on The Rhubarb Compendium, a comprehensive and excellently referenced site, but I didn't exactly cosset my plant).

We still have a plant of Glaskins Perpetual, around eight years on, and although it does now produce numerous sticks, they are spindly affairs that mean you need twice as many as you might pick from, say, a Victoria. On the whole, I'd go for planting crowns of rhubarb (that's the root part, if you're not sure), widely available in seed catalogues. Altogether more robust, producing thicker stalks.

Homemade blackberry squash (OK, it's blackberry vinegar)

Speaking of an enormous blackberry harvest (which we were in the last post Training a Wild Blackberry), we now have pots of blackberry and apple jelly and bramble jelly. Personally I don’t think it’s worth making jam, as blackberries are very pippy, but there's only so much jelly you need.

What I will be making now, and for the third year running, is Blackberry Vinegar.

Yes, it surprised me too.

You can make it with or without sugar, but I make the sweet version as I reckon it’s more versatile. It makes a great sauce to dribble on ice-cream, an extremely soothing, thick cough syrup (and the acid content is supposed to help get rid of bacteria), and it can be watered down like squash, which is how most of mine gets used up.

Training a wild blackberry bush

Have you picked your first blackberries yet? Down here in the south-east of England, where we’re enjoying a really super summer (apologies to all those in the rest of Britain who’ve been washed out (again)), blackberries started ripening around three weeks ago.

And, thanks to a garden experiment I began a couple of years ago, we're enjoying the bounty. For years, we’ve hacked back all brambles without question. Then, hacking yet again at a particularly powerful shoot that resurrected itself, no matter how often I cut it down, I deliberated this (literally) fruitless activity. Why not give it its head? 

Most brambles, especially in shade, are weedy, spindly growths that, in my experience, will never produce decent fruit. But this was a powerful stem in full sunshine and a sheltered position. So, in the face of fierce family opposition I let it grow.

Last year it bore well but this year we have a fruit harvest writ large. Pints of blackberries have ripened already, with plenty more to come. Part of the bush is even still in flower. (It’s a funny year.) And the blackberries themselves are enormous – bigger than anything I’ve picked in the wild, although it is itself a wild bush. My only problem is how to prune it.

Often advice is to train blackberry stems according to their age: in one direction one year, the opposite direction the next year. Fruit is produced on two-year-old canes, which is why you should keep the current year’s growth separate. Fruited canes are pruned out from the base after harvesting, and the year’s new fruits are trained in their place.

As usual, one of the excellent US Extension Colleges - this time belonging to Oregon State University - gives full instructions on dealing with blackberries. The diagram above shows the current year's growth (primocanes) laid out on the ground, with the fruiting canes (floricanes) having been tied in the previous autumn. They also give instructions on light pruning of the primocanes.

The RHS website does it differently, suggesting bundling new canes together along upper wires, then retraining them on lower wires, once the fruited canes have been removed from them (sounds harder work!).

But my bush, shaped in a hummock, has nothing so tidy about it. The RHS website warns: “If you don’t have somewhere to train these berries, they will quickly grow out of control and be harder to prune and less productive.”

I admit it’s only just under control. I foresee a lot a scratched flesh this autumn as I try to sort out the different canes. Still the council just hacks wild bushes back year after year and they continue to fruit, so I guess we don’t have to be too prissy about it.

So, if you have a bramble that just won’t go away, why not give it a chance and take advantage of Nature's bounty? And if you've given this a go, click on comment below and let us know how it's gone.

Damson pruning brings forth new shoots

Last month, I did some very heavy (and seasonally inappropriate) pruning to my damson trees, in order to fit in a garden office (more about that later – this is much more important). I was distinctly worried that I’d finish them off by hacking off major parts of their anatomy.

But now, only six weeks later, look! Shoots are appearing, not just from near the cuts, but all over the trunks.

It’s quite a relief. These trees are over thirty years old but still manage to burgeon forth like a teenager. And a bonus will be that, unlike the previous branches which stretched sideways in a desperate attempt to gain light, these are now bathed in sunshine and growing the way they’re meant to – straight up.

Fingers crossed: we have rejuvenated trees!

Cutting off the rhubarb's flower bud: what are we missing?

If you grow rhubarb, then any time soon your plants will be doing their best to beautify themselves with flowers.  You shouldn't be just picking stalks, but also vanquishing such vanity by removing the flower bud.

All the gardening books exhort you to do this, as it is said to save the plant’s energy for growing the bits we want to eat. Though, if your rhubarb is like mine, it just becomes more energetic in sending up more buds, which is why last year I got to wondering.

Normally I obediently cut off every one (I was a good girl at school, too), but last year my curiosity won. What was I was hacking off? My imagination ran riot. Rhubarb is a showy plant; surely its flowers would match the leaves? At the very least, I decided, it would produce a tall column topped with a colourful spike, possibly like a delphinium, maybe even a verbascum. Whatever form it took, I was positive it would be bright crimson.

So I let one flower.

For all those who’ve ever wondered what a rhubarb flower actually looks like, the result is pictured. It’s not a spike and it ain’t crimson.

This year I’m hacking them off.

Pruning my damsons - a deep cut is the hardest

There can’t be many more distressing acts than cutting down a living tree. Our Celtic ancestors saw strong symbolism in trees, based on their uses and observation.

Indeed, in the Ogham — the alphabet used by Druids for divination, among other things — the name of each letter is represented by a tree. Some feeling of this ancient mystery still lingers. As I say, to cut down a living tree feels criminal.

So I wasn’t feeling too good yesterday when most of the afternoon was spent slicing off large parts of the damsons at the bottom of the garden, not because they’re dead or diseased, but because they’re standing in the way of my soon-to-arrive garden office.

Saving our heritage apples

Last month I posted my startling discovery (startling to me, anyway) that cooking apples are virtually unknown in the States. To find out why this might be, I emailed Bill Spencer who runs Windrose Farm in California. Certified Organic and becoming Biodynamic, it’s one place that does grow them. Could it be that Bramleys are not to American tastes?

Bill replied, “The short answer is that we know of over five or six thousand varieties of apple that once grew in the US and now the ‘corporate Industrial Agricultural System’ that is pervading the planet sells fewer and fewer, maybe six or eight varieties.”

Bramleys, he says, do very well there and are, indeed, greatly sought after, but like most ‘heirloom’ varieties they don’t fit the ‘corporate’ needs, not being uniform or ready all at once and having different management needs from all the commercial apples.

Sadly, we can’t hold our heads any higher in Britain, even if we have preserved our national taste for ‘cookers’.