Fruits in the Garden - Part 2

It's been a while, but as we mentioned in Part 1 we decided to add to the collection of edible bushes & trees in the garden.  

This post has been delayed because we were waiting for three more bare-root fruit trees to be delivered, but after two months the nursery simply refunded the money and cancelled the order.  Not a word about this cancellation to me of course, either before or after the event - I only spotted it from the credit card statement.  They've shown themselves to be complete amateurs and so I'll be avoiding Chris Bowers & Sons in the future.

Anyway, this year so far, we've bought the following new plants :-

Supplied in larger pots :-

Macadamia Nut (exact cultivar unknown) - Macadamia integrifolia (UK hardiness H3)

This evergreen tree was already quite large when delivered.  It has been grafted, and the variety above the graft has very different leaves from the rootstock. The grafted cultivar leaves are of a lighter green colour than the rootstock, with fewer very sharp spines along the leaf edges and a longer petiole.  The graft has been made quite high up on the trunk of the rootstock, around 600 mm from soil level.  

Macadamias can grow very large if not controlled, and so I'd have preferred the graft to be nearer the soil and for the cultivar branching to start much lower down, to make a more compact tree better suited to containerisation.  Macadamias are only half-hardy and the pot will need to be brought into the conservatory for the winter.

However, it's not a bad looking tree and is growing away strongly, so I cut off all the branches below the graft to stop the rootstock growth sapping the strength from the cultivar.

In the photo pairs, the image on the left is 'as received' from the supplier, and on the right is after my initial training cuts.

I used these rootstock prunings to make three hardwood cuttings, which I've placed in a pot.  

macadamia rootstock cuttings

If they should survive, then we can make more grafted trees in the future, using scions cut from the cultivar on the mother tree.  Perhaps I'll be able to grow a new tree which I can train to branch out from much lower down than on our bought specimen.

Macadamias prefer the soil to be slightly acidic, so for this tree we'll incorporate ericaceous compost in the container mix.

I bought this tree from a UK online nursery, but they couldn't tell me the name of the particular cultivar which had been grafted onto the rootstock, since they didn't graft the tree themselves but just bought it pre-prepared from Spain.

Further research into specific macadamia cultivar identification led me to this fascinating pdf publication from a horticultural institute in Australia.   The document's over twenty years old, but from the leaf parameters of our own tree there seems to be no doubt the grafted cultivar is definitely a Macadamia Integrifolia species and is similar to types 344, 660 & 741 - to narrow this down further, we'll need to wait until it produces flowers or fruits !    

There have also been new cultivars developed since that publication was written, but in countries in which macadamias are commonly raised for sale in nurseries, e.g. Australia, then their websites still offer Macadamia-344 and Macadamia-741 saplings as well as dozens of other variants.

Examining the rootstock leaves, which are longer and narrow than those above the graft, I'd say the rootstock of our tree is similar to types A268 and NG8, and NG8 is one of the smallest macadamia trees available.  So hopefully we have a very dwarfing rootstock.

Persimmon 'Fuyu' - Diospyros kaki (UK hardiness H5)

This persimmon cultivar has been grafted onto a rootstock.  The tree had previously been pruned at the nursery, maybe last summer, but it hadn't been looked after very well.  The trunk had been 'knee-capped', but only two branches had sprouted below and they were adjacent around the trunk circumference and almost touching each other.  There was also an unwanted sucker growing up from the rootstock.

I was very disappointed with the condition in which this tree was supplied - it certainly wasn't cheap.  If it had been my nursery, I wouldn't have sold a tree in this condition, instead I'd have re-topped the main stem an inch or two lower to remove all last year's growth and then held the tree back for another year.

But I'm restoring the tree myself.  I trimmed off all growth except for the branch nearest to the vertical - no larger than a twig at the minute - and then chopped this back to around 700 mm from the soil level.  There are several buds visible below this cut that I hope will break in the spring and then I can begin to train them to form the main scaffold branches.

Pomegranate 'Provence' - Punica granatum (UK hardiness H3)

Again, I cut back almost all the dormant growth to leave a single stem with buds below, from which scaffold branches can be trained.  This tree is now around 600 mm high.  This was done because I'd prefer a mini-standard tree form to an unkempt shrub - on my travels, I've seen some beautifully trained pomegranate trees and I'd like to reproduce the same form if I can.

Pawpaw 'Improved' - Asimina triloba (UK hardiness H4)

Pawpaw (unnamed) -  Asimina triloba (UK hardiness H4)

Although pawpaw is not dioecious and has 'perfect' flowers, the female flower parts appear first and are no longer receptive by the time the male parts mature, so the tree cannot easily self-pollinate.  That's why we've bought two plants.  It's also recommended that pollinating pairs (or groups) are genetically different as much as possible, so we bought them from nurseries located in different regions of the UK.

The pawpaws as received were a bit of a tangle of low growth, with several upward shoots at very shallow angles to the main leader, which is not ideal.  I made several pruning cuts to clean up the sapling and then inserted small wooden spreaders between the three remaining limbs to encourage them to grow further outwards.

limb spreaders made from lollipop sticks

The intention is to plant both of these pawpaw saplings within the same 100 litre container.  I've seen several examples on the internet of successfully growing small trees in very close proximity to each other.

Supplied in small pots :-

Sweet Almond - Amygdalus communis (UK hardiness H4)

Strawberry Guava - Psidium cattleianium (UK hardiness H3)

Japanese Medlar (Loquat) - Eriobotrya japonica (UK hardiness H4 / H5)

as supplied, L-R; Loquat, Guava, Almond

These plants will likely need at least a summer of regular potting-on before they're finally ready to be put out into very large containers - I've already moved them on into 4 litre pots.  

They're still in the conservatory for now but they'll all go outside in May, the loquat and almond on a permanent basis although the guava will be brought back inside in the late autumn.

Kiwi 'Jenny' - Actinidia deliciosa (UK Hardiness H5)

'Jenny' is a hardy self-fertile kiwi fruit cultivar which produces egg-sized hairy-skinned fruit, i.e. they're recognisable as typical kiwi fruit.   There are several other self-fertile kiwi varieties available but some of them seem to bear smaller, smooth fruits.

This plant will actually go directly into the ground, at the base of one of the legs of our vine trellis.  There's already an ornamental climber in this location, but we'll move that somewhere else.

Kiwis require an acidic soil which we don't have here.  So we'll excavate quite a large planting hole, insert a big pot or similar with the bottom cut out, and then fill it with a soil / ericaceous compost mix to make a mini raised bed.  

We'll also have to remember to add the kiwi to the acid lovers feeding list - during the growing season, we regularly apply an appropriate liquid feed to the blueberries, camellias and rhododendrons etc.

Supplied bare-root :-

2x Pear 'Williams Bon Chretien' - Pyrus communis (grafted but unknown rootstock) (UK hardiness H6)

These were very recent bargain buys at £7 each from Poundstretcher, a fraction of the price of the three bare-root trees we ordered online which were not delivered.

Poundstretcher had loads of bare-root fruit trees in stock, but they were crammed in boxes with all the branches tangled together, many of which had snapped.   However, by removing them very carefully it was possible to pick out a few decent specimens with low grafts.

The labels say these trees will grow to a height of between 1.5 and 3m, whch sounds like they're on a 'Quince C' dwarfing rootstock.

One of these pear trees I selected to train as a two-level espalier, so I haven't pruned it at all yet.  After potting, I'll first see if I can gradually pull the the two side branches down into a horizontal position over the next few weeks, without damaging them.

for espalier training ...

The other pear tree will be trained to be short and with an open centre, so I've cut off the main leader to initially reduce the height and I've retained five scaffold branches, or scaffold twigs at the minute ...

Cherry 'Sunburst' - Prunus avium (grafted but unknown rootstock) (UK hardiness H6)

Another £7 tree from Poundstretcher, we already have a 'Sunburst' cherry we bought last summer, but I'll try to maintain this latest purchase as a much smaller tree.

cherry tree, stem pruned to <600 mm from the soil level

Growing on

Except for the kiwi and the espaliered pear, it's intended that all of the new plants will spend their entire lives in containers, and they'll be pruned regularly to keep them to a manageable size.  The tender varieties can be brought inside the conservatory for the winter.

In January, I made 10 new large containers from plastic drums.  I bought 2x 205 litre and 3x 150 litre drums from a local company, measured and pre-cut slots for lifting handles and then cut all the drums in half.  

marking & cutting ...

The bases of the new containers have been drilled for drainage and they'll be pressure-washed before they're planted up, to remove any residue of their former contents.  All the drums were previously used for food ingredients, so there's never been anything nasty in them.

eight of the new containers

These drums are made from HDPE and are strong and UV resistant.  They're ideal for lightweight large planters, and it's better to re-purpose them than to simply destroy them after a single use of transporting foodstuffs.

To fill these containers, we'll use a mix of our own garden compost, fresh topsoil, multipurpose compost and a decent amount of pearlite for aeration and water retention.  I bought a 100 litre bag of pearlite last year that's still almost full, but I'll need at least one more with so many new large containers to fill.

Many of the smaller plants won't need final planting into their permanent homes for some time, perhaps even years, so there's no immediate hurry to fill most of the very large containers.  As an interim home for some of these smaller specimens, I've more than ten white buckets of 30 litre capacity stored in the shed.

However, two of the new 100 litre pots will be used as soon as possible, to re-pot our existing cherry and apricot trees - this will then free-up two 50 litre pots for a couple of the newer plants.

cherry tree in it's original pot, and the new one alongside

And we've already put the Macadamia tree into one of the homemade 75 litre pots.  We thought it best to get it out of that very narrow pot in which it was delivered, and let the roots spread out.   As mentioned earlier, I used ericaceous compost in the pot mix instead of normal multipurpose.

This tree is currently overwintering in a corner of the conservatory, and will be taken outside in May.

the macadamia indoors ...

The bare-root varieties will be planted out as soon as possible.  Upon receipt, they were all heeled-in together in one pot as a temporary measure. 

And finally ...

As if this lot wasn't enough, I'm also attempting to grow more fruit species direct from seeds.  

I'll post more about these later in the year, depending on their progress.