Ditplo
What's Going On?
The recent strange weather has certainly played havoc in the garden. The early dry spring set everything in motion about two to three weeks early. In our yard we have a fan-trained apple tree with early flowering clematis climbing through it and already it has climbed the height of the trellis.
With earlier warm weather followed by a return to the normal conditions, gardeners in the southwest experienced more frost damage to established shrubs and plants. This will probably cause no lasting damage and young foliage will soon be replaced with the vigorous growth brought on by more seasonal weather later in the year.
Dittisham plums have for many years been the talk of the town and they are believed to have been unique to the village for several hundred years. In high summer, baskets of them appear for sale at many a garden gate in the village from whence they hail. The plum was only ever grown in the area and indeed is named after the village.
One potential theory of its origin is that they come from the German “Pflaummen Baum” Plum and the trees were bought from Germany by monks in the Middle Ages. A contrasting theory is that the plums arrived by sea and were either dumped in the village by a sea captain unable to sell his cargo or washed up in the River Dart from a wreck, only to be salvaged and planted by villagers.
But, should the Dittisham plums go the way of the Cornish pasties, (no, not to be taxed by the chancellor) and the Melton Mowbray pork pie and achieve Protected Geographical Status?
Anyway, now is the time to turn our attention to pruning our plum trees and other stoned fruit.
Plum trees do not require as precise pruning as apples and pears, but they still benefit from initial training and the thinning of old wood to ensure they produce as much fruit as possible. Plums are pruned in early-spring or mid-summer to avoid infection by Silverleaf disease.
The bush is perhaps the most popular method of training and pruning and creates an open-centred tree with a clear stem of 75cm (2½ft). Its ultimate size will depend on the rootstock it is grown on.
The overall aim of pruning is to create an open-centred tree and this begins with the same formative pruning as apples and pears. Pruning is mostly limited to removing crossing, weak, vertical and diseased material.
Jobs to do this month
• Sow French beans, runner beans, squash, cucumbers and pumpkin seeds directly into prepared beds outside. Be wary of late frosts.
• Sow sweetcorn outside in blocks, at 45cm (18in) spacing, with two seeds per hole. The strongest seedling can be selected later.
• Sow purple sprouting broccoli for harvesting next winter.
• After all risk of frost has passed, plant out tomatoes, courgettes and pumpkins that were previously sown under cover.
• Young plants can be planted out once conditions are suitable and once they’ve been acclimatised to the colder outdoor conditions over a week or two.
• Earth up potatoes when the shoots are 9in high, in order to prevent the new tubers going green. Earthing up is the drawing up of soil around the stems of the plants, leaving just 2in of shoot uncovered so that the plant has enough foliage to continue growing.
• Start to remove side shoots from cordon tomatoes as you see them. The side shoots develop in the leaf axils, and if allowed to develop will sap the energy of the plant and reduce the quality of the yield.
• Thin out sowings of Florence fennel made last month. The final spacing should be 8in, with 18in between each row.
First Published May/June 2012 By The Dart
