Just a quick note about this Saturday's fruit tree planting session at the garden from 10.30am - 3.30pm
Tree planting is one of winter's great gardening pleasures, full of anticipation for spring and Nature's bounty. This is especially true for fruit tree planting, where you're providing a legacy for many years to come. If well maintained, even severely-trained fruit - especially pears and apples - can be productive for over one hundred years.

At Abbey Gardens we are cordon training each plant on a 45 degree angle up to circa 2metres in height, though for the stone fruit such as apples this height may take 5 or more years to achieve. The sunny wall will be great for fruit ripening but the dryness at any wall base will mean we will need to water the plants carefully at least for the first few growing seasons. Pruning for most of the trees will be in late summer though as we plant we will do some light formative pruning too.
There's a handy quick pruning guide online here.

One thing we're doing which I myself have not done before, is cordon training berries including redcurrant and gooseberries - this means pruning their usual bushy disposition into a single stem. The technique produces less fruit but has significant advantages - the fruit can ripen more evenly, larger berries and trusses will result, and of course the cordons will look darned good too. The soft fruit will yield sooner than the pears, cherries and apples too (for which we will need to patiently wait 2 -3 seasons) thus giving us some tasty grazing even as soon as this summer.

Here's the delicious list of what we're planting:

Cherry Stella
Cherry Inga
Redcurrant Jonkheer Van Tets
Redcurrant Junifer
Whitecurrant White Versailles
Peach Peregrine
Apricot Gold Cott
Apple Autumn Glow
Gooseberry Invicta
Gooseberry Pax
Pear Comice (Doyenne de)
Pear Merton Pride
Pear Concorde
Peach Red Haven
Apple Winter Gem
Apple Falstaff (Red)
Apple Baumans Reinette
Apple Bountiful
Apple Pitmaston Pine Apple
Apple Herefordshire Russet
Plum Denniston's Superb
Plum Curlew
Plum Coe's Golden Drop

Posted February 1, 2010 12:30 by Karen Guthrie