Oh for some rain, the fruit, the vegetables and flowers are crying out for water and all the water-butts are empty, but there is hope at last. The Met. Office has forecast heavy rain; perhaps this time we will get some.
Yes, here it comes, lots of it; this was on 9th July. The next morning my husband went to inspect the cherries and reported that they had not cracked and that Kordia has borne a large crop that is ready for picking. Two hours later we found that most of them had cracked badly; including Kordia, which is reported to be fairly resistant to cracking. What shall we do?
I decided that we should pick all the cracked ones off, so that they would not rot on the tree and infect those remaining. We picked in all 3lbs of cracked cherries, but what shall we do with all these sweet cherries? I stewed them all together, the fully ripe, the half ripe and unripe and add a teaspoonful of sugar at the end. They did not taste like Morellos, but were very nice indeed.
To think I nearly threw them away! I expect many other people have had a similar problem this year, but what did you do with them?
Elisabeth Stringer
We had the same heavy rain over in Kent and it was a great surprise to see that hardly any of the cherries in the Cherry Collection at Brogdale had cracked. Usually under such circumstances there would have been lots of varieties with cracked fruit. The Collection, however, was treated with a programme of Pre-Tect by FAST.
Don Vaughan of FAST told Fruit Forum that Pre-Tect has been widely used this year commercially with very good results: ‘Now we have 2 years of results I think that it can be developed for wider use. It is a natural product containing 0.1% Harpin protein which is a naturally occurring protein exuded from common diseases. This evokes the plants defence mechanisms and causes more nutrients to be taken up making the plant more vibrant. In the case of cherry cracking, more calcium is taken up which strengthens cell tissue.’
See FAST web site for details: http://www.fastltd.co.uk/PreTect.html and then click on Press Releases for more information.