Last week I tackled a job I’ve been waiting to do all summer: pruning a badly overgrown plum tree at the back of #Plot59.
Categories
Tag: pruning
A couple of weeks ago I enjoyed the opportunity to work on a rather lovely Bramley’s Seedling tree that hadn’t been pruned for a while and was starting to get too big for its space. The owner of the tree – which was highly productive last year – was very keen that it shouldn’t just […]
Last Sunday I girded my loins against the chill and headed down to Platt Fields Park in south Manchester for a day of restorative top fruit pruning. The session was organised and run by The Orchard Project, with The Friends of Platt Fields Park, and was led by Mark Simmonds, a Hebden Bridge based orchardist […]
Earlier this year I talked about establishing our air-pot mini-orchard; three apples and a morello cherry that we’re growing in Air-Pot containers. At the time I mentioned that I was planning to use a Modified Lorette system of pruning in an effort to develop the best possible network of fruiting spurs without over-taxing the trees. […]
The three apple trees that we potted up into our Air-Pot mini-orchard are all doing very well so far. After blossoming profusely back in May they’ve all set fruit quite well; a couple of them maybe too well. Here’s a cluster of developing fruitlets on our ‘Cornish Aromatic’: As you can see, there are four […]
With the weather turning a little warmer and the immediate threat of frost receding this week, I took the opportunity to pot up our newly-delivered fruit trees. Even more importantly, I gave them a formative pruning to set them up for their future roles as small, hopefully highly productive, fruit-bearing trees. Here’s how I went […]
With the weather holding dry and fair last week, I took the opportunity to spend some time down at Plot #59 and make a start on of the more essential winter maintenance jobs: pruning our soft-fruit bushes. Soft-fruit crops are among the most useful you can grow on an allotment. They’re perennial, so once they’re […]
Categories
Plot #59 Update: April 2016
“April is the cruellest month,” said T. S. Eliot, in the opening line of his epic poem ‘The Wasteland’. He could well have been referring to the tricks that April seems to enjoy playing with the weather. Last year April served up a prolonged, scorching heatwave, followed by a thoroughly miserable, damp cold-snap. This year […]