CHERRY AND RASPBERRY BUMPER CROP

Even though not so long ago I thought my crop of Prunus avium 'Stella' cherries was going to be a disaster, they've got a move on in the last couple of weeks.  Initially they seemed to have ground to a halt at the green stage, no bigger than a regular-size pea.  The weather can do that, put the brakes on fruit development, and we've had some horrible weather this spring, but my luck was in.  Today I've picked a small handful of ripe cherries and there are more to come.  Doesn't sound like much but when I consider that the dwarf tree (planted in a large container, sunk into the garden border) has only been growing in my garden just over two years and that last year, when the crop was damaged by weather to the extent that only about six cherries remained, I feel like I've had a bumper crop in comparison. 

Prunus avium 'Stella' Gisela 5 (dwarf sweet cherry)

ripe for the picking

I wrote in my last post about the cherry tree that I wouldn't go to the trouble of putting the net back over the tree to keep off that vandal of vandals, the embryo-cherry-snatching Wood Pigeon, but when I saw the cherries swelling and starting to ripen, I just had to.  I've just thrown netting over the small tree this time without fussing with canes.  Birds, fortunately, are going nowhere near it but I am keeping a strict eye on it to make sure no birds get caught up in the netting.  Funnily enough, birds don't go near the raspberries either.  Is this a kind of thank you for feeding them well with seed and/or fat-balls spring, summer, autumn, and winter?

Prunus avium 'Stella' Gisela 5 (dwarf sweet cherry)

 

I have to mention my Polka raspberries.  I've mentioned them in several posts over the years and I'll keep on mentioning them, no doubt about it.  This week alone I've picked four large cereal-bowls full of juicy raspberries.  The crop is bumper all right.  No grubs, no mould, no damage, no white drupelet disorder, and the rust disease that I mentioned earlier in the year also seems to have gone.  To try and control the rust spores, I kept picking off and destroying infected leaves before the problem became widespread - luckily I spotted the tell-tale orange spots quite early on.



The lovely thing about Polka, the wonder raspberry, is that it is a double cropper.  I should, if I am lucky, get another crop on this year's canes in autumn. 

Polka raspberry canes giving a bumper crop, 2015

The everfruiting strawberries which are growing in containers are rather abysmal.  I don't know what's wrong with them (they are generall small and deformed) but I know this much, there is a good chance at this rate that they will be kicked out of my garden this year.  Meanwhile, the loganberries in the south-facing corner of the garden seem to be starting to ripen.  Hopefully I will have them when the cherries and summer raspberries have finished.