Has anyone had any experience establishing a cherry orchard? Where would one go for advice on rootstock, varieties, suitable regions, tree suppliers, polytunnel suppliers etc.
Would permissions be needed to establish orchards on farm land? Are there any restrictions? Restrictions on putting up polytunnels?
Stewart Duke
Archive for May, 2009
Establishing a Cherry Orchard – advice please?
Posted in Fruit Questions on May 26, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Summer Sun Cherry – is it self fertile?
Posted in Fruit Questions on May 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Summer Sun cherry trees are frequently marketed as self-fertile and thus will crop without a pollinator. Some years ago East Malling Research Centre conducted a genetic analysis on the Cherry Collection growing at Brogdale and found the absence of the gene responsible for self-fertility in Summer Sun, thus taking it off the list of self-fertile [...]
Ants on Cherries – how to get rid of them?
Posted in Fruit Questions on May 26, 2009 | 2 Comments »
My problem has been ANTS – the little tiny kind – that crawl up and eat ridges around the ripening cherries! I have heard that the herb pennyroyal planted around the base may help; or using borax there at fruiting time; or soft soap sprays.
Can anyone help me plan for the eventual battle?
G.L. Foskett
See an [...]
Spring 2009 in South Nottinghamshire
Posted in News on May 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
No significant air frosts during April means a reasonable plum crop could be in prospect. Certainly the blossom has not been killed off and temperatures were considerably higher than 2008, although we had to wait several weeks for a continued six days of sunshine which could be critical as regards fruit set. Cherry blossom was [...]
Apple Cosies
Posted in Fruit Questions, News on May 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »
An apple cosie – isn’t this the cutest thing ever? Knitted jackets for apples to protect them in your lunch box and seemingly part of a marketing campaign in Italy to encourage apple sales by local growers.
The cosie in the picture was knitted by an Italian friend from instructions in a magazine and the apple [...]
‘Blossom’ – is this an uniquely English word?
Posted in Fruit Questions on May 17, 2009 | 2 Comments »
A recent ‘Letter to the Editor’ in the Independent noted that the English have a special word for the flowers of fruit trees: ‘blossom’. Yet the Japanese who place great importance on blossom in art and poetry do not have have a single word for ‘blossom’ – instead saying, for example, ‘the flowers of the [...]
Suffolk Pink and Winter Wonder – how they originated
Posted in Articles, News on May 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There was been some correspondence a while ago about the origin of the apple Suffolk Pink, and we think it would be a good idea to have some input from the discoverer, Dan Neuteboom, and to this we are adding information about an earlier Neuteboom discovery, Winter Wonder.
These two varieties were first recognized at Dan’s [...]
Pendragon Apple – has anyone heard of this?
Posted in Fruit Questions on May 11, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Through my research I am also looking at the future of heritage apples from a market angle. One of these is promoting the nutritional value of the fruit.
Somewhere in the information I have read I have come across reference to an apple called Pendragon that is being hailed as a superfood due to its particular [...]
Brogdale on Radio 4
Posted in Brogdale, National Fruit Collections, News on May 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I listened with interest to the BBC Food Programme yesterday, Sunday 3 May, that again explored Brogdale in Kent, home of the National Fruit Collections. In essence the BBC was updating the story of the National Fruit Collections covered by the programme in the early 1990s and in 2007. I was [...]
