A few years ago I decided that I would like to plant a few fruit trees at my garden in High Blantyre. I started out with just a couple of trees, but each year since 2012, added to them, and by 2017, I had plum trees, apples, damsons, cherries and pears. Now I don’t pretend to be any sort of gardener so I wasn’t too disappointed when they didn’t produce any fruit. I suppose I had more of less given up on them.
However, in 2017, the trees finally looked as if they were pollinated, perhaps due to an abundance of insects in a warm May. Almost all of my 8 small trees produced fruit in June through to September! I had pears and gala apples. (I did have a couple of damson and cherries but the birds made off with them within weeks of them appearing and before photos!).
8 trees, by no means is an orchard and the days of local lads hopping into a garden to raid fruit are long gone. The days of large, expansive orchard in High Blantyre are gone, however, I still felt some accomplishment in returning fruit trees to High Blantyre and seeing “the fruits of my labours”. I have hopes for a better crop next year.
Pictures are from July 2017
Featuring Blantyre Project Social Media with permission. Strictly not for use by others on or offline, our visitors said,
Once you have taken the harvest you can give them a light prune or wait until spring time.
Remove the leading shoot on top and it will keep the height down and encourage the side shoots. Will make collection the fruit a lot easier.
Taking away the grass from the base of the plants will stop the grass from taking most of the water and nutrients away from them. A good circular base will encourage better roots.
Put down a good layer of compost just now for over the winter months. Will give them a good start for the coming spring