It's been a good year for the gooseberries.

[whiskywill]

Harvested the last of my gooseberries yesterday evening. It brought the total from my two standard bushes to 14.9 kgs or 32lbs 12ozs.

 

[MikeG.]

We've two young bushes, and this is their second season. One (delicious) crumble has dealt with about a third of the crop, I reckon. I'm hoping for a lot better next year. In the meantime, rhubarb has taken over the garden, the new potatoes produced an enormous yield but mildly disappointing taste, the strawberries were brilliant, and the sweetcorn germination rate was extremely poor. Just another year in the veggie patch........

 

[sunnybob]

Not to be outdone... :shock:
I have one olive tree in my back garden. Last year I picked 38 kgs :shock:

Shame I dont like them (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

 

[doctor Bob]

Gooseberries have done alright.
Sweetcorn, rubbish
Rhubarb and peas gone mental.
Runner beans, beetroot, onions all look promising

 

[Steve Maskery]

I planted a G bush and a Raspberry cane. Both have grown well but zero fruit, not even flowers. Are they the sort of animal that only crops on last year's growth? I'm pleased and disappointed in equal measure.

 

[Racers]

My gooseberry bush has died, all the Mirabelle plums have been eaten by the wood pigeons who have deposited the waste over my decking, table, chairs etc that are under the tree, good crop of redcurrants on our one bush should make a couple of pots of jam. The Victoria plum tree is heavy with fruit and the blackberry's are in full flower.
My rhubarb is also doing well in only went in this year.

Pete

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Not to be outdone... :shock:
I have one olive tree in my back garden. Last year I picked 38 kgs :shock:

Shame I dont like them (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

I've got 400 in my back garden - lucky they are for oil, not for eating. What I also get, however, is lots and lots of olive wood. I have plans....

 

[Suffolkboy]

Oh man I hate gooseberries.

 

[sunnybob]

Not to be outdone... :shock:
I have one olive tree in my back garden. Last year I picked 38 kgs :shock:

Shame I dont like them (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

I've got 400 in my back garden - lucky they are for oil, not for eating. What I also get, however, is lots and lots of olive wood. I have plans....

How come you get the wood? On the other side of my garden wall is a small grove of about 40 trees, but he never cuts any thing off except thin branches under 2" across. The main trunks must be dozens of years old but still less than a foot diameter.

And he doesnt even clean between the trees, there could be lions in that grass and I wouldnt know. He does have one tree though that has lemons one side and oranges the other, which apparently is quite hard to achieve.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

Not to be outdone... :shock:
I have one olive tree in my back garden. Last year I picked 38 kgs :shock:

Shame I dont like them (hammer) (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

I've got 400 in my back garden - lucky they are for oil, not for eating. What I also get, however, is lots and lots of olive wood. I have plans....

How come you get the wood? On the other side of my garden wall is a small grove of about 40 trees, but he never cuts any thing off except thin branches under 2" across. The main trunks must be dozens of years old but still less than a foot diameter.

And he doesnt even clean between the trees, there could be lions in that grass and I wouldnt know. He does have one tree though that has lemons one side and oranges the other, which apparently is quite hard to achieve.

A huge subject - firstly, some people don't prune their eating olive trees as hard as their oil olive trees. If you don't feed your olive tree, it won't grow very much, so there won't be very much to cut off (3kg per mature tree per year, 21:7:14 N:K) If you only have a young tree, you're only going to be cutting small bits off. However, for my trees, some of which are 200-300 years old, I recon on cutting about half the canopy off, every other year. Obviously this varies from tree to tree and depends on weather and fertilizer rates etc, but as a rule of thumb, it's not too far off. Also, because trees don't do accountancy, they tend to have an off year followed by an on year, and the trees are not all in sync, so one year we get twice as much oil as the next, and therefore twice as much wood. This year is the big year - looking to harvest 15 to 20tons of olives, of which 17-20% is olive oil.

I must send you a photo of my neighbour's firewood pile - he has electric central heating, so doesn't use the wood...all prime olive wood, sun dried, just waiting for a lathe. My little pile is sad and pathetic in comparison - I only have wood from the last 3 years stacked, because I burn it in the winter.

The citrus family tree is fun thing - my neighbor is a big fan of grafting, and has four or five different citrus fruit on any given tree - grapefruit, orange, lemon, bergamot etc. I live in a very agricultural area, and stuff grows incredibly well here - all the rain in the winter. Currently 33 degrees, a tad cooler than your neck of the woods, I believe.

 

[MikeG.]

.......Runner beans, beetroot, onions all look promising

I don't know if this is commonly known (forgive me if it is), but the leaves of beetroot make a perfectly acceptable alternative to kale/ spinach/ "greens"....... They just need a minute of so of cooking. I think my wife eats them as part of a salad, too.

 

[whiskywill]

I planted a G bush and a Raspberry cane. Both have grown well but zero fruit, not even flowers. Are they the sort of animal that only crops on last year's growth? I'm pleased and disappointed in equal measure.

Gooseberries grow on old wood. The only pruning needed is to keep the bush tidy.

Raspberries are different and you need to know the variety to know whether it is a Primocane or Floricane type. A primocane type produces fruit on the current years growth and can be pruned down to ground level every year, after fruiting, of course. They also tend to be later fruiting to allow time for the current year's growth. The floricane varieties produce fruit on second year wood. You would prune out all wood that has borne fruit and leave all new growth for the next year.
If you do not know the variety, you could leave all growth on the plant and note which branches bear fruit, the old or the new, and afterwards prune accordingly.

 

[Garno]

.......Runner beans, beetroot, onions all look promising

I don't know if this is commonly known (forgive me if it is), but the leaves of beetroot make a perfectly acceptable alternative to kale/ spinach/ "greens"....... They just need a minute of so of cooking. I think my wife eats them as part of a salad, too.

I had no idea of that, I suppose we learn something new every day.
Does the wife cook them before adding to the salad or raw?

Garno

 

[SammyQ]

My gooseberries are still like rubber bullets...that's what you get for living 'oop Narth' I guess...spuds ain't flowered yet, blackberries still wizened flowers just...heyho!

 

[MikeG.]

Raw in a salad. Cooked when used as a spinach substitute.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Gooseberries grow on old wood. The only pruning needed is to keep the bush tidy.

Raspberries are different ... prune accordingly.

Will, Thank you very much for all that, very helpful. In a previous life I had Staff for this sort of thing...

This is the raspberry

It's in a pot and was just a couple of twigs when it went in. It's about half a metre or so now. I now see it has a whole flower

I have no idea why, but I appear to have cut off its name. I seem to remember it was described simply as "Golden Raspberry"



The gooseberry is in a large (5' square) planter, but hasn't put on anywhere near as much growth

In my previous garden I had two G bushes, a green and a red. They cropped at different times. The red one was absolutely gorgeous, you could pick and eat them, they were that sweet.

My garden is in the process of being "landscaped". Ha-ha. It's currently 90% covered in tarpaulins to keep the weeds at bay.

Because of several generations of building works in the garden, (including me, of course) and the concomitant removal of topsoil to make way for foundations, my garden is very undulant and a good foot above that of the neighbours, in places. So my mates Ray and Charlie are going to help me sort that out by building a perimeter wall, levelling out the soil and putting in a path (which you can just make out, meandering from the front corner of the log cabin to the door of my workshop), after which I can plant out some of the pots.

I've had to empty my herb garden and re-position the herbs against the fence, so that a new wall can be built. They appear to have survived OK, in the main. The parsley is the worst hit, though I have a big pot of the stuff as well, so I'm not panicking yet.

I've never really been interested in gardening. I like to see a pretty one, of course, but actually doing it? Nah. But now I have my own, and no gardener, I am actually beginning to see the appeal.

 

[boardgamer]

Just back in the house after blackcurrant picking. About 10lbs from the 1.5 bushes (half of one has died). Strawberries now finished (delicious but one can only eat so many). Raspberries are just getting going. Gooseberries due to be harvested tomorrow - my wife spent the evening pruning the bushes so we can actually *see* the berries. The Blackberry bush has had its best year. The fruit are huge (well huge for blackberries).

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I doubt they are blackberries - most of ours are pea sized or still flowers.

 

[boardgamer]

I doubt they are blackberries - most of ours are pea sized or still flowers.

Yes and no. It's a cultivated variety (Loch Ness??? No, my wife has corrected me to say its Black Butte). You're right that the wild ones round here are nowhere near ready.

 

[Garno]

Raw in a salad. Cooked when used as a spinach substitute.

I was telling a friend about it earlier today, he had never heard of it either.

will give it a try sometime I think.