It was in my Six on Saturday post from 28th January this year that I mentioned grafting a few scions of what may be 'Meridian' onto a tree of 'Holstein'. I last looked at them when they were just breaking bud, at which stage all four grafts appeared to have taken. Today I had a…
Fruit
Apple grafting – follow-up.
Back in January I did a short blog about grafting apples in the simplest way possible. https://wordpress.com/post/gardenruminations.co.uk/8269 Here, exactly 3 months later, is a progress report. I grafted three scions onto three shoots of apple that had appeared in my garden. I think they may have been suckers from the roots of an apple tree…
Apple grafting, the low tech way.
I've done a bit of apple grafting but never anything on a large scale. I'm not skilled, I don't have years of experience but I can say that it has almost always worked, in that the grafts have been successful. I was however a nurseryman and I did have access to rubber ties and grafting…
Apple upcycling
OK, you planted a bunch of step-over apples nearly ten years ago because they were fashionable then and to be honest they’ve been a disappointment. Maybe they don’t get enough sun, maybe they weren’t pruned quite right. Some good varieties among them too, like ‘Saint Cecilia’. According to the National Fruit Collection this is a…
How to prune apples.
I read a blog the other day entitled ‘How to grow Alstroemeria’ which started with an apology for its pretentious title, used because confident titles attract search engine attention. I imagine there is a lot more written about pruning apples than growing Alstroemerias, so confident or not, I’m not expecting the world to sit up…
Apple growing, a cautionary tale.
I have an allotment. On it is a large fruit cage, taking up a third of the plot and in which I grow, reasonably successfully, soft fruit. I have raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and red currants. The allotment rules don’t allow me to plant trees in the ground, so I am unable to plant…
Six on Saturday – 5/8/2017
Dahlias and Japanese anemones are definitely flowers of the second half of summer. I'm impatient for them to start flowering, then depressed when they do. One. Dahlia 'Orange Cushion'. There is not the remotest possibility of this dahlia ever being mistaken for nearly red or nearly yellow. It's a bang down the middle orange. I've…
Allotment update – 3/4/2017
My purple curly kale has had it. Time to go. I chopped round the stems with the spade, leaving most of the roots in the ground and took them away to be shredded and added to the compost heap. I'd wanted to plant spuds in the space nearly a month ago but thought there were…
Pruning the apple tree
Well it's done now, for better or worse. There's no going back. I have to admit to a degree of trepidation each year when the third week of August comes around and it is time to prune my Suntan apple. It has to be done; in a garden the size of mine there is no…
Allotment update
No dig veg growing throws up the odd dilemma, like do I or do I not earth up my spuds. I chose to do so, but not to the extent that everyone else has done theirs. Having made and carried out the decision, it seems a bit late to turn to Charles Dowding's book and…
garden ruminations 