Weekly update for the fruit garden – third week of August 2015

Apples:

Today we picked some good sample of Discovery apples. During the first week of June, we thinned the clusters of the young fruitlets to two fruits per cluster. The effects of this are now, at picking time, very evident. The fruits are of beautiful colour, decent size and very crisp. It is always right with early maturing varieties to thin out the fruitlets, EARLY in the growing season, if you like crisp fruit with a good flavour. Never store early fruit with long term storage fruit. Early varieties produce lots of ethylene and therefore reduce the storage life of all the surrounding fruits.

Make a regular check and remove any fruits showing brown rot. Do not drop this fruit on the orchard floor. Spores easily spread and will infect other fruits still on the trees.

The rewards of a well-tended orchard

Raspberries:

Continue regular picking of the autumn–fruiting raspberries. Cut out the old canes of the summer fruiting raspberries. Tie in the new shoots.

Weekly update for the fruit garden – second week of August 2015

Apples:

Many apple trees are carrying too much fruit. To ensure that you have a crop next year, remove surplus fruit from the tree this week. Concentrate particularly on damaged, small and green fruit in the centre of the tree. As we are in a drier spell of weather, do not let the trees go short of water, while the fruits are swelling.

Cane fruits:

Cut out the old canes of summer fruiting raspberries. Finish picking the red and black currants.

Gooseberries:

Watch out for gooseberry sawfly. These caterpillars can defoliate your gooseberry bushes within a week. Organic materials are available in the garden centres to prevent this menace.

All fruit trees:

Net the trees if birds are pecking the fruits. If not, wasps will hollow out the fruits, such as apples, pears, plums and greengages.

 

Photo courtesy of Katherine Shann/flickr.com

Read our month-by-month fruit tree care calendar.

September tip: blackcurrants and rasperries

Blackcurrant bushes: remove the wood which has carried this year’s crop.  Raspberry canes: for the summer-cropping raspberries such as Glen Ample, Tullameen and Leo, cut out all the old canes to make room for the new canes. After the autumn-cropping raspberries such as Autumn Bliss and All Gold have all been picked and have finished cropping, cut ALL the canes back to ground level. Remove/treat strongly-growing weeds.