Ac Baker

An impressive range of apple varieties grown from grafting as individual or family trees, by our resident top fruit enthusiast:

Two Coeur de Boeuf, Bramley's Seedling,  two Egremont Russet, Howgate Wonder, James Grieve, Golden Delicious, and Lord Lambourne varieties.

Five dwarf rootstock trees in total

Thank you so much for your rapid reply.

This is such an interesting technique, yet I had never heard of layering otherwise annual brassicas before!

When you say, 'Territorial', do you mean these are strains where you've been saving your own seed to adapt them to the local conditions?

Thank you for the intriguing pictures!

I am definitely going to be trying layering my annual brassicas. Thank you!

M.K. Dorje Jr. wrote:

I also grow Purple-Sprouting Broccoli as a perennial.

I just pinch off the flowers and bend the stems over so the plants can re-root along the stem.

These guys can go for years like this without much care.

Some of new ones survived the recent deep freeze without problems - these guys are tough!

Plant them in a spot where they'll get afternoon shade in the summer and they'll do fine.

I would love to get this to work! I was wondering, is anyone reading who knows if this works for all purple sprouting broccoli varieties, or has named of some that will do this? Thank you!

This has been a year of drought with record-breaking length of above average temperatures (from March to August) for us.  Soft fruit, perennial shallow rooted plants & annual vegetables have done poorly, except where we could copiously water. In practice, this means the deep rooted perennials in our home garden, which got at least 16 l / 4 gallons between them once a week of bath water.

Top fruit & grapes have done well where so watered: plums, apples and apart from the pear midge infestation on plot 33A, pears.

Here is a large ripe juicy sweet pear of unknown variety, from the own rootstock tree in our house garden.  We will be donating about 70 good fruits to the community from this one tree.

A question: the conventional wisdom around here (England) is that pears ripen best after being picked nearly ripe.

But due to illness (my partner had a mild gout attack!) we could only get the ladder out yesterday to finish the harvest. Could it be the abnormal heat means these ripened better in the tree than typical for England?

If pears grow well for you, what's your experience with ripening them in or off the tree?  Many thanks.

This site suggests flowers and leaves are useful too:

https://nzbotanicalkitchen.com/herbs-and-recipes/yarrow-for-oral-health-herbal-mouthwash-recipe

PFAF has a couple of links & warnings about using the whole plant too: https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Achillea+millefolium

I do, as a replant perennial, as we usually get one deep freeze each winter.  I have an attractive red variety my friend N shared with me.

In a good hear, they can too 6f high, and we get lovely orange 'daisy' flowers on them.

This year has been a drought from our early Spring at the start of March until it finally has broken at the start of September.

Despite watering as much as we sensibly can (with insufficient rainwater harvesting capacity over winter, and looming city water shortages), they're barely 3ft this year.

I am the only one who eats them, raw or lightly cooked. Tasty. But we don't like the leaves.

I have substantial Long COVID-19 changes to my body which I'm trying to healthily re-adjust. I think I'm about 14 months into a 42 month programme ..

Every day we eat home-grown fruit, fresh of frozen.  Today we have got golden plums freshly stewed, Nancyberries, golden raspberries and redcurrants.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:And that means!!! I rolled over halfway a million calories! 🤩 total currently is 517,260 calories.

Is this for one or two years? Very impressive!

Thank you!

With our increasingly variable climate, diversifying seems wise.  I believe I still have a couple of weeks to sow this grazing rye seed as an overwintering crop,  I guess it might struggle if another hot, dry summer comes next year, but it's not long since we had a mild but very wet summer too!

It looks like rye is sown more densely for grain production than for green manure, and can inhibit germination of other plants up to six weeks after digging in.

If it does well for me maybe I could try a more valuable sowing of grain-optimised rye?