Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
July and fruit in the garden is swelling nicely
Too many to picture separately. Here they are in two sets and attached below as a pdf.
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July 22 crops.pdf, 1.2 MB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Aligator on
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Looking great. How do you manage all those pesky creatures (snails, slogs, birds, squirrels, foxes, neighbours' cats, etc)? We've given up with growing vegetables and all our fruits on the trees have teeth marks on them despite the fact that they're not even ripe!
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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Slugs I treat with nematodes. Snails aren't a big problem as they seem to stick mostly to particular plants that don't suffer too much, eg hop vines, lilies, raspberry canes and broom. When they become a problem, I sometimes wander round the garden just after dawn picking up snails and dropping them into a bucket of saline. Cats also don't cause me much of a problem. They tend to favour recently tilled soil. Foxes are much worse as they dig aimlessly in newly dug soil and often damage things we have just planted. To prevent this I put some impenetrable obstacle in their way like this temporary fence around a tiny mimosa tree.
I keep birds away from soft fruit and brassicas with netting although this is not so easy to do with a big plum tree.
I explained some other points in an earlier post, see:
https://harringayonline.com/forum/topics/edible-crops-galore?xg_sou...
Another pest I have had this year for the first time is saw fly caterpillars eating my gooseberry leaves. Here they are:
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Not under glass. An old vine that was already well established when I bought the place in 1979. It was probably planted by the previous owner who was from Cyprus. The grapes are small, dark and not very sweet but the leaves are big, which might have been his aim. In a good year I can make a respectable grape juice which keeps well when pasteurised.
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I have a small apricot tree that produced some fruit for almost the first time this year. When they were about 2cm in size, I went away for 10 days and on my return, all but one had completely disappeared, no sign anywhere. This was in early June. What do you think might have happened? I ate the remaining one a couple of weeks ago despite its unripe state in case I lost that too. Pigeons? Squirrels? Is netting the solution?
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I have never grown apricots but, given the absence of debris, I would guess it was a squirrel (or a neighbour!).
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I planted an apricot tree on our allotment (Tomcot variety) and this year we had 23 fruits in total, ready in late June. Large, beautifully coloured and truly delicious (sweet with just a hint of tang). Better than almost any you can buy. I cannot recommend them highly enough. We had no netting from the birds/squirrels and no protection at all from the (non-existent) early frosts. It's possible we lost some but I don't think so, and certainly not once they were fully developed. I should know as we watched them like a hawk while on the tree. Almost decided to name them individually and GPS track them!
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Well now I'm really fed up! Judging by the one unripe one, the flavour would have been good, some wretched creature obviously thought so. On to next year, then.
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Congratulations. Your apricots look delicious. Perhaps there is no squirrel population near your allotment. In which case, you are very lucky.
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