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Old 25-07-2012, 12:52 PM
echinosum echinosum is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2006
Location: Chalfont St Giles
Posts: 1,340
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mark View Post
I don't know if it can be blamed on the weather
Clearly it can be blamed on the weather. Too dry and hot too soon, encouraged early flowering, but drought caused young leaves and flowers to shrivel up in some cases. Then it was too cold in April for good fruit set. One of my apple trees has a reasonable amount of fruit on it, but the other two have little. And no pears, and few plums.

One surprising beneficiary has been my grapevine. It was delayed from flowering or even coming into leaf during April, then produced huge quantities of leaves and flower buds in May, eventually the flower buds opened only in July and I got huge fruit set, probably over 50 bunches. In fact I've been thinning them out, and cutting back leaves to expose the developing bunches to the sun. If it stays reasonably warm, we'll have a lot of grapes.

The blueberries have been happy.