Monthly Archives: August 2008

The only good rabbit…..

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Rabbits are a complete pain if you happen to grow hedging and trees and fruit for a living. Cute looking they may be, but they have a horrid habit of biting branches straight through (usually close to the stem) and of tearing leaves off plants they don’t bite…

We have a standing out area at Ashridge Trees where we have a fair number of potted hedge plants – escallonia, griselinia, pyracantha, photinia and so on. I walked out there this morning to find that a rabbit or rabbits had bitten through the electrified rabbit proof fence (yes, bitten and no sign of a dead one) and plundered the plants. Actually they had plundered the Elaeagnus ebbingei Limelight with barely a glance at the rest.

I guess the silver lining is that we know that Elaeagnus is not a good idea as a hedge plant when rabbits are about.

I must tell Frances …..

Cut the Cordon now!

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This is just about pruning cordons – there is a much longer piece on growing cordon fruit trees if you would like to know more.

Cordons should be pruned every year around mid August (i.e. about now). Your cordon is ready for pruning when the new side shoots from the main stem(s) become woody at their base. Shorten all of this new growth from the main stem to 3 or 4 leaves above the basal cluster of leaves at the base of the shoot – see the diagram below.
Where a shoot from the main stem has a side shoot coming of it, prune this also – to one leaf above the cluster of leaves its base.

Summer Pruning Cordon Fruit Trees

Pruning Cordons

Pruning of fruit trees is generally carried out in winter or early spring. Cordons are different in that you restrict their growth by pruning now and the ideal cordon is compact and covered in fruiting spurs (which this treatment encourages).

You can use this technique on any shape of fruit tree if you wish to restrict its size but at the same time ensure it produces lots of fruit.  The trick is to use a M9 semi-dwarfing or MM106 semi-vigorous rootstock

We hope your plants have grown well this summer (certainly not much need to water!)

Watch your plants grow, and enjoy!

Be careful who you call sucker….

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Some hedging plants and trees produce suckers (new plants that grow up from the parent plant’s root system). Sometimes this is bad – because the sucker is the same as the rootstock, but not the tree as the plant is grafted. An example here would be a named rose variety that is grafted onto a dog rose rootstock.

Sometimes this is good – because you want a bushier plant. Rugosa roses make a bushier hedge because they sucker.

Here is a list of trees and shrubs that sucker. As usual it is not exhaustive, so feel free to comment and add. But if you don’t babies sprouting around your plants these are the ones to avoid.  You can reduce suckering in grafted trees (and an awful lot of trees are grafted – all named apple trees for example) by not damaging their root systems. If you do see a sucker it is best to “tear” it out – cutting it back just means it will try again.

Suckering trees include

Amelanchiers
Acacias
Alders
Cherries
Elms
Limes
Poplars
Willows

You can find all these in our Standard Trees section

Suckering shrubs are:

Bamboos (just as a caution – we don’t sell them…. yet)
Blackthorn
Dogwoods
Elaeagnus
Forsythias
Laurels
Philadelphus (mock Orange)
Ramanas Rose
Viburnums

You can find all these in the section of the Ashridge Trees website on Bare-rooted Hedging and Trees

Apple Tree Pollination Groups

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This is a list of Apple Flowering Groups for the UK.  You can use it as a reference for the purposes of ensuring you have the correct pollinator(s) available for your Apple trees

Early Flowering Group

These trees will pollinate one another and any tree in the Mid Season Flowering Group (see) below:

Beauty of Bath, Discovery, Egremont Russet

Mid Season Flowering Group

These trees will pollinate one another and any tree in either the Early or Late Season Flowering Groups:

Arthur Turner, Charles Ross, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Cox’s Self-Fertile, Grenadier, James Grieve, Lord Lambourne, Revd W. Wilkes, Sunset, Winter Gem, Worcester Permain.

Triploids in this group (that need pollination but cannot pollinate other trees) are:

Blenheim Orange, Bramley’s Seedling

Late Season Flowering Group

These trees will pollinate one another and any tree in the Mid Season Flowering Group:

Ellisons Orange, Falstaff, Howgate Wonder, Laxton’s Superb, Spartan

Triploids in this group (that need pollination but cannot pollinate other trees) are:

Crispin, Jupiter

 
Creative Commons License
Apple Tree Pollination Groups by Ruth Eyre is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at Ashridge Trees – Apple Tree Pollination Guide.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/blog/blog-copyright/.

 

Watch your plants grow, and enjoy!