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Field Allotments at Amerton
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Tips
By Mrs FM
Hartley.
Unusual
& Old
Fashioned Fruit
Trees.
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Vegetables,
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Edible Plants.
Environmental
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By
Alan J Hartley
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Moving
Trees.
Last Autumn/Winter I spent a
lot of time re-doing all of my different Climbers from the Grape Vines
to the Sausage Vine including the Kiwi Vines and others. Most of them
had new posts, were heavily pruned and were tied in with fresh strings.
This year I have decided to re-organise many of my various fruit trees.
Some I am going to remove and replace with other varieties, and some
will be moved, while others will just need new posts. There will also be
a certain amount of Winter pruning to do, particularly on the Apple
Trees. I have done a little bit of harder pruning earlier and shaped up
some of the younger trees. However, stoned fruit especially shouldn’t be
pruned after the leaves have started to drop and the trees have started
to shut down for Winter.
As the leaves started to fall one of the first things that I did was to
dig up and pot some Elderberry tree saplings that I had bought in, bare
root, last Winter. They have been growing on and rooting down in an
empty part of one of my growing beds and have now put on lots of lovely
new growth. They looked just like 12 inch sticks when I first planted
them and I lost one out of the 5, but the remaining plants really do
look like strong, healthy, small trees some 4, or 5 feet high. They were
potted into large pots and I may take them to work, or offer them for
sale when the Allotments have their fundraiser sales day in the Spring.
Of course with Autumn here and the leaves falling it is the ideal time
to move and plant fruit bushes and trees and on that subject – I intend
to plant an edible, and yet at the same time, ornamental Fig Tree called
Pannachee. It will go in the spot where the very large, viciously
thorned, Black-Berry came out of, by my Compost Heap. The tree has been
growing in a special Fibre pot that was plunged into the soil on a
vacant part of my Plot a couple of years ago. It is actually a cutting
that was taken some time ago from a tree in my Mothers garden. This
unusual Tree has some variegation on the leaves and also quite
spectacularly on the figs themselves. I have never been able to pick any
ripe Figs from it yet, but they are supposed to be edible. Not far from
it, by my Cold Frame, I am also going to plant another ornamental Fig
Tree of the variety called Ice Crystal. This tree was also grown from my
own cutting. Fig leaves are normally quite showy anyway because of their
large leaves that are “Palmate,” or shaped like a hand, but Ice
Crystal’s leaves are more cut away in a pattern reminiscent of an ice
crystal. The Tree does actually produce small Figs, but they are
inedible.
Another tree that I am going to plant is a small, potted Mulberry Bush,
which I bought over the internet. I did have a couple of smallish
Mulberry trees in my Mother’s garden before I moved 2 years ago, but
decided to leave them behind. One of the trees always fruited well with
its red berries ripening to a dark black, but the other wasn’t
productive at all. Like some fruits they do not pick well and I
understand that commercially they shake the trees to harvest them and
the berries are allowed to fall onto a tarpaulin spread beneath the tree
so they can be safely gathered up. The berries are every bit as bad as
Elderberries, Blackberries and Black Currants for the staining ability
of their juice, but quite tasty and a different fruit to eat.
In my garden at Home I decided to remove a Robinia Frisia that I had
grown earlier from seed. It was only about 3 feet high when I planted it
2 years ago, but had grown extremely well and was going skywards. They
are supposed to be a relatively small tree that is said to be ideal for
back gardens. However, the thorns on a bigger tree are absolutely
vicious and not the sort of thing that you want where people can brush
against it. On the corner of a bed, by the top of some steps in my
garden, was definitely the wrong place for it. I might have been able to
transplant it, but decided I had nowhere suitable, so have binned it and
replaced it with a Rowan, or Mountain Ash. The normal Red Berried
variety of Rowan can be seen everywhere, but there are Yellow and White
berried types available. The white berried tree that I planted had been
pot grown, so could have gone in at any time of year, but even so Autumn
is the best time to plant any tree. My little tree had been grafted, so
hopefully this means that its height will be restricted as that is often
one of the reasons for grafting trees. Ordinary Rowans can get to some
20 or 30 feet, which classifies them as a small tree, but that would be
too much for my garden. The berries look very tasty, but they should not
be eaten, although birds and other wildlife love them. Before berries
are produced Rowans have flowers that are highly scented which nobody
ever seems to notice.
Also recently, I bought a small pot grown, evergreen, Strawberry Tree,
or Arbutus Unedo to give it its proper name. It will be planted in my
Allotment where a Variegated Myrtle was taken out. The Myrtle had gone
to a new home and been planted in my front garden. The Arbutus will
eventually get a little too tall for our 2 metre height regulation on
our Allotments, but Strawberry Trees are fairly slow growing, so it
should be alright for quite a few years until then. It is said that you
can safely eat the berries although they look better than they taste as
they are bland and woody and I speak from having eaten them several
years running.
Incidentally, you are supposed to be able eat some
varieties of Myrtle Berries, but my bush is too small yet to find out.
On the other hand my Olive Tree that is in a tub on my yard at home, has
produced some baby Olives for the first time which I am quite impressed
with. Given the time of year, I don’t suppose they will fully develop
and mature outside, but it is still fun to say that I have grown my own
Olives!
The trees that I bought and planted at the start of the Month were all
pot grown, but now the leaves are falling properly it is time to buy
Bare Root Trees and bushes. Of course if the Growers can dig them up to
sell them bare root it means that it is OK for me to finally remove a
Plum Tree on my Allotment which didn’t like being trained Espalier
style. With the constant pruning it never fruited very well as Plums
don’t like being trimmed due to them fruiting on mature shoots. Before
the leaves had fallen and I dug it out, I cut off the large, sideways
growing branches to give it a more normal, upright shape. Hopefully, I
will be able to re-plant it at work where it can be allowed to grow as a
normal tree. It will be replaced with an Apple tree moved from elsewhere
that had been temporarily crammed in where it didn’t fit after a last
minute rescue when I moved house. It is being re-planted in a spot where
I will be able to give it more room to spread out its branches and I
will be able to train it Espalier style much better. The Apple should
perform quite happily in place of the Plum as I normally do quite well
with my trained Apple Trees of which I have quite a few of different
sorts. Not being all the same variety means that they fruit at different
times, although of course they all fruit sometime in the Autumn.
 
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