Unexpected Windfalls

Red Admirals are appreciating the fruity windfall too

So far this year we have had a winter with virtually no frost, we had about a foot of rain in 3 days and we had temperatures touching on 100F.

Every year has its variables but these weather extremes seem to be more and more frequent and each comes with its own challenges for growing food.

On this occasion it was strong winds that did the damage. Many plums and apples fell from the trees, but worse still was the damage to several of my plum trees. Our recent weather seems to be encouraging rapid, soft growth of new wood which does not stand up to the strong winds which often come in August when the trees are fully laden with leaves and fruits.
The trees which sustained the most damage were actually those which were not overburdened with fruit.

The damage did me one favour though. One of my plum trees went severely off piste a few years back. Basically the rootstock outgrew the grafted tree and we ended up with a huge tree which bore very little fruit. It looked good, but was growing fast and taking too much from the surrounding fruit trees.

Last week's winds literally split the trunk into four, so it was time to 'lightly prune'. Fortunately plum leaves and bark are a favourite for the Shetland sheep.

Fungal disaster avoided
Wet and warm weather is leading to more problems arising from fungal diseases. One of the plum trees in the chicken pen was absolutely dripping with fruits and I hadn't got round to thinning them adequately. Just as they were turning ripe, brown rot set in. Every fruit was rotting on the tree just as it was ripening. It looked as if we would lose the whole crop, as well as potentially infecting all the other plum trees.
I carefully picked every plum that was showing any signs of rot, often precariously balanced a the top of a step ladder, and removed every single trace of fruit from the ground. These weren't wasted, as the sheep very much appreciated them.
I have continued to remove any infected fruits and any that have dropped to the ground and disaster seems to have been averted.
Over the last few days Sue has picked a thousand plums off just one tree. It is still not empty.

Self-thinning Apple trees
We missed the June drop this year - this is when fruit trees often drop much of their fruit. in response to environmental stress. I didn't really keep on top of manually thinning the fruits either. This should really be done for several reasons. The branches can split under the strain of too much fruit; fewer large fruits are generally better than multiple dwarf fruits; thinning the fruit allows for improved air circulation.
The recent winds fixed the problem of not thinning though! Many apples came off, to the delight of the geese and sheep.

Halcyon Blues

More work on the pond
First job on our return was to crack on with the big pond. The overflow boggy area wasn't working as it obviously had a leak and the damp soil was perfect to be invaded by grass. Taking advantage of my renewed vigour and ignoring the heat I set about digging all the soil back out and relining it. It is now basically a second pond which I will plant up with marginal pond plants.

A Kingfisher Missed
All the while I was doing this I couldn't get out of my mind what Sue our farmsitter had told me that morning. Just the previous day a kingfisher had been sat on the log I placed at the back of the pond. We had a kingfisher in our London garden once and only once, but never have I seen one here. I have spotted them on the Main Drain, but only rarely and little did I think that one would visit my new pond.
Let's hope for a repeat performance.
Until then I am gutted that I wasn't here to see it.

Quack Quack! I'm a Duck, Not a Drake

One animal that won't be allowed anywhere near this pond is my ducks. Ducks have already ruined one wildlife pond. Anyway, most of these won't be around for much longer. They have continued to grow at a staggering rate. They are still only eight weeks old. The males are beginning to show their curly tail feathers - it might be in their interests to try to hide these!

But there is another easier way to differentiate males from females. Only the females quack! Again the males may do well to learn to quack PDQ!

A Whopper First Plum Harvest

Other news and the first plums are ready. I've lost the label and am wracking my brains to remember the variety. It may be Opal, which was originally a cross between a plum and a gage. This year they have remained green and not coloured up at all but they have ripened and sweetened nicely in this year's exaggerated sunshine.
Sue couldn't quite reach all the high up fruits, but she still gathered 17.5kg of fruit. That's a lot of plums! We have about half a dozen other plum trees which should come to fruition over the next month or so.

Everyone's a Fruit and Nut Case

My one piece of advice to anyone setting up to be self-sufficient would be to plant fruit straight away, orchard trees, soft fruit bushes, nut trees and hedgerow fruit. It is an investment which takes a little while to start paying off, but it has rich rewards for the patient.

Our orchard is just starting to produce properly and can only go from strength to strength in the next few years. As summer gives way to autumn variety upon variety of apple comes ready, each with its own unique taste. There are pears and plums aplenty too, as well as more unusual fruits such as medlars. We have gradually added to the trees we first planted and will hopefully soon have an annual crop of apricots too.

All these, of course, can be bought in the shops (except maybe medlars), but some of the hedgerow plants I have planted are even more of a treat. Crab apples make a wonderful jelly, as well as being an excellent source of pectin when added into preserves.
And what about the elderberry - its flowers make an excellent cordial and an even better champagne, or let the berries ripen for one of the best wines. This year we harvested the berries (leaving plenty enough for the birds) to make pontack sauce. This old English recipe has enjoyed a recent revival, probably due to its inclusion in Hugh F-W's repertoire. It is a heady infusion of elderberries, vinegar and spices. The closest equivalent I can think of is Worcestershire Sauce. Pontack sauce stores indefinitely in the larder and develops its taste over the years, so Sue makes a big batch every few years. It adds an incredible richness and depth of flavour to meat dishes, particularly stews and casseroles.
Elders poke out from the edible hedgerows I have planted as well as being dotted all around the smallholding now. They are easy to propagate, grow well here and feed the wildlife as well as us.
Alongside them are blackthorn bushes with their yield of sloes. When you say sloes, most people instantly think of gin, but Sue prefers to add them to vodka. Once they have imparted their unique flavour to this beverage, the same berries are then used to make sloe port. Definitely a hedgerow fruit for the drinkers! We almost had a sloe disaster this year. After a blank year countrywide in 2016, our edible hedgerow has again failed to produce any sloes (or Mirabelles for that matter). I think I have been cutting it back too much in the winter and taking off the fruiting wood.
Sue's disappointment was tangible, but then I remembered that I had planted a few blackthorns in the woodland area which I have created. A closer inspection yielded several bushes laden with sloes ready to pick - a thorny job and it takes a while to fill a basket, but yesterday (edit - now a while ago as this post was superseded by other events) we collected 2kg of sloes, plenty enough for a lot of alcohol. They have gone into the freezer to simulate the frosts, as left on the trees the autumn thrushes would take them all before winter bites.

There are hawthorns and rowan berries too, though we don't have much use for them and leave them for the birds. Rosehips explode colourfully from the hedgerows too and every few years Sue makes a batch of rosehip syrup, a rich and sweet source of vitamin C. I actually grow plenty of rosa rugosa as its flowers brighten up the borders of the soft fruit area and it produces the plumpest, most vivid hips.




Back to the orchard fruits and damsons take centre stage. Our tree produced abundantly this year. They are a handsome looking fruit and handsome tasting too. All varieties of plum produce, in a good year, bountiful crops too much for simply eating the fruit straight. Pies, crumbles and jams go without saying, but Sue has had the dehydrator and the ice-cream maker busy too. Her plum yogurt ice-cream is delicious and dried fruits or fruit leathers make excellent healthy snacks for a hungry worker.






Finally there is the rather poshly named nuttery. The nut trees were an expensive investment when I planted them, as I opted for named varieties bred to produce fruits early in their lives. The almond tree has produced virtually since day one and the nuts taste delicious with that lovely marzipan kick of arsenic to them. The cobnuts are basically hazelnuts cultivated to produce larger kernels and these are producing more and more year on year. In contrast, the wild hazelnuts in the hedgerow and woodland will be keeping us waiting a good few more years before they even think about producing a nut.

Drastically thinning the plums

Saturday 3rd June
Today I sowed the rest of my beans along with the sweetcorn, courgettes, pumpkins and celeriac. Finally virtually all of the veg beds have something in them.
I sowed more carrots and lettuce too as well as sowing my swede crop for the year.

With everything growing so well, the creeping thistles have poked their heads up in my young woodland and there are a couple of rather large patches which will get out of control if I do nothing about them. Don't get me wrong, thistles are great for wildlife and I even quite like how they look, but they are just too unruly. So I spent a half hour or so  mixing up the Grazon and spraying it liberally. The great thing about this weedkiller is that it doesn't kill the grass, it just takes out the broad-leaved plants, with a particular penchant for thistles and nettles. It's not organic so I wouldn't use it near the crops, but it is perfect used in the right place. Within 24 hours the plants will already be drooping.

Finally I got on the mower. When it works well it is great, but I have never been able to ride it in confidence. Today it broke again! I gave up.

Sunday 4th June
Job for the day was to thin the plums. Two of my trees have bumper crops this year - the Victoria plum and the Merryweather damson.
Tempting as it is to leave all the plums on the tree, the internet reassures me that this is not the best policy. The fruits need space to grow and they need air around them so they don't rot. Plum trees often suffer from branches breaking under the stress of a bumper crop of fruit - another reason to thin the young fruit. Thirdly, and I had not considered this, if the tree has put all its energies into a bumper crop of fruit it is unable to produce the fruiting buds for next year. This is why so often fruit trees go into the habit of cropping every other year.
And so I set about a drastic thinning process, leaving at most a third of the plums on each tree. It had better turn out well.








Monday 5th June
Following a dismal return from the 500 sweetcorn seeds I originally sowed, I ordered some extra seed from another company. Fortunately they were having an end of season sale, plus I receive a discount on top of this so I ended up paying less than 50% of the packet price.
But of course, while I was on their website, many other items caught my eye. In particular I discovered a good source of seed for my dyer's garden which I hope to develop next year. I also purchased some lablab beans. More on both of these later.

Tuesday 6th June
Boris needed his annual booster today so it was off to the vets over in Norfolk. Arthur came along for the trip too and I had a secret plan to take them both to the beach afterwards. But plans change. The weather was showery here, but by the time I had made the journey to Norfolk conditions were well and truly miserable. In the end we came straight back from the vets and had a lazy rest of the day.