Longest Season Plums - My Plan Is Working

My plan with any fruits that I like and that grow easily here is to try and have the longest season possible of fresh fruit.  

Now this can be done in a few ways. I can take advantage of any micro climates my plot offers, so taking advantage of suntraps like sunny walls or places under glass. The other is with variety. 

It' really with variety that I've doubled down on. I've been slowly collecting and planting as many varieties as possible with apples, pears, plums and damsons. All grow really well here and all have so many interesting types. 

What I really look out for when building my collection is the earliest to crop and the latest to crop. For me this is most important in the plum harvest. Plums just taste the best when fresh off the tree, and yes we preserve lots each year, but that fresh harvest really takes some beating. 

The earliest I've put in is Herman, but that is yet to fruit here. Then I have quite a few more early plums, with opal being trained against my shipping container to try and ripen them even sooner (although again no fruit yet). 

Victoria was the first to fruit this year, although it is also the oldest fruit tree I have planted here. It fruited so heavy a big branch snapped off it and ruined the harvest. 

As the Victoria's went over the Marjories seedling kicked in. I'd be tempted to say it's be a better plum than the Victoria, although the fruit clings to the stone. Funny that this one was next as the place I got it from said it would be ready the end of September - and they're going over now. 

Some other plums just coming ready now down int he orchard and the Merryweather Damson is at it's peak - these are almost a plum rather than a damson. Smaller than a plum, but the fruit is free stone, so it's really easy to prepare for cooking and making preserves, we normally dry some each year. 

I'm looking froward to a year all my plum trees fruit and then I can really see how long a season I've managed to create for fresh plums. So far so good though. Looks like I have a few weeks left yet! 

Victoria Plums!

One of my favourite harvests is at it's absolute peak this week - The Victoria plums. 

Supermarket plums from warmer climbs are such a disappointment, they're like a whole different fruit. These fresh from the tree (or local shop) are a different thing all together. Sweet and delicious flesh and so far the grub count inside them has been low (not saying I haven't eaten a maggot so far this summer, but if I have I haven't noticed). 

This tree is 13 years old and this is the first really heavy crop I've had from it. Unfortunately a little too heavy and one branch has snapped, reducing our harvest by quite some amount. Still enough to pick some fresh every day and stuff our faces. 

I know the space for fruit trees is a luxury, but fruit trees pay back so much from their initial cost if you can put them in. This was a £5 supermarket tree, it owes me nothing! 

Have different plums ripening elsewhere as well! 

What's your favourite plum to grow?

 

Planting Plums For Self-sufficiency

Thought I'd share a short video I made on the varieties of plum I've settled on this year.

Hopefully by having all these different varieties it should mean that we spread the season out as much as we can where we live. I'm looking for them to crop the whole time from mid July right through to the start of October, but I know this will all depend on frosts and other factors!

Let me know what you think of the video.

What other fruit do you try to have a large selection of to make sure you get a harvest?

Orchard Plans

Well it's raining again tonight and I've no plans to go and face it as I've been outside most of the day.

So instead I'll start planning what I'm going to do next. One of the first things I've done on the homestead was to start to plant our orchard. I wasn't going to bother this year, what with moving on the 23rd of December, having a baby daughter and keeping enough work coming in  we were quite busy, but I remembered that my plan was if I ever bought a smallholding then the first thing I'd do was to plant fruit trees!

They don't look much yet!

And plant them I did. I managed to get 22 in before the spring, I think I went a little bit mad. I brought quite few "common" ones from Aldi (as they were British grown and only £5 a tree) and then more unusual ones from Frank P Matthews (who are local to my parents and offer a huge range and top quality trees). I even bough some two year old trees to speed them along a bit. Many of these trees I planted in the rain at night, the neighbours must have thought I was burying a body!

I've tried to get a wide selection of fruit, apples are the most important to me as i eat so many (about 3 a day) and I've tried to get some with good keeping qualities as well as all my favorites.

The plan of the types of trees (excuse my writting!)

So far I've planted:

Apple - (2) Cox, (2) Braeburn, Bramley, (2) Scotch Bridget, Elstar, Worcester Pearman, (2) Brownlees Russet, Christmas Pippin, Discovery

Pear - Duce Du Comice, (2) Conference 

Plum - Victoria, Czar, Opal,

One Quince,

One Medlar,

One Green Gage

I've got enough room for another 8 trees easily in this area, maybe more, and I know I want to plant some damsons (damson jam is my favourite) but not sure what else. Maybe some cider apple trees, a few more plums and a crab apple but open to suggestions! I've still got to fence it off and add a gate so when I get some grazing stock they can be kept away from the leaves and fruit of the trees.

All the trees look really healthy (and I've not needed to water them!)

My other plan for the orchard is to look at getting some meat chickens (day olds) in the next couple of months as I'd like to start producing some free range chickens for us to eat. I'd have to build a movable coop and use mesh fencing so I can give them a large area of fresh grass but stop them from wondering off and give them some protection from predators. It should be a good use of the space as the trees establish.