Picking fruit trees – what to choose?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 19 October 2010 in growing | 4 comments

Having missed the window last year, we are keen to get some fruit trees plants this autumn – but it’s not as easy as we thought it would be.

The difficulty is partly, mostly our own fault of course. We could buy misc off-the-shelf trees from a garden centre but since we’ve only really got one shot at trees here, we want to make sure we get it right so are hoping to order custom ones from a niche supplier – ones that will suit our wants (in terms of height & flavour), our soil type and our climate. This is where we need an advanced degree in mathematics to figure it all out.

We’re hoping to plant three apple trees, a cherry tree and a plum tree, and I’m thinking about some raspberry canes or blackcurrant bushes, and maybe something very dwarfed in a pot (possibly the cherry).

The nursery we’re going to order from has 65 varieties of apple, combined with 6 different possible rootstocks – a total of 390 options! Some varieties are good for eating, some for cooking and some for cider making – John wants to eat them & make cider, I want to cook with some (although that’s less of a priority).

The rootstocks will determine whether they’re tall or short, very vigorous or considerable less fruitful. Some only prosper in good soils, some are more forgiving. Some take longer to start fruiting than others. We’ve got to decide where we want to compromise.

Unsurprisingly, the most vigorous ones are the tallest ones – but I think we’ll struggle to harvest anything over 10-12ft from the ground so there seems little point getting one that grows more than 15ft tall. They also don’t usually start fruiting until they’re five or six years old. Conversely, the most dwarf type grow to just 4-6ft and fruit at 2 years – but only produce about 10-15lb of fruit a year, which hardly seems worth bothering with.

Even picking the variety for flavour is a challenge: I don’t eat apples and John doesn’t really know what he likes and what he doesn’t. From the supermarket (not a good place to use as a guide for fruit flavours!), he likes Braeburns but they need warmer climes than we can offer.

So many options! The only thing I know for sure is that we have to order them ASAP!

Anyone got any advice or suggestions? What did you pick and why?

(Photo by iscott)

Wild plum/cherry plum jam recipe

Posted by louisa on Monday 23 August 2010 in cooking, growing, preserving, recipes, wild food | 11 comments

So last week, we went fishing for fruit on the mystery fruit tree outside our kitchen window. We collected 5.5kg of the plum-ish fruit, probably sacrificed as much the floor gods, and there is still a fair bit up there (albeit not terribly accessible). We’re not sure if they’re wild plum or cherry plum as everyone seems to have different opinions on what constitutes one or the other. Whatever they’re called, they’re very tart but also very sweet.

John wanted to try making plum wine (more on that another time) so I only commandeered 2kg of the harvest for our first batch of plum jam. (I’ll do another smaller jamming once he’s decided how much wine he is making tonight.)

The recipe calls for preserving sugar but granulated sugar would work just as well – preserving sugar is more expensive but the bigger crystals result in a clearer jelly. You don’t need jam sugar (sugar with added pectin) as there should already be enough pectin in the fruit.

UPDATE: Just a quick note to say that in 2011, I added a few drops of vanilla essence to the jam and it added a lovely round flavour. I can’t remember exactly how much or when (I think it was after the sugar so it wouldn’t be cooking too long, but wanted to mention it anyway, because it was delicious :)

Fishing for fruit: catching wild plums with a fishing net

Posted by louisa on Thursday 19 August 2010 in wild food | 4 comments

Over the last week or so, we’ve slowly been watching the mystery fruit (on the mystery fruit tree outside our kitchen window) turn from green to deep red. We had no idea that the tree was a fruiting one until green baubles started appearing earlier in the summer and still aren’t quite sure what the fruits are – we think it’s wild plum. As I said the other day, John thought they tasted almost peach-ish but yesterday our friend George taste tested our harvest and declared them to be plum.

Or mostly plum.

Or plum related.

We’re treating them as plums.

A few days off

Posted by louisa on Monday 16 August 2010 in cooking, frugal, growing, wild food | 1 comment

I’ve just had a few days offline to clear my head a bit – I spent a lot of time reading, resting & DSing so it wasn’t as productive as four days off work usually is, but there are a few things to report:

Massive egg update
The supersized chicken egg we got on Monday has been repeated on a few days this week – not a scientific test but definitely more likely to happen after they’ve had a good portion of green treats the day before. We’ve had a couple of them and they’ve been double yolkers – which is a worry as it hints that there is something wrong with the fine lady’s reproductive system (even though they’re still young, I think they’re a bit too old for it to be a “really young and still learning” quirk). Will keep an eye on the situation.

Foraging & fruiting
Took Lily-dog for a long walk around Otley Chevin on Saturday – found the most wild mushrooms I’ve seen in one place but unfortunately didn’t have our identification books with us, doh! Took lots of pictures for post-hoc identification – means we can’t forage them but the identification part is the more important bit at this stage in our learning really.

We also found the dregs of some wild raspberries – so ripe it was hard to pick them because they’d fall off as soon as we went nearly them.

Speaking of which, the bramble bushes in the woods next to our house are just about ready to give up their first glut – John had some as a pre-breakfast snack while dogwalking this morning and declared them delicious. Have to go picking soon.