On 05/05/2021 20:37, Martin Brown wrote:


I don't expect this year to be any good for plums, pears or cherries -
they have all taken a battering in the past couple of day. Hardly any
flying insects either. Swallows and house martins were wise to be late.

I have a large "colony" of mason bees (many hundreds of filled tubes)
and haven't seen more than a few this year. They usually come out on
mass just as my cherry tree is in full blossom. So, after a few days of
very heavy winds that have cleared my cherry tree of all blossom and a
possible lack of pollinating insects I too don't give out much hope for
a bumper crop of cherries.

My crop last year wasn't too good - despite many cherries on the tree a
complete lack of rain for a couple or three months followed by a wet
week meant that the first of the cherries swelled with little taste
followed by quickly splitting skins and mould setting in. The very small
crop gathered in the in the sweet spot before spoiling were nice


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