Discovering our Pear Tree

When we first viewed our plot, the fruit trees were in full blossom. The largest tree we knew was a cherry tree, likewise the smaller tree next to it. I recognised one of the other trees as being an apple tree, but had no idea about the others. We recently learned that we have a pear tree - great news for me as I absolutely love pears! It didn't seem to be in great condition, however, so I took a closer look to see what state it was in.

When I say I'm a complete beginner to allotmenteering/gardening, it's not an exaggeration! Apart from a few containers in our small yard at home, and a few houseplants that have managed to survive beyond a couple of weeks, I've never done any growing or cultivation.

The first thing I noticed was that some of the leaves of the pear tree had red spots on them. These had occurred in clusters of leaves, with large sections of the tree unaffected. A quick Google search revealed this was pear leaf blister mite, which, obviously, I'd never heard of. I learnt that you can simply remove the affected leaves if the infestation isn't too severe, but that you should leave them alone if the entire tree is covered as removing that many leaves is likely to cause severe damage to the tree. As it wasn't particularly widespread, we simply began to remove the affected clusters of leaves.

While it doesn't look very appealing, pear blister mite does not affect the fruit, so it's still safe to eat. The Royal Horticultural Society has more in-depth information on the pear blister mite here.

The next thing I discovered was pear scab. This was only present on a couple of pears, and again, isn't serious. I honestly had no idea of all the crop-specific conditions and diseases that were out there, but luckily everything I've come across so far has been non-serious and easy to deal with! While pear (and apple) scab is serious in commercial crops as it means the fruit can't be sold, it apparently barely affects the quality of the fruit at all so the fruit can still be used. I'm not sure how tempting I would find scabby fruit, even knowing it was safe, but it doesn't seem to be very widespread at all so fingers crossed it stays that way!

The RHS (again - what would I do without their site and books?) recommends pruning young shoots that have been affected, and clearing away fallen leaves and affected fruit to try and limit the amount of fungus still around to cause scabbing next season.

Next job is to closely inspect the apple tree and see what kind of state that's in!

No. 22: Positives so far!

While it's easy to be disheartened by the amount of work we've got to do, we have come across some positives so far!

Cherry tree

We've been told by other plotholders that our cherry tree is way too big and should have been kept to a height of around 10 feet ideally. I've no idea how tall it currently is...20 feet maybe? It's hard to tell. When we first viewed the plot it was in full blossom and looked so pretty that it definitely helped sell the plot to us. It went on to drop a lot of cherries before they were ripe and it hasn't been possible to cover it this year to protect the cherries from birds as it's so huge so I'm not sure we'll get much from it this season. We plan to cut it back considerably when we can and give it a little TLC.

cherry tree in full blossom (April)

Redcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries

When we viewed the plot, we were told we had a few raspberry bushes at the entrance. Turns out it's not just raspberries.

redcurrants starting to ripen (June)

The bushes were/are absolutely swamped by weeds and mare's tail (of course!) but we're working on clearing them. There was an awful lot of bindweed strangling the fruit bushes but we've made good progress with this. We've got a few decent berries from the bushes, and the goosberries have probably fared best of all this year. Perhaps they're simply more able to stand up to neglect and pests than redcurrants and raspberries? Hopefully by next summer we will manage to get a decent harvest from this part of the allotment!

Apple and pear trees

We originally thought we had two apple trees, but it soon transpired one was in fact a pear tree. Neither tree looked in particularly great condition. and we soon discovered the pear tree had pear leaf blister mite. This turned out to be fairly easily dealt with, despite it not looking very attractive. We're looking forward to seeing how the apples and pears turn out this summer!

apples growing (June)

Brambles

Of course, we also have lots and lots of brambles, reaching around 8 feet high in some places. Possibly a lot more than 8 feet - it's hard to tell! We're going to collect as many blackberries as possible once they're ripe, and then plan to drastically cut back the brambles in the winter. We will probably keep a small area of brambles as they're predominantly right at the back of our plot in a shaded area next to a fence and trees. We're planning to place our compost bin next to that area, and want to leave a small part of our plot relatively untouched for wildlife. We have a lot of frogs on our plot and they seem to be concentrated around that damp, shaded area. Also - blackberries. Who doesn't love blackberry and apple crumble?