Tag Archives: Fruit trees

Clay Soil – Problem or Blessing?

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We want to say it loud and clear if you think clay soil is a problem:

Clay soil is fertile soil that conserves moisture!

Clay soil is good soil, native European plants love it and so do many other trees.

Relatively few plants like really waterlogged soil.
Clay soil becomes waterlogged more easily than other soils and can collect water in certain places, like basins or low lying ground, but really in most places it’s fine to just plant into it.

When water sits in puddles for a long time after rain, one way to break surface water logging is to dig one or more soakaways or sumps.

These are a  lot of work, so it’s good that they do work.
Put them in first and use the soil that comes out to build ridges to plant into.
Clay is good for shaping into raised mounds.

In upland areas, clay soil’s ability to preserve moisture is a good thing – it works well with mulch fabric.

Transplanted hedging and trees survive best in clay soils – it’s plants on drier and sandier soils that need more watering in hot summer.

Long Term Years of Improving Clay Soil:
People who want to really improve the drainage in a plot of clay land each early winter will double dig it over with manure and lime, leaving big bare sods of clay on top, exposed to the frosts over the winter.
This can be covered in mid spring to dry off for digging with more manure and sowing with green manure fertiliser plants.

Fruit Trees and the Mile High Club

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You will often hear people say that you can’t grow apple trees at more than 500 feet above sea level.

While there is a germ of truth in this – as in many old wives’ tales – it is only a germ.  I know of an enormously successful commercial orchard that grows at beween 800 and 850 feet above sea level and crops heavily every year.

So here are a few, rather random, thoughts about where to put your trees if you are thinking about planting an orchard.

Think hard about “the slope”.  The worst thing that can happen to your average fruit tree is to be frosted while in bloom. No fruit that year. Period.  So the first, and most important tip is to plant your fruit trees on a slope.  Don’t go silly and try to plant them where only eagles dare, but make it a slope. You do this because cold air is heavy and falls. It comes to rest in valley bottoms and in hollows and dips where it can fall no further and gets trapped. That is where you get late frosts. Oddly, in falling, the cold air drives out the warmer air that was there before and pushes it UP. In so doing it creates what is called an “inversion” layer.  On cold nights this generally exists at between 100 and 300 feet above sea level.  When fractions of a degree are the difference between crop life and death, the temperature gradient is measurable and can be critical.

Think hard about the wind.  One of the major drawbacks of slopes is that parts of them can be really windy. And wind is bad for fruit trees; pollinating insects work hard enough as it is without battling with head winds.  Bees are not the most aerodynamic at the best of times….  Therefore only plant an orchard on a south-west facing slope if it is sheltered or if you can plant a shelter belt to break up the wind.  This is important as the prevailing winds tend to be at their strongest at almost exactly the time fruit trees are in bloom.  A sheltered north facing slope is preferable to a windy southerly incline.

Think height. Because of frost pocket risks, don’t plant too low and recognise that it does get colder as the land gets higher (at a rate of about 1 degree farenheit for every 300 feet). This temperature fall off delays the day fruit trees come into flower and so reduces the time available for them to ripen their crop. I have mentioned shelter belts and these help enormously in raising ambient temperatures, but unless your position is remarkable, don’t try to grow fruit at much more than 700 feet above sea level and try to chose varieties that crop (as opposed to flower) early.

Think soil. People are always surprised when they are told that the human body is more than 80% water. Well, given how solid the body is and how juicy a ripe apple or plum can be, it is not surprising to learn that fruit is generally more than 90% water. So while fruit trees like nourishment and can be productive in relatively poor soils, they cannot do well without enough moisture. The key to moisture retention with plants is soil structure.  Fruit trees will die if their roots drown in winter, so there must be drainage and their fruit will be undersized and deformed if there is not enough water in summer.  If the soil is thin, or if it is heavy clay, be prepared to incorporate masses of well rotted organic matter. Don’t just put it in the hole (in fact on heavy clay, don’t put any in the hole) either work it in all over the orchard or just spread it as a mulch and let the worms do their thing. Soil that is in good condition can both allow great drainage and hold an astonishing amount of available moisture.

Think protection.  Orchards are a magnet for scrumping children, theiving adults, sheep, horses, goats and the like.  You can’t keep them all out, but not having a fence is asking for trouble. They are also a magnet for wildlife and in this ever industrialising world orchards are now recognised as crucially important safe havens for an enormous range of animals that are under pressure elsewhere.  So leave a little room for some brambles, make a log-pile, have a bit of a pond if you can and cut down on those chemicals (of which there is more coming soon).

Sit back and watch your fruit trees grow.

Fruit Trees at Altitude

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We get hundreds of enquiries a year about growing fruit trees at altitude and our andwers usually start off with something like:

“Unfortunately your location sounds beautiful but (from the perspective of fruit trees) terrible. You site is high up and almost certainly windy given that you are south facing and prevailing winds are south-westerly….”

Because we are nice friendly people, we try to explain why this is a problem:

“You will face two problems. The first is that air temperatures will be lower in spring and autumn than on lower ground and so fruit trees will come into flower later and have less time to ripen. The second is that wind and pollinating insects do not go together…. if you do see any insects they tend to be traveling very fast.”

We would love to sell as many orchards as we can, but without a windbreak they are a waste of time and money at altitudes over 550 feet unless peculiar circumstances apply.

To the would be alpine fruit grower, our advice would be:

  • Start with soft fruit which have much later flowering times, mature more quickly and so will ripen in time. Also, because they are closer to the ground pollination is less of an issue as well as they provide better shelter for the odd flying friend.
  • If you are determined to have a fine stand of apple trees and the odd pear, cherry and what-have-you plant a windbreak and wait at least 4 or 5 years while it establishes before you plant an orchard.
  • Or you can try to grow your fruit trees as cordons against a south facing wall where they will be warmer and ripen more quickly.
  • And above 650 feet don’t bother.

Good luck

1 Easy Way to get Better Fruit

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Over the years, we have often heard a story very similar to this one: a first time fruit tree owner was delighted at the sight of their trees coming into maturity, flowering beautifully and being courted by all manner of bees and butterflies before becoming weighed down with piles of slowly but surely swelling fruit.

However! Their joy and wonder turned cold, like a cup of forgotten tea, as harvest time arrived. For their fruit were undersized, poorly formed and tasted nothing like the claims of the nice people who sold them the trees in the first place.

If the trees in question were apple trees, then the sad story may not be over. For if the tree has what is known in the trade as a “biennial tendency” – and many good apple trees do (and some pears by the way) – then it is likely that the tree will hardly produce any fruit at all the following year. What is going on?

The answer is simple. Even domesticated trees like our modern fruit trees are trying to spread their seeds, not win prizes for the flavour of their fruit. If they taste good to horse, then their seeds could be carried off in the belly of one. The tree’s only concern is making as many of them as possible.

In order to get a good quality fruit, it is often necessary to thin the crop. This can be done when the tree is in flower (as each flower will become a fruit, if it is pollinated) by experienced gardeners, but you can do it with good effect up to early July – the tree will have lost more energy, but you can clearly see which fruit are small or funny looking and should be removed.

By strategically sacrificing some of your bumper harvest, the tree will divert its energy to the remaining fruit, which will be sure to do well. In addition, thinning the fruit will help to even out the biennial tendency of apple and pear trees.

Apples, Pears, Peaches, Nectarines, Plums and occasionally Apricots all require thinning.

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!