Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Gwiz on September 16, 2012, 08:32
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We have a small Damson tree in our garden. This year it has produced the princely sum of two (2) Damsons. On the bright side, both Mrs Wiz and I had one each!
Would you say that top fruit has been disappointing this year, or have any of you noticed an increase in yield?
I'm only asking out of general interest regarding the weather/ insect populations/ location and don't want to start any great debate on best pruning methods and so on.........
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Results in the Garden of England have been a mixed bag, it depend on the weather when your tree flowered.
If it was when it was wet & windy the pollinators had no chance, or if they got caught by a hard frost. According to our local papers both happened locally and the orchards have very reduced yields this year :(
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As Mum says, there have been a lot of reports this year of tree fruit not producing anything this year.
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We did a little better than you Gwiz, we had 6 damsons. ::)
Of our 7 apple trees -5 eaters 2 bramley- 4 eaters completely bare of fruit, 1about half usual crop but very small apples and the skin is badly marked. 1 Bramley is bare, the other loaded :blink:
3Victoria plums, bare. 1 damson 6fruits. 1 greengage, bare
1peach, set a good crop but they all dropped off.
3 pears bare. The big old perry pear is bare for the first time since we came here 12 years ago :(
2 cherry bare.
In my book thats a really bad year for fruit :(
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We were lucky with trees full of apples and well over 10 gallons of Victoria plums picked with maybe a gallon still left on the tree.
The William pear had lots of blossom but no fruit.
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I haven't personally seen any reports, but then again I don't tend to watch gardening programs on the box or read news papers.
Kent's pretty close to us so that would make sense of it all.
The Apple tree has produced next to nothing but some of the wild trees on verges by main roads have done very well indeed including, I noticed, a couple of Damsons. I think I need to go for a walk and collect a few "windfalls".
It's funny that it seems some years trees that are "looked after" fair much worse than ones that are left to their own devices. Makes you wonder why you bother ::) :D
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I think it may be partly to do with aspect - the wild ones thrive only in the better locations (e.g. no frost pocket), whereas trees at home have to deal with the location they're planted in.
Survival of the fittest in the wild world :D
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Loads of trees have no fruit at all, or a fraction of their normal yield.
Those apples that have borne this year are badly scabbed, cracked and heavily russested.
Just a terrible year for fruit really.
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My plot has a Damson on and every year it is loaded with fruit... this year loads of flowers but not a single fruit... just a bad year for fruit in general!! :(
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I've got 2 cherry trees 2 Victoria plum 3 conference pears 2 Braeburn 2 Laxton superb and a
Bramley apple .
There are no pears or plums,only a few on the Laxton,the Bramley has a smaller yield than last year,and most pitted .
There were a lot of cherries but the birds managed to get them ,however there are quite a lot on the Braeburn ,which are ok
Overall not a good year at all
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Even North America had a bad year for fruit in many regions. We had an early heat spell followed by hard frost that zapped the unsuspecting blossoms. Not one of my 17 fruit trees had anything, and many commercial orchards suffered severe losses as well.
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Just spotted the first local apples of the season - some semi ripe Worcester Pearmain in Sainsburies. Doesnt seem like we'll have any Discos this year from the commercial growers.
That said, most trees apart from the Charles Ross which got flooded put on decent growth and all five of my cider apple grafts have taken, plus the three desserts.... 8/10 success rate for my first bash at grafting! 8)
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Got a kilo of damsons from the three trees on my allotment, there were some high up that we couldn't reach though! It's my first year there so not sure how much they would normally produce. The two trees near where I live we got kilos from last year must have had single figures between them this year, so that was really bad.
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I picked 18lb from my tree(s?) yesterday. There was lots I couldn't reach. Probably just as well, as I now have to do something with them all :blink:
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Last year we made Delia's spiced damson chutney (minus the cloves as we didn't have any) and it was delicious!
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I *could* look into that (good idea!) but I already have an eye on the mounds of spiced apple chutney I will have to make from that crop ... :blink:
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Last year we made Delia's spiced damson chutney (minus the cloves as we didn't have any) and it was delicious!
I made that too last year (with cloves) and it is good. Alas no damsons this year. There was plenty of blossom - unfortunately on our site all the plums blossomed as the frosts hit and nobody has had a crop you could do much more than make a crumble with! :(
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I picked 18lb from my tree(s?) yesterday. There was lots I couldn't reach. Probably just as well, as I now have to do something with them all :blink:
damson gin is fantastic! get it started now and it will be ready a couple of weeks before Christmas. Bottle it up into nice small bottles (250 or 500ml) and it makes a great present! We are just finishing the last of last year's, and am hoping to steal my father's damsons when I go down to visit him next week.