Pots of Fruit

Pinching off the Physalis

It's time to start pinching off the physalis in our garden.  We are just starting to harden them off after their winter in the green house and one of them is already beginning to get a bit too spindly.  They seem to be very vigorous plants and grow like the clappers, wanting to grow extremely tall very quickly.  The fruits start to appear at the tips of the shoots so if you want more fruit you must encourage the plant to make more shoots rather than tall shoots.  The plant on the left is still fairly small and stubby so I'll leave that one alone but another one we have is at just about the right phase to start pinching....as far as I know. This bush is actually starting to produce flowers so I felt very guilty picking one off but I know that in the long run there will be many many more.  Pinching off basically means that you cut off the growing tip of a shoot. This encourages more side shoots to develop. Once the new side shoots grow long enough you can repeat the same procedure with them and so one main shoot with one tip turns into  possibly  20 side shoots with obviously 20 tips.  So the amount of fruit that can be had is greatly increased presuming all other factors go well. 

To cut off the tip you can simply pinch it off with your nails as the physalis is very soft and you can make a clean cut very easily. 

Just to see exactly how effective this is I have left one of the stalks "unpinched" in order to see how it develops in comparison to the others and I'll let you know how it gets on in a month or two.

In the mean time I'd love to get some feedback on whether or not the photos that I use in these posts are clear enough.  Can you understand clearly what I am trying to get at or would more photos be useful?  Are they big enough etc?  This will help me to improve the clarity of posts.  So please leave a comment or email me at the link provided on the left. 

Early Strawberries

Well, I've read that you can bring on earlier strawberries by moving them into the green house in early spring.  So this year I thought I'd try it out.  We only have a very small green house but it gets lots of use and make a big difference to anything that is frost tender. In order to get a good idea of how much difference this actually makes I chose to take in a pair of strawberries that were the same age and in the same size pots as two other strawberries that would be left to take their chances outside.

I only thought of doing this in mid March so they won't be as early as they could have been but I can have another go next year.  As far as I know strawberries like to be nice and cold during the winter so don't take them in too early.  I'm not too sure on when is the earliest you can bring them in however.  I'll do more trials next year :)

At the start of April I took some photos to compare the two sets of strawberries.  The photo on the top is of the ones in the greenhouse and you can see a huge difference already.  The strawberries that are outside have no real signs of waking up after the winter yet while the ones in the green house have loads of new leaves.

And yesterday I took some more photos .. You can see that there are loads of flowers on the ones in the greenhouse and non visible on the ones outside. In fact one of the inside strawberries has the beginnings of fruit on it...yay. The outside pair have a couple of sprigs with flower buds developing but it's clear that they are about 3 weeks behind the other ones.  If I had brought the indoor pair in sooner  they you would probably get strawberries at least a month earlier.  By the way this is an unheated greenhouse as the winters here are fairly mild.  Another experiment that I am doing is to see how much difference liquid fertilizer like comfrey and manure make to the number of fruits.  With each pair I am fertilizing one and not the other and I can see that both the fertilized ones are a little ahead of the non fertilized one. I like doing these kinds of experiments so that I can see for myself how effective our methods are.  Also we can learn how to improve on our methods each year.  This year I'm just doing some basic trials but next year I'll get a little bit more detailed.  Basically I'm looking for simple and natural ways of increasing our yield.  I'm not going to look for the absolute maximum possible, just a little more.

 

Swap Your Plants

I was thinking about what I wrote in my post on experimenting and I inspired myself to simply begin a project that I have been mulling over in my head for a couple of years now.  I plan to build a walled garden,  as part of a small holding that we are somehow going to get our hands on.  On the outside we will get another two horses to keep our first one company and also to provide all the fertiliser needs of the garden.  There will be courses on liberty training and other natural ways of looking after horses.  There might be a meadow if we're extra lucky and have space and on the inside there will be lots of vegetables, many many types of fruit and lots of scented flowers and herbs. 

The garden will be used for education, for fun, for dreaming and more.  It will be built entirely from old discarded items and will be run on completely sustainable principles.  It will use money only if all other ways of achieving something have been exhausted and so will rely on people's imagination all the way.  As the idea develops in my head I will write more about it but for now I'm going to start collecting plants.  I'm looking for fruiting plants at the moment mostly, but also perennial flowers and herbs.  Anything that you have that you can either take a cutting of, gather seeds from or donate the whole plant will find a home...soon.  If you would like to do a swap then I can give you a physalis plant, or a melissa plant.  I'm working on get some cuttings from other plants that I have so watch this space. 

I want to gather the plants now so they have a little chance to grow and be ready for planting when the time comes.  There are many other things that I will be throwing out requests for as the whole idea takes off and if you happen to have any ideas that you think I would like then please email me(link on left).
I've no idea where this will go and how it will actually work but I'm really excited to be simply starting.  Stand by for more information...

Physalis Seedlings

In behind this mesh lies maybe a hundred physalis seeds, maybe more.  When the little fruit pods of the physalis dry out they leave a skeletal lantern behind and all the seeds stay safely tucked away inside.  It's just as well because we left them lying around in the green house over the winter, not paying them much attention until one day Chris decided to open up a lantern and plant some seeds. He simply scattered them in a little tray of potting compost and covered them with some more potting compost.  A few weeks later one little seedling started to  stretch up out of the soil. In the next couple of days lots more followed suit and suddenly there were about 40 seedlings in the tray.  Now there seems to be about 100!  I'm hoping to pot all of these on and see if I can swap them for other plants with some people.  If you live in Ireland and want some physalis plants them drop me an email and you can come and collect some.  I live in Limerick City and would love to swap any kind of fruiting plant for some of these.  I've a feeling they won't fruit in their first year but they will definitely do well in their second year if put into a large pot and kept indoors during the winter.  We're still learning about them and it would be great if other people experimented with them in different types of pots, in polytunnels, on balconies or whatever your growing conditions are.   If anyone from overseas would like to swap some seeds then  please get in touch.   I'm dying to experiment with all sorts of fruit but it can be hard to know where to get either the seeds or the  mature plants.    I'm sure there are some  interesting fruits out there that I've never even heard of and that might grow well in our temperate climate.   In fact now that I've thought of it a seed exchange would be a great idea...mmmm.  I'll have to give that some thought.   

Back to the physalis seedlings.  Some of the m got attack by slugs and were completely killed so I scattered some seaweed meal around the little plants.  This salty granular seaweed  deters slugs  as long as it stays dry.  They won't venture on to it a s the salt would harm them  and so they turn back.  And the trace minerals in the seaweed  are good for most plants as far as I can tell. I'll be keepin g them under close scrutiny  for the next few weeks  to make sure a good number of them make it to the next stage....being planted into little pots.

Willing to Experiment?

When I was in school I hated problem solving in maths because I never knew where to start.  By the time I got to university to study physics it became an even bigger problem and after a very long road I finally figured the whole thing out.  You've just got to start.  There seems to be a huge difference between staring at a blank page and looking at a couple of scribbles.  Once you've put something down, well, you might as well put something else down that is linked to the first scribble to keep it company and suddenly you're going somewhere.  You might have to back track or even start again, but now you're on to something.  The mind has picked a direction and that makes it easier to focus.  As a maths teacher I have been constantly amazed at how many other people are too nervous to simply start and to just try out a solution.  It seems to be asumed that you shouldn't start unless you are sure you are going to succeed.  But what is very very clear is that you definitely won't succeed if you don't start, but that you might succeed if you do. 

When originally thinking about growing fruit in pots I was constantly thinking that there were so many restrictions and that things surely would not work. Surely the experts would say, "this isn't suitable, don't be silly you can't grow grapes in Ireland in a little pot."  Out of desperation and no other choice I tried anyway, but still with some lingering doubts and little voices saying, "this is silly, you need acres and acres of ground for this".  But the other day it dawned on me that even though conditions are not perfect for our fruit and even though I know only a tiny amount of what I should know there is no reason for me not to enjoy having a go anyway. 

It struck me that a lot of people may be slow to grow a fruit tree or bush just because they don't know anything about them. But we should throw caution to the wind and just have a go, put a blackcurrant in a pot, and see what happens.  Watch it grow and develop and learn a little something along the way.  Give it a little water and we might be surprised that it produces some fruit all by itself.  A year later, what have we lost?  Nothing.  What have we gained?  A lot more than just fruit.  And even if the worst came to the worst and the bush died....awe...what have we really lost?  Maybe €5.  What have we gained?  A pot, some soil, a stick for the fire or the runner beans, some fresh air and maybe enough knowledge to have a better go next year.

When Chris, my boyfriend, decided to plant some seeds from some cape gooseberries that we bought from a supermarket something was telling me that it surely wouldn't work.  All the way along something was telling him to just have a go.  And lo' and behold they actually worked.   We got fruit, ate most of it and saved some for seeds.  Now I am watching the second generation of seeds coming up in the greenhouse.  I'm still amazed.

From now I'm determined to just try things out even if they sound ridiculous.  I'm going to take the top off a pine apple and plant it in a pot and all I know for sure is that I'll enjoy telling everyone all about it.  I'd guess that it will at least grow leaves and if it decides to grow a full blown fruit, well that would be great too, but I will thank it anyway for teaching me some interesting lessons if it doesn't.  I don't think it is possible to fail at growing fruit if we at least give it a shot.  It just depends on how you define failure and success.  After three years I still haven't gotton a single fruit off our redcurrant bush but I've discovered that I love propagating new plants and that I might even like to open a fruit nursery sometime.  That sounds like a positive outcome to me. 

So I'm sending out a challenge.  Will you grow something that you would normally think just wouldn't work?  Something that you think would melt your brain if you read all about it and tried to extract the right propagation methods, something that you think wouldn't work in a pot, in your climate or your shadey position?  Just have a go and see what happens.  Have a laugh if it all goes pear shaped, have a huge smile if you actually get even one fruit. I'd love to hear your stories of the silly things you've tried and I'll make a page specially for them here on this blog.  If you have photos or simply words send them into me.  We don't have to be experts, we just have to be willing to have a go and enjoy the experiments.  Who knows we might actually discover something very useful along the way....and it might even be about fruit. 

The Flowers of our Fruit

These are flowers from our cherry tree.  If they turn into fruit I think we'll have to have a party :)

I've never tasted a jostaberry so it will be interesting to see what this cross between a gooseberry and and blackcurrant will do.

These tiny flowers are coming up on the blackcurrant cutting.  The mother bush doesn't even have leaves yet for some reason.

Raspberry flowers buds seem to be in abundance this year...yum.

The blueberry flowers seem to be the most understated of all.  In general I have noticed how low key the flowers from our fruit are....I wonder why.

Our little alpine strawberry, holding out after a shower.

Redcurrant Cuttings

On January 3rd of this year I took a couple of redcurrant cuttings while I was pruning the existing one.  For some reason I doubted that they would actually work.  Maybe it's because I'd never tried it before or maybe I think the wood looks too hard to make little tiny roots.  I though that maybe they would get blown over or dried out but much to my amazement they are now both happily growing away, showing all the promise of turning into a mature bush in years to come. 

Taking a cutting from a redcurrant bush is basically the same as for a blackcurrant but with three important differences.  1) Do not cut anything off the top of the cutting.  Leave all the little buds intact there.
2) Remove the buds on the bottom of the cutting.  You do this by simply rubbing the bud off.  I have read conflicting accounts on how many to take off, but the idea is that once the cutting is in the ground there should be at least 15cm between the ground and the next bud.  Some books have recomended taking more off, but to be honest I think this kind of thing is not an exact science.

For some reason I didn't take a picture of the cutting when I put it into the pot but but I'm sure you can imagine what it looked like.  Here is the best cutting of the two as it is today, four months later. I think that the spring in general seems to be a little bit behind last year's one so it may get to this stage a little earlier in better years.  There are still more buds to open up and I'm keeping an eye on them closely, making sure they are alright.  You can just barely see that this bud is starting to grow.  The little green bit of life is squeezing out slowly from it's protective covering.   A bud further up the stem has already turned into a fully fledged branch although though it is still green and tender.

I learnt two valuable lessons during this first  experiment with redcurrant cuttings.  The first one is to be patient.  I found a redcurrant branch that had been pruned off in January that I had obviously just tossed in the grass.  It was in late March when I cutting the grass that I notice a little branch with leaves on it tucked away in the damp longish grass.  Even though it was not in soil and obviously had no roots it had in fact grown new leaves.  So I knew not to disturb the one guy in the pot that was already growing leaves.  In case I had been having any thoughts of transplanting it already I was reminded that all may not be what it seems.  I will not be transplanting this little bush until next Autumn when it is absolutely clear that it has a good strong set of roots.  The second lesson that I learnt was....em...patience.  One of the cuttings that I took had not grown any leaves by mid April.  I had moved it into the dead zone where all pots are eventually emptied in order to be re-used again.  But suddenly I noticed that there were little leaves growing and that I was too quick to give up.  This guy is certainly not the recommended shape for a cutting but I just  put it in anyway as an experiment.  You can see that it is way behind the other cutting but I'm sure it will all even up eventually.  Overall  the most important thing with cuttings is to just leave them alone for at least 6 months and just wait and see what happens.  Make sure they don't dry out  and don't transplant them prematurely.

We now have three redcurrant bushes and I don't see why I won't be taking more cutting next year.  It's fascinating to watch them come to life and to slowly grow and take shape.  Even if I never got fruit off them I would still enjoy it.  We like to give away plants when we can so I always try to have a few spare ones if a friend happens to say they are interested in growing something new.

The blackcurrant cutting is also a success and so I'll be trying it on some of our new fruit varieties in autumn.  There will be lots of plants given as Christmas presents this year :)

Natural Slug Control

About 2 years ago we decided that no insects would be killed by us during our gardening exploits.  They may be annoying, eating the very things that you are caring for for months on end, but it just doesn't seem right to squish them or drown them in beer and fling them in a bush.  But, we never said anything about tossing them to the birds or simply uncovering them so some needy robins can have their lunch.  It feels a bit odd leading them to their doom and I still have to decide how I feel about that one, but for now I'll go with it. 

But to be honest, most of the slugs that we come across end up getting launched over the back wall or simply thrown into the under growth in the hope that they will find something extra specia and stay there.  I wrote a post before on how Chris constructed a raft that is more or less impervious to slugs and woodlice and to me this represents the best solution.  Make it easy for them to decide not to crawl all over your food...then there is no need to think about what to do with them.  The more delicate things like strawberries are reserved for this special treatment and every so often I do a bit of a check up and see how well the moats are working.  Over the winter we tended to let the water run dry and so I guessed that there were probably some hopefuls laying in wait for the fruiting time.  One way I have found to oust the slugs and woodlice from containers is to put the pot into a tray of water. 

As the slugs burrow their way into the bottom of the pots and live between the drainage material it would be impossible to pick them out so this is the only way to do it really.  After about 10 minutes the slugs give up and start to crawl out from their hiding places and make their way up the pot to escape the water.  They don't seem to be panicked or anything, but they don't want to stay submerged either.   You have to make sure collect the slugs before they make their way to soil level so they can hide again.  The woodlice don't seem to be able to get out of the water however.  They get prevented from leaving because of the surface tension of the water.  They tend to float around just under the surface wiggling their legs, hoping to push through, but it just doesn't work, so they need a little help.  If you put a little branch into the water they will gladly crawl up it.  If they stay in the water for too long they will die, I missed a couple, that's how I know :(, but they seem able to stay in for a couple of hours without too much harm.  The fact that slugs and woodlice can survive under water makes me wonder how they breath.  In fact I've just looked it up and according to Wikipedia they breath through their skin.  The woodlice may do the same although I really have no idea. 

I've always been interested in nature and I'm beginning to appreciate how interesting these "pests" are.  Each one of them has a strange and unique way of living in the world.  They are trying to survive and to eat what most helps them.  We would probably have more problems in the garden if they did not exist at all and so I won't be looking at them with irritation from now on.  We'll keep our moat operational and pick them out of other areas, but apart from that we'll leave them in peace while they collectively do a huge amount of work for us in the garden.

For more information on slugs visit here

Ladybirds and other Insects

The ladybird is one of those insects that you definitely want in your garden.  If you are growing anything that is susceptable to aphids (green fly, white fly etc) then this guy should be looked after so that he can flourish and eat all those little guys that can check the growth of your fruit.

Here is an example of an infestation of green fly on our fennel.  The fennel seems to have really tender flesh on it and this is where greenfly seem to thrive.  They will not get their jaws through tough stems and tend to congregate on young shoots.  On the left you can see a whole clump of at least one hundred green fly and on the right you can see a close up of the little critters.  In  general these guys won't do too much harm but if they get out of control they can slow down the growth of plants by quite a lot and possibly cause them to grow malformed. 

These little black flies caused quite a lot of damage to our cherry tree last year as a result of being "farmed" by ants.  Below you can see the damage it did to the leaves of the plant and the result was that our young cherry tree had a very stunted growth pattern.  So this year I was pleased to see our first ladybird who will hopefully be in the process of laying eggs so that there will be lots of hungry mouths to feed.   

The ladybird is known as the gardner's friend as they can eat up to 5,000 aphids over the year of its life, which can't be bad.  Don't think that I want all the aphids in our garden to die however.  I don't mind a few hanging around being part of the overall system and of course if they weren't in our garden then we would not get to see as many beautiful ladybirds.

The ladybird pictured below is a seven spotted ladybird and seems to be one of the ladybirds most commonly spotted in Ireland.  There are ladybirds with 24 spots, 5 spots, 9 spots, different coloured ones, different sizes etc.

They seem to like to live in gardens and anywhere that there is a bit of cover so if you are growing fruit on a balcony or somewhere similar it would be a good idea to grow something that will give the ladybird cover during the winter.  Most fruiting plants will loose their leaves in the winter so you'll have to think of other ways of giving them natural places to hide.   When growing food naturally it never seems to be a good idea to focus solely on what you are hoping to eat but to think about creating a healthy ecosystem within the space that you have.  For example, flowers will encourage pollinating bees and hover flies whose larvae will also eat lots of aphids.  If there are plenty of insects then birds will become a regular visitor and will play their part in balancing your garden.  I'm sure the list of plants, insects and other animals that should be given a home in your garden is quite long, but whatever you can do to help them at all will hopefully improve the success of your fruit growing.

HARLEQUIN LADYBIRD

I read today that the native species of ladybird may be under threat in Ireland.  Apparently the harlequin ladybird has just been spotted in Ireland on a consignment of vegetables from a major supermarket chain.  This ladybird which is a native of Asia was introduced into glass houses and other areas in Europe i n order to eat aphids (green fly etc) as they are better than other species of ladybird at eating the farmers' pests.  Obviously the harlequins have now become naturalised in many European countries including the UK and there seems to be a possibility that they will do the same here in Ireland.  Unfortunately they end up eating all the native ladybirds' food which means they die of starvation.  They will also eat the young of many insects if they are under pressure and so the natural balance had been upset again. 

Having read about this I have suddenly thought of another couple of reasons to grow your own food. Moving cargo from one country to another has always caused problems to local ecosystems.  The harlequin ladybird is getting a free ride on some vegetables and in the process getting the chance to invade new territories.  Obviously buying locally grown produce or growing your own food would be one step towards reducing this problem. 

Another problem with large scale agriculture is that people feel forced to use any methods available in order to increase profits or safe gaurd their livelihoods.  They may start using biological controls like the harlequin beetle without really understanding the consequences down the line.  By growing our own food without the pressure of needing to have the maximum yields we take the pressure off our ecosystems too.

Irish Ladybirds Website

More on Ladybirds

Experimenting with the Raspberries - Planting Suckers

I previously tried to grow raspberries in a pot and didn't have much success.  The canes grew and produced loads of new ones but there was very little fruit.  So I planted them in the ground in one of our precious beds (we don't have many as the garden is small).  But this year I am determined to try pots again.  I've learnt a few things since then so I'm going to put them to the test.  In general it is not recommended to grow raspberries in pots because they like to have cool and damp roots.  In fact within the UK and Ireland Scotland is the most suited to growing raspberries and it is indeed cool and damp.   

So I have planted about 12 baby suckers and will be trying out some of the things I've learnt on them.  I'm sure I should be able to improve the yield even a little.

To start with, the suckers are new plants that have sprouted off the mass of fibrous roots that makes up the underground life of a raspberry(from here on RB).  The RB is a perennial fruit, meaning that it comes back every year.  In theory it goes on forever growing one cane this year to bear fruit in autumn or the following year, depending on the variety.  This cane which has fruited will only live for two year regardless of the variety and the survival of the plant relies on its ability to send off new suckers all over the place.  They may appear within 1cm of the 1st cane or up to two feet away in my experience.  In the above picture you can see some of the new plants(right) starting to grow beside the parent plants(the big ones on the left).  However in reality the RB will fade away after about 10 to 12 years due to viral or root infections.  There is no cure I'm afraid and the RB seems to be very prone to them.

On the left is a picture of a sucker that I planted last autumn.  I dug it up with lots of soil still on the roots so as not to disturb them too much.  It is a good idea to plant raspberries in the autumn so that the roots have a chance to establish themselves over the winter.  Even though the top might look asleep, the roots are working away busily getting a head start.  I have also read that you should plant RBs when it is wet but not too wet.  So if you can't plant them in autumn you are best waiting till spring...presuming you live somewhere where the spring is a little drier than the winter.   

We have an autumn fruiting RB so I will refer to the care of this type for the time being.  Tip number 1 - I put in plenty of garden compost with ordinary garden soil and then added a top dressing of horse manure.  RBs like plenty of fertility so this is important.  The last time I tried with the RB in a pot I simply let it do its thing without keeping it in check at all.  So tip number 2 is to regularly remove any new runners come up in the first year of planting.  I have read that according to some trials that took place in Scotland if you don't regularly prune out the suckers it cam reduce the fruit yield by up to 16%.  So that would account for some of the problem we had with fruiting in our first attempt and growing RBs in pots.  When I planted my suckers last year I completely pruned off the original plant.  I did this because from previous experience I have found that the little s uckers do not grow very well once they have been replanted.  So I waited for more new suckers to grow from the original suckers roots.  In the middle of March they began popping up and in the above pictures you can see that I have pruned all the little weedy guys and kept the strongest one.  Any new suckers that appear will also be pruned out.   

The manure that I have put around the RBs should have two benefits.  One is obviously for the fertility, but the other is that it acts like a mulch.  A mulch on top of any soil will help to conserve moisture thereby keeping the roots a little wetter..tip number 3.  I haven't put too much manure on these little fellas cos according to one book I have read mulch may check the early growth of runners.  I've no idea why this is so I'll just have to see what happens.  So I suppose once your plant is established you can use this idea to better effect. 
Here are two of the RBs on April 19th.  They seem to be growing reasonably well if a bit behind the ones that were left in the ground.  It's probably not too surprising as they have been disturbed so it will probably be next year before the come to much.  Tip number 4 is to keep the pots nice and moist by giving them a bit of extra water now and then.  I am going to experiment with two sets of babies to see how this will affect them.  I will water one only when there is a long dry spell and I will water make sure the other one gets water after about 4 days of dry weather, and possibly more often in the summer.  I've chosen plants that are currently the same size in order to get a good picture of the effects of watering and I will report on this later in the year. 

Overall it seems worth trying to grow RBs as they are among the most perishable fruits, bruising easily and also going mouldy very quickly.  This results in the toughest and least yummy tasting RBs ending up in the shops.  I've never even seen organically grown RBs in Ireland although they may be for sale somewhere.  Apparently there has been very little research done into growing fruit in pots organically and so I'm hoping to learn a few things myself through trial and error.  For now, we're waiting for our crop in the ground to start fruiting.  I will record how much fruit we got off each plant and then I'll be able to compare this to the pot grown specimens and know what I need to aim for.

Caring for RBs once they are planted is very easy and this is another reason that they should be tried out.  Of course the fact that they are just gorgeous is what does it for me and I feel like we are in the lap of luxury when we have even little bowl of the golden fruit.