Posted in Articles on June 23, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Spring 2008 was undoubtedly a very cold and wet affair with temperatures mostly between 40 and 45 degrees fahrenheit for weeks. The prevailing winds coming from the east or north east carried with them myriads of aphids which brought most new growth on the plum trees to a halt. The problems did not stop there [...]
Posted in Articles on June 4, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The amateur fruit grower in Britain has been well served since the 1940s by the authors of pamphlets, manuals, encyclopaedias and even ‘bibles’, covering the basic questions of how to grow fruit. However there is a real dearth of knowledge in published form for the benefit of the first time enthusiast, explaining the impact of [...]
Posted in Articles on April 17, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Any expectation that it was going to be an early year for fruit blossom has almost been reversed. As Howard Stringer predicted, our fickle climate has brought snow, frosts and hail in April. The damage to commercial crops of plums in Kent is reported to be serious in some areas and pears may also have [...]
Posted in Articles on April 16, 2008 | No Comments »
The origin of the dwarfing Gisela rootstocks for cherries, recounted by Howard Stringer on the Fruit Forum main web-site, has drawn the following comment from Malcolm Withnall.
May I compliment Howard on his informative essay on the origins of the Gisela series of cherry rootstocks. Milestones are rare in fruit culture, but Dr Gruppe’s inspired work [...]
Posted in Articles, Fruit Questions on April 5, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I am trying to find any information on the Copmanthorpe Crab, an apple named after a village outside York. Although Hogg and others record it as a synonym for Dutch Mignonne, Lindley questioned how a local apple grown outside York could be mixed up with a well known continental variety and called for closer comparison. [...]
Posted in Articles on March 31, 2008 | 4 Comments »
In his article ‘Essential Pears and Apples’, on the main web-site, Adrian Baggaley rates Katy above Discovery as an early apple, but I think that this is under-rating Discovery, which in my experience is a splendid variety. Its fruits are a pretty pinky red and when really ripe the flesh becomes marbled with pink, [...]
Posted in Articles on March 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
I note Howard Stringer’s reference to ‘horsiculture’ replacing orchards in Surrey. This has been a feature of the East Anglian landscape too.
Some orchard surveys were carried out in 2005/6 of several hundred orchard sites in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire that were mapped on the Millennium Edition OS Explorer maps. Both counties have shown conversion to pony [...]
Posted in Articles on March 7, 2008 | 3 Comments »
A recent article on the revolution in English cherry orchards published on our main web-site has prompted the following comments. To read the article see: http://www.fruitforum.net/english-cherry-production.htm
Posted in Articles on March 2, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The Flower of the Town apple variety illustrated in my original piece clearly differs from that held in the National Collection at Brogdale and has given rise to some comment. If nothing else, it confirms the difficulty of authenticating varieties when only the name of the collector, in this case, Miss Holliday of Leeds, working [...]
Posted in Articles on February 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Some time back there was mention of a pomegranate tree in Golders Hill Park, London. Last week, on my weekly visit with a group of friends, I finally found someone in the park to ask: there is a substantial tree and I was told it fruited well last year, but the fruit is only [...]
