some amazing plant recoveries (and one not)

Looking out of the bathroom window this morning I saw a robin and a great tit already standing on the empty bird table, so refilled it as soon as I'd had my shower and got dressed.  Despite the rain of recent days (11mm in the past 24 hours) there must still be a shortage of natural food, as I don't normally need to feed the birds in June.

The view of the bird table from my desk is partially obscured by one of the potted camellias which stand in a row outside the study window.  Next time I'm out there I must budge the pots along to give me a clear line of sight.  I've been feeding the camellias in containers with a dilute liquid ericaceous feed, about one in every three times I water them (slightly dictated by when I can be bothered to carry the watering can around to the back of the house instead of using the hose) and they have been opening new leaves for a while now, and starting to look more respectable.  They were very dishevelled and sad at the end of winter, with sparse discoloured leaves and some dead twigs.  I realised quite how bad they had got when I compared them to the camellias growing in the ground, which apart from a couple of branches broken down by the weight of the snow were looking green and lush, and much more densely clothed with leaves.  Among the container grown plants the smaller and younger specimens suffered more, and I lost one, 'J.C. Williams', a good early pale pink which was one of the first williamsii hybrids and named after one of the Williams family of Caerhayes in Cornwall.

The plants in the ground have not always been so happy.  C. x williamsii 'Jury's Yellow' went into the bank between the house and the wood in April 2003.  It was a well-grown young specimen just ready to plant out, root system nicely filling its pot without being pot-bound.  The soil on the slope where it's planted is not great, being strange structureless stuff dumped there by builders in the 1970s, and the slope made it difficult to water the camellia, though I did try.  Twigs kept dying back and I kept trimming them off and hoping, until the bush was reduced to no more than half of its original size.  Then, at last, it established itself and began to grow.  It is now a shining, healthy plant fully 1.5m wide and tall.  I hope that the smallest of the remaining potted camellias is going to pull off the same trick.  'Donation' gave up on half of its top growth last winter, but in the past couple of weeks has started opening new leaves, and I think the corner has been turned.  It is hard on them standing outside all winter, and I should bring them in, or at least the smaller ones.  The trouble is that there is nowhere to put them.  Over-cramming the conservatory with pots just leads to everything being neglected, as I can't see what I'm doing with the watering.  (To a gardener in the south west of England the pace of growth of my Essex camellias must seem painfully slow.  It is.  That's what happens if you grow camellias on sand in an area with just over 500mm average annual rainfall.  But they are perfectly healthy.  Camellias are much more satisfactory than rhododendrons for dry sites).

The olive in the front garden is shooting from the main trunk, and some of the branches.  I thought it was still alive.  They do say you should wait until June before writing plants off.  A third harsh winter will be too much for it, I fear, but that might well not happen.  I'll give it a while longer, to see more clearly which of the branches still have life in them, and then trim out the dead wood.

The plum 'Marjories' Seedling', that I had doubts about at the time of planting, never came to anything good.  It was watered, and threw a weak shoot from very low down, just above the graft.  I could complain to the grower, but then I would be embroiled in an argument about whether or not I had watered it enough, given the weather we've had.  I think I'll try again in the autumn with another supplier, and quietly not use the first lot again or recommend them to people.  It is the second time I have had a failure with one of their plums.  Odd, because their cherries have been fine.  Maybe plums are difficult.  Two is not a statistically valid sample, but I'm sure that 'Marjorie's Seedling' wasn't right when they sent it to me.  Pity, because the grower has a long and interesting list, but life is too short to spend it on arguments with mail order suppliers of bare-rooted fruit.

warm air and dormant plums

What a difference a change in wind direction makes.  It has gone round to the west, bringing mild Atlantic air as the weather forecasters point out, and as the sun came out the thermometer reached 9 degrees.  Suddenly it was a pleasure to be working outside, instead of being something I braced myself to do because there were jobs to be done, and they can't all be done in March.  The westerly wind has even invigorated The Whizzer, which began working again yesterday after several days of immobility.  The days are lengthening too.  By the time I decided it was too dark to see to weed it was five o'clock.

The fruit nursery reassured me that plum 'Marjorie's Seedling' is not supposed to have visible buds yet, because it is a late variety.  Certainly there are some trees, such as Robinia and Gleditsia, that are normally late into leaf and don't push out big fat buds for weeks beforehand, and we sometimes get angry owners returning them to the plant centre insisting that the tree is dead (which it probably is by the time they've dug it up and brought it to us, though it was probably fine before).  I don't know if 'Marjorie's Seedling' is such a one, but it sounds entirely possible.  I don't honestly know all that much about top fruit.  If you have any concerns about a new plant it's always a good idea to share them at the time with the person you got it from, as they may be able to set your mind at rest, and if it does fail later you have smoothed the way to getting a replacement. 

grow your own fruit

Having said that I must get my skates on and order another cherry tree before it was too late I actually did so a few days ago, and this morning it arrived.  That is the slight trouble with bare root stuff, once you've got it you have to get on and plant it.  The arrival of the cherry forced me to get on with sorting out the mess in the fruit cage, which had got a bit weedy.  Most of the weeds pulled out easily enough, but there is some couch grass running around.  I extracted as much as possible by hand, but will probably end up treating the regrowth with glyphosate.  I'm very sparing in my use of this weedkiller, but would find it hard to do without it entirely.  The cherry is 'Summer Sun' which is a dessert variety generally described as doing well even in an indifferent English summer, so with any luck that will guarantee either cherries or a fantastic summer in a year or three.  It's on Colt rootstock, which in theory will produce a larger tree than I would want for a fruit cage, but on our miserable light soil I've found it pays to go for more vigorous rootstocks than you would think you wanted.  As I weeded around the fruit I was shocked at how sandy and mere the earth appeared, as if it had never received an application of organic material in its life.  There is one bin of compost ready to use, so that will go on.

I ordered a plum at the same time, 'Marjorie's Seedling', which should bear dark purple dual purpose plums in late September.  There's already a golden plum that's ready to pick in the first half of August, so the plan was to extend the season.  This is on St Julien A, and again I'm not expecting it to grow as large as the RHS guidelines suggest it will.  Unfortunately, having seen the plant, I'm not entirely expecting it to grow at all, as it doesn't appear to have any leaf buds.  Normally buying mail order from reputable suppliers works well.  I'm trying to contact the grower, and I expect it will all be sorted out one way or another, but it is a hassle.

While I was at it I went for some more raspberries, which are receiving mega doses of compost as I plant them, but half are still heeled in as the light ran out.  The challenge this year will be to try and prevent raspberry beetle destroying a sizeable proportion of the crop.  Last year I was throwing away half of what I picked, which is disheartening and makes picking a faff as you have to inspect each fruit.  It also makes it difficult to enjoy eating them as you wonder at every mouthful if your inspection failed and this one will be off.  The grubs live in the core of the raspberry, then move into the flesh, and the taste of fruit which has been attacked is vile.  The RHS only offers chemical controls so goodness knows how organic raspberry growers manage.

My cheerful reflections the other week on how economical it is to grow your own fruit did overlook the cost of buying the plants, plus the fruit cage.  Our fruit cage has suffered after two snowy winters.  Gardening books always say to remove netting roof from fruit cage in case of snow, but how often do we have that much snow in Essex?  After the first winter it was possible to bend the aluminium top bars back so that the cage was servicable, though wonky, but they wouldn't bend back a second time without breaking.  Sourcing replacements and fitting them is another job for the spring.  On a positive note, during the stock take at work I did discover we had a supply of angle irons for sale, and I shall get a few of those to make supports for the raspberries.  First time round we used tree stakes, but these have rotted and I'd prefer not to replace them with more stakes that will rot again.